The Great Indoors Award 2011

REcentre took part in the education programme of The Great Indoors Award 2011 (Maastricht, NL)

The Great Indoors Award is an international, biennial, interior design award that wishes to elevate interior design to the level of ‘mature discipline’. The Great Indoors Award is initiated and organized by: FRAME Magazine (www.framemag.com) (Amsterdam, NL), Marres, Centre for Contemporary Culture (www.marres.org) (Maastricht, NL), and NAiM/Bureau Europa (www.bureau-europa.nl) (Maastricht, NL).

The Great Indoors Award attempts to provide the interior designer with a platform of stature, as well as to prompt debate and disperse information on interior design. The aim is to reward excellence and, at the same time, to show this work to the world.

The theme of this years edition was IN BETWEEN. In a period of economic instability we face increasingly complex and even contradictory challenges. The Great Indoors wishes to reflect on all these challenges mostly by way of its parallel program. Interiors are part of a visual language. Change is a vital element, giving for instance retail interiors a lifespan of three to four years. The Great Indoors sees an unexpected quality in this dynamic element of interiors and wants to reflect on the importance of temporal solutions in a period of economic stagnancy, growing vacancy and the need for durable solutions. IN BETWEEN aims to investigate the temporal as a productive strategy for vacancy and reuse.

An important part of The Great Indoors was the education programme in which design students from the Euregion work on a temporary interior for commissioners from the region.

The Great Indoors Education Programme was developped in collaboration with REcentre.

REcentre also took part in the programme as one of the commissioners with assignment to design the ‘interior’ for a temporary park on a vacant lot in the centre of Maastricht. Mentors Ernst van der Hoeven (landscape architect) (www.ernstvanderhoeven.com) and Frank Bruggeman (designer) (www.frankbruggeman.com) guided the students from the Fachhochschule in Dusseldorf that worked on this assignment.

On 4 November 2011 The Great Expectations Award was announced for the best student project in The Great Indoors Education Programme. The winning student project/ student team was be selected by the designers that are nominated for The Great Indoors Award 2011. The concept of the temporary park won the award of The Great Indoors Education Programme 2011.

All the student interiors were realised in the centre of Maastricht and were open to the public on Saturday November 5 between 11am-6pm.

Please visit The Great Indoors Award website for more information on the education programme, the commissioners, the mentors, the process and the final results.

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