The Architecture of Visibility: How Design Collective Show Not Show Deconstructs Power at Dutch Design Week

EINDHOVEN — In the labyrinth of contemporary design curation, exhibitions often celebrate the final, polished artefact while neatly sidestepping the socio-economic mechanisms that brought it into existence. The design collective Show Not Show has chosen to shatter this convention. With their provocative exhibition The Table of Power, staged at the Kruisruimte exhibition space during Dutch Design Week, the collective has turned its critical lens inward, interrogating the delicate, often transactional power dynamics that bind creators, institutions, and the design press.

Taking its name and conceptual framework from Jacqueline Hassink’s iconic 1990s photographic survey—which captured the pristine, unoccupied boardrooms of Fortune 500 corporations—The Table of Power replaces corporate boardrooms with the infrastructure of the design industry itself. In doing so, it forces a reckoning on visibility, authority, and who truly holds the levers of influence in the creative economy.

Main Facts: The Anatomy of The Table of Power

At the geographical and conceptual center of the exhibition lies an exceptionally long table designed by collective members Frank Penders and Luuk van Laarhoven. Constructed from industrial sheet metal, the piece is cut and bent into a stark, brutalist form. Its cold, utilitarian origins are softened—and complicated—by brushed textures and vibrant chromatic gradients, lending the institutional symbol an eerie, seductive allure. A strategically placed mirror at the far end of the installation creates an optical illusion, stretching the table infinitely toward an imagined horizon.

Surrounding this brutalist axis is an eclectic assembly of collectible furniture, lighting, and textile pieces contributed by core collective members—Lucas Zito, Marc Meeuwissen, Mokko, and Studio Fabius Clovis—alongside invited guest exhibitors Aleksandra Adamchyk, Kilian Vos, and Pablo Octavio.

The material palette of the room reads like a tactile debate: raw wood sits adjacent to high-gloss lacquer, sculptural metals contrast with translucent glowing bioplastics, and heavy stone-like textures meet tactile textiles. Key installations include:

• Marc Meeuwissen’s Barricada: A new series of angular wooden stools crafted with just one tool and one material, engineered to mirror the geometry of the central dining setup.
• Studio Fabius Clovis’s Plywood Seating: Characterful, human-scale furniture characterized by uneven surfaces brought to a high-gloss sheen.
• Lucas Zito’s Pendant Lights: 3D-printed totemic lighting forms fashioned from bioplastic that distort spatial perception through radical shifts in scale.
• Pablo Octavio’s Room Dividers: Curtain-like, brushed aluminum partitions whose height deliberately grants seated individuals superior spatial oversight compared to those standing, physically encoding a hierarchy of control.

Chronology: From Concept to Press Dinner

The genesis of The Table of Power was as functional as it was conceptual. When Show Not Show was invited to orchestrate the official press dinner for Dutch Design Week, the collective was faced with a spatial constraint: the Kruisruimte exhibition space is modest in scale.

Instead of treating the dinner as an isolated hospitality event tucked away from the public exhibition, the collective executed a brilliant inversion.

• 2024 Launch: Show Not Show debuts at the Kruisruimte during Dutch Design Week, establishing its mandate to exhibit design experiments, works-in-progress, and raw prototypes. The collective subsequently takes this methodology abroad to the Design Biennale Rotterdam, Collectible Brussels, and Milan Design Week.
• 2025 Evolution: The collective shifts its curatorial focus toward interiority, emphasizing the philosophical concepts, internal dialogues, and theoretical frameworks driving their material practices.
• October 2026 (Dutch Design Week): The collective is approached to host the official press dinner. Rather than separating the dining experience from the showcase, Show Not Show merges the two, transforming the dinner into the literal and conceptual focal point of the exhibition.
• The Opening Night: Journalists, critics, and media heavyweights are seated at the infinite sheet-metal table. Though organizers explicitly encourage diners to stand up, circulate, and "share the power," observers note a telling sociological phenomenon: few journalists relinquish their seats.

Supporting Data & Exhibition Metrics

• Dates: The Table of Power ran as part of Dutch Design Week 2026, which took place from October 17 to October 25, 2026, across various venues in Eindhoven, Netherlands.
• Location: Kruisruimte, a renowned incubator for independent contemporary art and design in Eindhoven.
• Participants: 7 distinct design practices comprising core members (Frank Penders, Luuk van Laarhoven, Lucas Zito, Marc Meeuwissen, Mokko, Studio Fabius Clovis) and guest contributors (Aleksandra Adamchyk, Kilian Vos, Pablo Octavio).
• Contextual Scale: The exhibition is part of a broader Dutch Design Week landscape that features monumental, immersive installations such as Everything Moist Seems Alive by Boris Acket and Maison the Faux at the MU Hybrid Art House, which integrated performances by the Dutch National Opera and Ballet.

Official Responses: The Philosophy of Visibility

For the members of Show Not Show, the exhibition is less an aesthetic showcase and more an act of institutional self-critique. Frank Penders, speaking candidly about the motivations behind the project, emphasized that the collective’s annual exhibitions are designed to peel back the curtain on the unglamorous realities of working within the creative industries.

"Each exhibition offers a glimpse into our world as designers, revealing something that visitors might not normally see or consider," Penders told Dezeen.

Detailing the trajectory of the collective’s programming, Penders explained:

"In 2024, we showed our experiments and prototypes. In 2025, we focused on the ideas and concepts behind our work. This year, the subject is visibility. Being seen, becoming known, and finding recognition for what you create. It is about the relationship between designers, their work, and the media that bring it to a wider audience."

By positioning the press dinner as the core mechanism of the exhibition, Show Not Show aimed to spotlight the design media as a primary site of systemic power. In the modern design ecosystem, journalists and critics act as gatekeepers, holding the discretionary ability to elevate an unknown studio into global prominence or leave experimental work languishing in obscurity.

The physical arrangement of the gallery underscored this dynamic. While guests dined at the central metal monolith, Pablo Octavio’s towering brushed aluminum dividers created an intentional panoptic effect. Those seated—predominantly members of the design press and institutional stakeholders—enjoyed sweeping visual dominance over the room, looking down upon the standing visitors and surrounding artifacts. The subtle discomfort of this spatial hierarchy did not go unnoticed by attendees, turning the dinner table into an active sociological experiment.

Implications: Redefining the Role of the Collective in Modern Design

The Table of Power arrives at a critical juncture for the European design fair circuit. As commercial pressures mount and major design weeks risk becoming overly homogenized showcases for luxury brands and venture-backed studios, independent collectives are carving out vital spaces for critical discourse.

By laying bare the codependent relationship between creators and media platforms, Show Not Show has provoked a necessary conversation about the ethics of exposure. The installation challenges both designers and journalists to interrogate their own complicity in the attention economy. For designers, it asks whether the pursuit of visibility compromises material authenticity. For the press, it questions whether the privilege of the seat at the head of the table breeds complacency and echo-chamber journalism.

Ultimately, Show Not Show has proven that furniture design can be deployed as an effective political medium. By fusing brutalist materiality with sharp institutional critique, The Table of Power transcends traditional exhibition design, offering an enduring reminder that the structures we build—both physical and social—inevitably shape who gets to speak, and who is left in the shadows.