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Droog Hosts Dutch Design Festival at Governor's Island

Conceived by Renny Ramakers, co-founder and director of Dutch design collective Droog, the festival marks 400 years since the Dutch arrived in New York.

Nicholas Tamarin -- Interior Design, 8/27/2009 12:00:00 AM

New York returns to its roots this September when "Pioneers of Change," an all-Dutch design festival, descends upon Governor's Island for a two-weekend run.

The event, scheduled for September 11-13 and September 19-21, commemorates the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the Dutch in New York by celebrating modernist design, fashion and architecture from the Netherlands.

Conceived and curated by Renny Ramakers, co-founder and director of Dutch design collective Droog, Pioneers of Change will be centralized in several stately officers' homes in the island's Nolan Park, a former Army base accessible by a free seven-minute ferry ride from Manhattan.

Exhibits will feature work from luminaries like Maarten Baas, 2012 Architecten, Atelier NL, and Atelier Van Lieshout. Students from New York's Parsons The New School for Design will collaborate with Dutch fashion designers and master craftspeople from New York. Designers will unearth the local grounds to explore color and textures; inside, a screening series features films on urban farming in New York.

"I am honored to share my vision of what I see as a new movement in design and architecture, a different design based on a more critical attitude toward global mass consumption and with an open eye to participation from the public," say Ramakers.

The festival-related programming actually kicks off on Manhattan's Upper East Side, where the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum hosts Open Talks, a two-part panel discussion on September 10. Moderated by Dutch and American architects, the presentations consider two topics: "Toward a New Notion of Luxury" and "New Collaborations".