Michael Erlhoff passed away on 1 May 2021 and although I was not a student of his, and my contact with him was limited to a few visits to his home and occasional exchanges by email, his death nevertheless affected me so much that I felt like contributing to the Festschrift (commemorative publication) that was put together by Maziar Rezai and Simon Meienberg. While I was never able to tell him, Michael Erlhoff's contributions to design theory had a great influence on my thinking and designing. In his honour, I tried my hand at my first Dadaist poem, which has now appeared in the publication “DaDa-Erlhoff – About The Man Who Knew Too Much”, alongside contributions by Wolfgang Jonas, Simon Meienberg, Claudia Saar, Birgit Mager, Maziar Rezai, Veselina Koleva, Angelia Knyazeva, Michelle Christensen, Florian Conradi, Stefan Schmidt, Jan Zurwellen and Tom Bieling. The full publication can be downloaded here.

The 23rd edition of the “Design promoviert” colloquium will take place at 16 May 2020. The event was originally planned to take place on site at Köln International School of Design (KISD), however, due to the Corona Pandemic, the event will now be held for the first time as an online-only event. In collaboration with KISD, a digital format has been developed that will enable as many people as possible to participate.

On 12 October 2019, Christoph Tochtrop and I gave the workshop “Kleiner Span ganz groß” for citizens of the city of Essen. In preparation to the workshop we had designed a chair, whose building instructions fit entirely on one A4 page that became a component of the chair. The side element, which is the constructive heart of the design and to which all parts are connected, has exactly the dimensions of an A4 sheet (29.7 x 21 cm). All participants, most of whom had little or no craft experience, were able to build the chair in the tight time frame of 3 hours. The chairs were made from chipboard that we had picked up on the street. The workshop was initiated by the Ruhr Museum as part of the program accompanying the 100th anniversary of the Bauhaus. 

After Marie Beuthel and I took over the organization of the “Design promoviert” colloquium for the 21st edition – which took place at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen on 11 May 2019 – the 22nd edition of the event will take place at the Kunsthochschule Kassel on 17 November 2019. “Design promoviert” was initiated as a thematic group of the German Society for Design Theory and Research (dgtf). The meeting is addressed at all who are working on or would like to begin a doctoral thesis in the broad field of design. The meetings, which take place twice a year at a university in Germany, offer a protected space to discuss the manifold theoretical and research approaches to design.

As co-founder of the shared workspace “Ateliergemeinschaft Beisingstraße” I will participate in the group exhibition “Zehn Positionen” (ten positions) where each of the ten members will show one project. My contribution to the exhibition is the Hello, Goodbye coat hanger. The exhibition runs from 3 to 10 August 2019 in the space of the “Alte Mitte” at Viehofer Platz 10 in Essen.

I got nominated by the Rat für Formgebung (German Design Council) for the German Design Award 2020 in the category Newcomer. After being nominated together with Philipp Hermes in 2015 this is my second nomination for this award.

The new office address is:

Dustin Jessen Design (DJD)

Ateliergemeinschaft Beisingstraße e.V.

Beisingstr. 12 (Hinterhof)

D-45141 Essen

Germany

Two new products will be launched at Orgatec fair in Cologne from 23 till 27 October 2018. While Dutch brand functionals will be presenting the Kumpel trestle table, and its endless possibilities of various shapes and sizes, Van Esch is showing the Coach coat rack.

I started to work on my doctoral thesis at Folkwang University of the Arts. The research project is funded by the Umweltbundesamt (German Environment Agency), and supervised by Prof. Dr. Christa Liedtke who is the director of the division “Sustainable Production and Consumption” at Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy.