Ineke Hans designs furniture, products, exhibitions and spaces with content, explores new design strategies and works for leading international manufacturers.
Since 2017 she is professor for Design & Social Context at the University of the Arts in Berlin.
The UDK Berlin with Ineke Hans in the project group Design & Social Context focuses on content development and network building as well as the development of talk formats.
In 1998 she set up her studio in the Netherlands after studying Product Design Arnhem (NL) and graduating with an MA in Furniture Design from the Royal College of Art in London.
In 2015 she moved back to the UK to set up the London Salons to look into ‘the future of furniture design and the changing position of the designer’.
Since 2017 she is professor Design & Social Context at the University of the Arts in Berlin.
As many dutch designers Ineke started off by initiating furniture and product collections herself, still sold via INEKEHANS | COLLECTION today. Her early work centered around pictograms and archetypes, but it has evolved in many ways; investigating the psychological roots of products, perceiving and playing with the interaction between people, objects and space.
STUDIO | INEKEHANS nowadays designs both industrial furniture and products as well as handmade items produced in smaller batches and also works on exhibitions and architectural commissions for manufacturers like Arco, Cappelini, Iittala, Lensvelt, Magis, Offecct, Royal Ahrend, RoyalVKB, and clients like Cooper Hewitt Museum (NY), Royal Dutch Forestguard, Shorefast Foundation (CA) and Dutch governmental organisations.
Ineke Hans is valued for her down-to-earth and simultaneously hybrid design approach with a focus on detail, function and clarity, an interest in the vernacular as well as our future society. Old and brand new production methods are used in intelligent, unconventional ways, but all work is based on the interest to design and define projects fitting to future ways of living and working together.
Crafts, industrial methods, and digital production are equally important to her: ‘We have to cherish all skills. Designers can use them to make products by challenging the old techniques, just as they have to stretch the limits of a modern laser cutter and recent open source methods.’ Innovative materials and production techniques and thinking about future human values and habits have become most important triggers for new work and make it multi layered, playful and social. Her work have won prestigious international design awards and her work is globally purchased by museums and collectors.
Ineke Hans is regularly involved in international talks and debates on design. In 2014/15 she was Guest Professor Produkt Design in Kassel (Germany).
Her investigations and research with INEKEHANS | SALON in London underlined her position as one of the leading Dutch designers at the forefront of dealing with the societal changes the design profession currently needs to deal with.