Plastic! The Zip-a-Tone, Letraset, Mecanorma and more
Frans Hooykaas
Frans Hooykaas studied at the Academy of Architecture in Amsterdam and worked at the Van de Broek & Bakema architecture office from 1961 to 1990, first as a draughtsman and later as a collaborating architect, mainly focusing on design visualisation and on publications. He also assisted Jaap Bakema with his international contacts and his teaching work, including four years as a teaching assistant at the International Summer Academy for Visual Art in Salzburg. From 1975, he also worked as a teacher and coordinator at what is now the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam, where he introduced the use of self-adhesive plastic films into interior design.
Mette Peters
Mette Peters is a film historian specialising in the history of animated films and the conservation of animation heritage. She researches the creative practices of animated filmmakers in the Netherlands during the interwar period at the University of Utrecht, and is a lecturer on animation at Utrecht School of the Arts. Peters regularly publishes on Dutch animated film and on the filmmakers Jacques Verbeek and Karin Wiertz.
Jeroen de Vries
Jeroen de Vries is an industrial designer, curator and (former) activist. As a designer and insider, he played an important role in the anti-Vietnam War movement, student protests and the peace movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Today, many of the projects in which he is involved are about the history of war and genocide, as well as current issues such as the climate crisis and migration.
Ellen Smit
Ellen Smit is an architecture historian. She has been a curator at Het Nieuwe Instituut since 2001. In 2016, she researched the role and significance of structuralist architectural drawings in the design process with a grant from the Dutch Research Council (NWO). She is the project leader of the research project Invented from Copies, which explores the cultural value of the copy in the design process and design culture.
Paper conservator Aafke Weller and graphic designer Ad van der Kouwe advised on the content for the evening. Weller works at the Hoogduin restoration workshop (Delft) and is involved in the Disclosing Architecture programme in that capacity. Since 2017, together with Mette Peters, she has been leading the Materials in Motion conservation project, which focuses on researching and preserving a large number of animated films in the Eye collection. Ad van der Kouwe is a graphic designer and co-founder of the design bureau Manifesta – Idee & Ontwerp.