Cooling down the city

Creative Collaboration, Naturally

During DDW2024, visitors to the NRE site will experience first-hand the beneficial power of greening. Elho, the specialist in sustainable design products for all the extra green in our lives, launches the multidisciplinary platform elho X to give its social mission an innovation boost together with designers, artists, scientists and architects. For this first collaborative project, initiator and curator Caroline Krouwels invited Eindhoven-based designers Grietje Schepers, Harm Rensink and Niels van den Broek to join elho in creating a lasting manifestation of green magic. The result titled Cooling Down the City offers visitors to the former NRE a special ‘forest bathing spa moment’ and, even better, new life for the oak tree on the site that was in danger of withering away due to heat stress. Learning to work together with nature, that is elho X's ultimate goal. Everything that comes out of this has literally sustainable added value for all of us. With the brand-new platform elho X, elho is creating a multidisciplinary playground to create new sustainable solutions and products together with designers, artists, scientists, architects and other creative heroes.

Life Saving Greenery

By initiating creative collaborations, elho proactively seeks to reinforce its mission to green the urban living environment, contributing to well-being, cooling and liveability. During this edition of DDW, elho X proudly presents the result of the first collaborative project between the best of man and the best of nature : Cooling Down the City.
For the site-specific project Cooling Down the City, elho joined forces with three designers: Grietje Schepers, Harm Rensink and Niels van den Broek. All three live and/or work on the NRE site, a new residential area being developed by the mostly creative residents themselves. On the NRE site, for instance, there is an oak tree that visibly suffered from heat stress and suffocation due to ever-increasing petrification. By surrounding the tree with as much greenery as possible, the residents managed to give it back its vitality. At the invitation of elho X, the local designers decided to pay tribute to this early success and let the DDW audience share in the experience of the healing power of greening. Nature and people flourish through loving attention and respect.

Forest Bathing

During DDW, the old oak tree will become a soothing green spa where visitors can take a moment to enjoy the tranquillity and coolness offered by trees and plants. A temporary metres high green installation will rise up around the oak in which visitors - ‘having coffee with dear old neighbor oak’ - can get in touch with themselves and with nature. Designers Harm Rensink and Grietje Schepers specialise in creating immersive spatial installations that appeal to all senses, and together with architect Niels van den Broek and elho's expertise, they were able to materialise their design oasis. The coffee, of course, is of the most sustainable quality and provided by NRE neighbours Sprout Coffee Roasters. All the greenery for this elho X project will be donated to the NRE site after DDW so that the oak tree and its surroundings can enjoy the sustainable effects of this initiative for a long time to come.