What are you going to do in Scotland?
I will be the Head of the School of Design, which consists of 13 departments, each one having its own specialization. There is, for example, glass, jewelry, product, photography, graphics and film and video,. It’s lovely. Edinburgh is a beautiful old art school. It is an excellent school with a lot of potential and many dedicated people working and studying there. It is comparable to the Glasgow School of Arts, which is a little better known due to their more aggressive marketing. Edinburgh is a well kept secret.

So you are leaving Holland after ten years?
It’s a shame to leave Holland and Amsterdam. I really enjoyed living here. I’ve always worked in Eindhoven –first at Design Academy Eindhoven, later at TU/e - and travelled from Amsterdam. Recently the travel was no problem, I enjoyed it, but sometimes the 12 hour days were a bit too much. In Edinburgh we’ll be living literally around the corner.

What can you tell us about how it all began in the Industrial Design department?
I started as member of the sounding board back in 2000 together with Jeu Schouten, Loe Feijs, Rokus van Iperen of Océ and Han Smits. I remember Jeu asking what I thought about a project with an adaptive car sunroof. I replied that the idea appealed to me and I wondered if the roof also knew if you wanted to be observed while you were driving nude [laughs loudly]…. Just to make the point that such an adaptive product should be able to comply with your individual wishes, or better, with your emotions. Intelligent products are OK, but you need to see the psychological and emotional side as well. Your emotions are more important than your activities, when we think of designing intelligent products.

What were your first experiences with the functioning department?
We started with very few staff members and few students. The very first students did so well, they were able to make a big impression with the clients they worked with. One of the strongest points in this education is that the students have always led. During the accreditation that we went through last year, the students were the true voice of the faculty. On the Masters I feel that mix of modules, guest lectures and project is really excellent, but I have a feeling that things might soon change.

What direction do you think we are moving now?
It’s becoming more scientific. Scientific questions have to be answered, that is obvious; it is a University. In my view, our students should become vision people, able to tackle the questions industry is asking and needs to ask in the future. Research is important and they enjoy their research semester in the Masters, but ultimately 90% of our students will work with or for industry and will not continue as academic researchers.
I went to Taiwan four months ago and was surprised to see only young people heading the design department of Asus, a computer company. Designers should feed the industry. They play a really important role. In Asus you saw people from a specific background, whereas our ID students are integrators. I’ve seen ID master students, e.g. Michel Peeters at Adidas, capable of truly exciting the board of directors with his innovative ideas and approach. He could speak the language of all specialists involved and knew how to convince them. I’m afraid that this mix of qualities is not exactly what the university wants; that, in other words, this mix is considered not scientific enough and we’ll lose the battle with the hard core scientists.

What do you think you’ll be missing?
Richard Appleby and I have had a very special position within the faculty. I have had the opportunity to work with people from a totally different background to my own. Rene Ahn for instance has a hard-core engineering background, but still we were able to communicate and inspire each other. This kind of bridging between disciplines is very seldom seen. I didn’t imagine I would gain so much insight in the creativity of engineers as I have done here. That is something not provided for in Edinburgh Yes. Though, Product Design already works with a Technical University in Edinburgh. Maybe the difference here is that there has been and hopefully still is a will to work together. It’s the most difficult thing in the world to cross disciplines. We did it because people wanted (and indeed needed) to.

What will be your cherished moments at ID you take with you to Scotland?
There are many. The accreditation feedback last May was a very important moment for me. I sat next to Loe Feijs and when the feedback was so positive I looked back at him and we both had a little tear in the corner of our eye. A lot of people have worked so hard to get to this point, to help make the faculty what it is now. So many people have trusted in us for so long. The accreditation success was a payback for that trust. The graduations of both Bachelor’s and Master’s were also very special to me. At these moments you start to realize that the education is ‘travelling under its own steam’ so to say. You see that the course we created together is working well, people get through, they get jobs and they are successful.

Do you feel the pioneering phase is over now?
[Long pause]… That is my problem: people feel like it is over and now want to stay in their comfort zone; whereas I think it is still necessary to forge ahead. I’m afraid that now we start to rely too much on the people who don’t want to go outside their comfort zone. Its probably out of balance now. The eagerness to take it one step further is starting to diminish. I think the research here is often quite classical, as we do it, whereas the education is far from classical. Unfortunately there comes a point that we’ll probably make the education less revolutionary so the goals of research and education can meet. I fear this will lead to too many compromises.

What do you think of the increasing importance of research?
The researchers within ID when we started were very adventurous. Now you have various schools of research that all need to publish and that asks for a certain kind of approach that is less flexible than what we were able to do in the very beginning. Take for example Loe Feijs, he worked very hard to broaden his knowledge and experience so that he could understand and develop alongside our design students; he was capable of bridging the gap between research and design. But I don’t know if there will be many more of his kind. I’m afraid that these kind of ‘spines’ that you need in you department become solid and we’ll be less flexible. We have to convince the research groups that the typical education approach we have developed here is interesting and lucrative enough for them to respond to. It would be a pity if the education would become more conservative to support the research.

What do you hope you future in Scotland will look like?
I’m afraid my son Louis will lose all the wonderful Dutch he learned [laughs]..
Well in essence I’m now the Head there and I can take it whichever way I want it to go. I’m looking forward to that responsibility and opportunity.

How will you become a successful King of thirteen little Kingdoms?
That is a good description of it. But you can also look at it as a wonderful mosaic. It is necessary to preserve the specialness of each department and still find the thread that will bring them together. The wonderful thing is that this school doesn’t need to grow, it has fixed numbers; most people who apply are turned away. We must concentrate on excellence. Many of my students from the Design Academy have become design celebrities. That will happen in Scotland too. It is very much about ambition, to educate students who are ambitious.
What I learned at ID is that if you give the students sufficient space, they will be able to become outstanding designers. You create the support system, but need to withdraw at the right time. We will invite innovative guest lecturers as we have done for the ID Masters. It is wonderful if these lecturers from outside make a true ‘mess’ of it and we’ll pick up the pieces when they are gone, which is a very healthy thing to do. We bred an ambition for excellence at the Design Academy then at the ID Masters and I will now make sure that happens in Edinburgh too.

Dr. Jun Hu from the Designed Intelligence capacity group is involved in coaching this group of highly talented youngsters. Hu: ‘The help from prof. Loe Feijs and the cooperation between our faculty and the team icNRG during the open day turned out very successful – icNRG won the regional championship and also the Benelux national in the First Lego League. Now they have advanced to the international level and will be representing the Netherlands in the First Lego League Open Asia Championship in Tokyo.’ 

Jun adds: ‘We still need a lot of financial support. The mayor of Eindhoven ir. Braks supports the team and Industrial Design is planning to support the team as well.’ International successes like this underline the importance of good, stimulating, technology-oriented education, especially in the Eindhoven ‘leading in technology’ region.

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