These are the Designers in Residence 2023

Yara Veloso is a graphic designer, artist, and creative developer based in Rotterdam. She works across media on websites, video and installation to which drawing is an integral part. Her work often connects the physical and the virtual and focuses on understanding how technology works and how it contributes to how we access and assimilate the world rather than what it can produce. While her approach remains objective, it is infused with a poetic feeling, connecting fragments of thought and making space for the unexpected that emerges as things come together.

Image by Jan-Pieter Karper

Simon Hampikian is a versatile designer and artist. He lives and work in Mulhouse, France. Focused on the material details of the everyday life, he is collecting intriguing textures, techniques or compositions through street-oriented photography. Images will then be used in the concept and the making for carefully thought objects that enhance anonymous found phenomenon into handcrafted shapes.

Nicolas Zanoni, a designer born in 1995 in Paris, graduated in industrial design from La Cambre (Brussels), and now works between Brussels and Paris.
Nicolas Zanoni's practice is based on an in-depth research process, which leads him to create unique objects shaped by careful listening to materials. He adopts a thoughtful approach, focusing primarily on the production process he uses to bring his creations to life.

PHENOMENAis an investigation into the nature of reality. Since ancient times, humans have questioned their environment. From Plato's Allegory of the Cave to the dystopian future of the Matrix, the visible universe has been compared to the metaphorical tip of the iceberg.

While science formulates increasingly detailed answers, the essence of how this world is created remains unfathomable. In this search for elementary particles, the properties of matter are explored and the ephemeral nature of all appearances unfolds, each answer raising new questions. With this investigation, we aim to show that what we consider reality, our thoughts, perceptions and feelings, are creations of our own minds. These may contain only a fraction of reality or an interpretation of it, leaving ultimate reality elusive.

With this overall concept, ELDERS and Designregio aim to explore the nature of 'reality', by inviting spectators to consider very different ways of dealing with matter and reality on the one hand, and to question their own perceptions on the other.