Atelierdorp
Where once people prayed devotedly to God, now people work with a similar devotion on concepts that conquer the world. This devotion is not only focussed on their work but just so much on doing good to the world. With faith in the fact that spreading the right energy and conceptualizing what the world and the people need today, the people of Atelierdorp think of how to make this world a better place. Not as a rigid religion, but as a way of working, of collaborating, of sharing.
They all finished their education at Design Academy Eindhoven and since then stone by stone built up their career from this special place – de Van Aars Kerk - , that was offered as a temporarily working space by the Housing Corporation Woonbedrijf. In this church people have been working inventively on ideas and products that went travelling through the world. The designers of Atelierdorp have been exhibiting in Milano or Miami or any other place in the world. They sold their work through world famous galleries, to sometimes world famous customers. No visitor of any importance in the design industry left Eindhoven before visiting this church. But then this global range of activities does not make them less aware of the environment they live in. With the people in the neighbourhood and schoolkids they have been working on a project like Buurt Etalage: to stimulate happier living in this somewhat deprived neighbourhood. Poems on the walls, happy animals in the street. A project that make people living there, proud of their environment that radiates now with more positive energy. Atelierdorp would like to spread this kind of working all over Eindhoven. A positive and creative energy that can be shared with schoolkids in workshops, with people in neighbourhoods in coffee sessions, with entrepreneurs. Furthermore they offer working space to student designers that benefit from their coaching during the finalization of their graduation projects. With faith in the motto that one and one makes three, that collaboration in openness pays itself back in sharing costs and facilities, feedback, exposure , the collective of Atelierdorp - although consisting of people of different origins - demonstrate the spirit that is so characteristic for Eindhoven and the region.
