We are delighted to present three exceptional projects by one of the Netherlands’ most acclaimed designers.

In 2011, Meindertsma created Tree Track a unique autonomous work commissioned by InnovatieNetwerk. Tree Track is a 13-metre-long wooden train track with trains and blocks made from a complete 13-metre-tall beech tree from the Flevopolder. Tree Track spreads over the entire floor of the gallery, reaching out towards the walls. As if the tree is growing again.

In the rear space is the project Les Modèles Cristallographiques (2014), 16 objects of magnified crystal models made in beech wood. For this project, Meindertsma selected the pear wood shapes of the French mineralogist René Just Haüy (founder of geometric crystallography) that represent the crystal formation of minerals. The collection, which dates from 1801, is owned by the Teylers Museum in Haarlem.

The third project is a recently published encyclopaedic book, Bottom Ash Observatory, in which Christien Meindertsma takes the reader on a voyage of discovery through a bucket filled with 25 kilos of bottom ash, the residue of 100 kilos of incinerated domestic and industrial waste. Through a process of sieving, drying, laser-analysis and separating ten thousand elements by hand, Meindertsma harvested materials that, when melted down, produce 12 valuable cylinders of pure metal like zinc, aluminium and silver. Whereupon the waste of the waste becomes a new form of mining for the future.

Christien Meindertsma researches ‘the life’ of products and raw materials. In her designs, she hopes to regain insights into the processes of the materials that have become lost to us through industrialisation. Her work is exhibited at MoMA (New York), the V&A (London) and the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum (New York). Her book PIG 05049 was distinguished with three prizes: three Dutch Design Awards (2008), as well as an Index Award (2009). Christien graduated from the Design Academy Eindhoven in 2003.

This exhibition is made possible thanks to the support of InnovatieNetwerk, Kuperus & Gardenier and Thomas Eyck