Design Map · Eindhoven
Clayboard Boxes
Graduation project by Nicole Lee at Design Academy Eindhoven, 2026. Shown during Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven on Design Map, location F5.
As a child, one of the easiest ways to translate your vivid imagination into the real world is by making things out of cardboard – but as we get older, this sense of imagination gets lost. Seeking to tap back into this uninhibited creativity without overthinking it, Nicole Hyejeong Lee got back in touch with cardboard. After making a series of prototypes with cardboard boxes, she carefully replicated their tabs, folds and corrugated edges out of clay using slab construction techniques. After firing the boxes in a kiln, colourful drawings on their surface hint at what they can become. If Nicole draws a vase on a particular box, it becomes a vessel for flowers. And if she draws a window, a plain wall opens up to a view of a landscape. The result is a series of ceramic objects, both functional and imaginative, that maintain a childlike sense of creativity.