More top design comes out of Groningen than you think. Under the Northern radar are creative minds that almost silently conquer the world with their sublime designs. Gerard de Hoop is one such person. He recently won an international award for a cupboard that can be packed to be so flat that it would get IKEA a little excited, and thanks to an intriguing and sight-defining structure he designed with Ward Huting, you can now say you are going to Slochteren city centre without any shame. And whoever manages all that has to be kind of a big deal.
Gerard de Hoop (Stadskanaal, 1968) is believed to have been born a designer. In his final year of secondary school, he had already designed his first piece of furniture: a collapsible desk in the shape of a cassette tape box. This fuelled his passion for design: ‘I was in my final year and I had yet to decide which study programme I wanted to pursue. And then suddenly I thought: art school, that's what I want to do!’ In 1995, he graduated from Academie Minerva in architectural design. He has since taken the design world by storm. For instance, big names such as Gelderland, Castelijn and Palau have designs of his in production, he designed the Vincent side table (‘a little table with one ear’) for French department store Monoprix, and was given permission by Danish designer furniture manufacturer Fritz Hansen to adapt Arne Jacobsen's world-famous butterfly chair to his own liking. He’s one of a kind.
SLOCHTEREN: THE TERRAIN OF GAS AND FOLLIES
Slochteren is Home to the great gas deposit: purveyor of great wealth and collapsed farms. It has been the place to be for capitalists and disaster tourists, but now it’s also for folly lovers. Say what? The folly: the most decadent child of the architectural family, born in 18th-century England. Large landowners there began to enrich their landscape parks en masse with artificial caves, fake ruins, Greek or Roman temples, Chinese pavilions, obelisks, false tombs and pyramids. These were totally useless objects and therefore something that immediately acquired a fan base, because happiness is found in very pointless things. Incidentally, Huting and De Hoop's is not: ‘This is a so-called history folly and it still serves a certain purpose: it refers to the history of the place where it stands," a seated De Hoop explains about his own design.
THE SWOAISTEE AND ITS BRICK NEIGHBORHOOD
The folly is called De Swoaistee, which is Gronings for ‘winding hole’: at this spot, barges used to be able to turn to go back across Slochterdiep after unloading goods. The design is one of the ten winners of the project New Follies on Fraeylema and Slochteren's Erfgoedplein, organised by the Fraeylemaborg Estate Foundation. Eight follies are near the castle, and two are on the Erfgoedplein. In addition to the Swoaistee, there is also a pile of bricks by the famous architecture firm MVRDV in the square. MVRDV has long since broken through internationally and can afford to do that. The Swoaistee prevents you from feeling like you have landed on a construction site.
WINNING TEAM? LEAVE IT BE!
Incidentally, this is not the first time Huting and De Hoop have designed a folly together: they previously did so for Noorderzon in 2006. Don’t change around a winning team though, because for the Fraeylemaborg design competition, they also submitted their own designs separately, but neither of them made it. It became The Swoaistee: seven windows were placed around a centre, made up of back-to-back frames of impregnated pinewood — not intended to stay in place for eternity, but at least for five years. De Hope: ‘The windows point to all the important places and buildings in the village. So you can see the whole town from one location. The Swoaistee, by the way, is at its most beautiful when you drive around it: you can see it keep changing and the lines and shadows especially well.’
CONQUER THE WORLD
It is typical of De Hoop's work, which is mostly graphical and minimalist. This is also strongly reflected in the 'FRAMES' series, which consists of sleek, open-shelving constructions, with which he is currently causing a furor. The most recent design from this line, FRAMES 2.5, was even worthy of an international award: the Silver A' Design Award 2015-2016 in the Furniture, Decorative Items and Homeware Design category. And rightly so, because it’s a brilliant piece of furniture! It consists of ten black steel frames which, when packed up, all fit together to form what is known as a flat-pack. Once in position, there is a full-fledged shelving unit. Which Swedish homeware store does this principle remind us of again? Exactly and that seems to be fine: ‘I would love to design something for IKEA; it seems really cool to me to be sold all over the world!’