Eindhoven does culture in old factories: Philips left behind the halls, and artists, film-makers and designers moved in. Three days of concrete architecture, independent galleries, legal graffiti and a concert hall inside a shopping arcade.
Philips' 1966 flying-saucer conference hall by Louis Kalff reopened in 2022 as Retrofuture, a permanent exhibition on how earlier generations imagined tomorrow. Open Wed–Sun 10:00–17:00; the concrete-ribbed dome is the real exhibit.
The 1930s Philips lamp factory now holds the public library and Design Academy Eindhoven, whose graduates fill Dutch Design Week each October. Walk the glass stair hall, then browse the ground-floor design shop; free during library hours.
Independent art space showing hybrid work by young international artists — four to five exhibitions a year, usually installation, sound and tech-driven pieces. Open Mon–Fri 11:00–18:00, weekends 12:00–17:00, with a good art bookshop.
Massimiliano Fuksas's 2010 Blob bulges in glass and steel onto 18 Septemberplein, facing the 1920s Lichttoren where Philips burned bulbs around the clock to test them. Both façades read best once the street lighting comes on.
The Van Doorne factory museum tracks Eindhoven's other industry: some 200 vehicles from the 1928 trailer works through Variomatic passenger cars to Dakar rally trucks. Tue–Sun 10:00–17:00; the 1958 DAF 600 is the centrepiece.
Eindhoven's concert hall, home stage of Philharmonie Zuidnederland, sits wrapped inside the Heuvel shopping galleria. Free lunch concerts run on selected Wednesdays at 12:30 and the box office opens at noon for same-day seats.
Arthouse cinema and small stage in the former Philips Physics Laboratory, the building where the compact cassette was developed in 1963. Four screens of subtitled world cinema plus evening concerts in the old lecture room.
The city's main stage on the edge of Stadswandelpark: 1,200 seats for dance, opera and Dutch-language drama, alongside a language-independent programme of music, mime and contemporary circus.
A fenced industrial yard turned artists' colony on the eastern edge: roughly 100 studios in sheds and stacked containers, housing ceramicists, metalworkers, furniture makers and set builders who supply the design week.
The scrap-wood designer's empire fills a former Philips ceramics hall: workshop, gallery, shop, hotel rooms and a canteen-style restaurant with long shared tables under eight-metre ceilings. Open daily, free to wander.
Legal painting zone in the pedestrian tunnels beneath the Insulindelaan roundabout, repainted continuously since the 1990s and curated each spring during the Step in the Arena jam. Walls change week to week.
A 1930s military garage rebuilt as a design house, with rotating installations by Design Academy alumni suspended above the restaurant floor and a project space in the raw brick annexe behind it.