Renny Ramakers: Rethinking Design?Curator of Change

Surveying the expansive career of a champion of contemporary Dutch design

Cofounder of the Droog Design collective, the Dutch designer, art historian, critic and curator Renny Ramakers (born 1946) has championed the notion of furniture and industrial design as a reimagination of today's world for more than three decades, combining virtual technologies and social media with the craft of design to develop new social relations. When Droog first exhibited at the Milan furniture fair in 1993, its assemblies of found materials and witty forms instantly changed the landscape of design. Since then, Ramakers has worked with makers and creators to move beyond slick objects and toward critical projects that open our eyes to our multifaceted realities while bringing great access and joy to users.

In Renny Ramakers: Rethinking Design―Curator of Change, author Aaron Betsky shows how Ramakers has emphasized the mix of high and low cultures, the reuse of images, the importance of wit, the necessity of user participation, the elegance of the undressed object and the possibilities of design as a catalyst for social change. It surveys the work Ramakers has done since 1980 as the author of countless articles and books on design, as the promotor of Droog, as project director and curator, and as thinker.