Studio Tjeerd Veenhoven is a product design studio with a love for inventing materials and production techniques. In their mind, being a designer is much more than just aesthetics or expressing trend: it is almost activism; design to change the world, even if just a little.
From the design studio in Groningen they experiment with materials and crafts from all over the world: developing new products to strengthen local economies, ecological awareness and design thinking. Their latest innovation is a modification of dry and brittle palm leaves that turns them into soft and flexible vegetarian leather, which are now being produced in the rural areas of South India in cooperation with some of India’s brightest social entrepreneurs. The Palmleather project is recently won the prestigious Green Design Competition Award 2012.
