Design Map · Eindhoven
The Dust Has Settled
Graduation project by Kangning Zhou at Design Academy Eindhoven, 2026. Shown during Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven on Design Map, location F5.
Kangning Zhou’s ‘The Dust Has Settled’ is a three-part installation that reflects on the designer’s experience of growing up in the care of his grandparents, and the sentiment of loneliness that he associates with this part of his life. Triggered by the event of graduation, the project is an exploration of memory, presented as a collection of photographs and a short film. In order to trace time he perceives as lost and largely inaccessible through his personal memory, the designer visited his childhood home and went on to collect dust in the former home that lay abandoned for 15 years, in a final attempt to capture traces of the past. At this point, the designer brings a personal well-connected project to larger universal grounds that resonates with everyone’s life: once the dust that embodies the passage of time has settled, the past cannot ever be traced.