NAGOYA--"I designed a new way of living," says Jill Marie Hanssen, by way of introduction. She is a 1999 product design graduate from the Academy of Visual Arts Maastricht, so the hyperbole may have been the unintended result of speaking in English, her third language, but I took the 22-year-old Dutch designer's statement at face value.
Sitting on her product in her open-ended cubicle in the maze of "Design Next Generation 2000: The Dutch New Innovators," an exhibition at the Nagoya International Design Center at NADYA Park, I was electrified by her will and the power of her simple concept: a gray stuffed nine-panel felt carpet punctured with holes at regular intervals. To go in the holes are round-bottomed ceramic cups, with a sort of upside-down felt cozy for holding hot drinks, and larger containers, maybe for nuts. A turned wooden bowl with a rounded base completes her innovative room set. It is astounding that no Japanese designer has come up with such an elegant solution to the increased use of Western flooring.
Of course, this young woman hasn't designed a new way of living single-handedly. She had help. The exhibition features six different teams of mostly young Dutch designers, part of a new design movement that has surprised and delighted the world since the early 1990s.