FeelGood Kerstmarkt Eindhoven

This hall used to make things for the whole world. It still does, just on a smaller scale.

You are in the Klokgebouw, the Clock Building, in the middle of Strijp-S. In 1916 Philips built its first factory on this site, a glass works for light bulbs. From 1928 the complex grew fast, and the Klokgebouw was part of that growth. It produced Philite, Philips' own name for bakelite, the early plastic used for radio cases and telephones. Radios were assembled here too.

For most of the twentieth century Strijp-S was a closed city inside the city. In the 1970s around ten thousand people came to work here every day, and if you did not work for Philips, you did not get in. Eindhoven grew up around this company.

Then, slowly, Philips left. In 2002 the city and a developer bought the site, and over the following years the factories were opened up and turned into homes, studios, shops and event spaces. The Klokgebouw is now a national monument.

So the stalls around you, local designers, makers, small food producers, are working in a building where the products once came off a production line by the thousand. If you live in or around Eindhoven, there is a good chance someone in your street once had a grandparent who clocked in here.