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Glass Hand Formed Matter at the Bröhan Museum Berlin
Designer | 18.05.2022

Glass - Hand Formed Matter at the Bröhan Museum, Berlin

There is an argument to be made that the craft of the glassmaker is as anachronistic in the 21st century as that of the candlemaker: an argument that while the later has seen their craft superseded by the electric lightbulb, the function of the former has not only been increasingly marginalised by the rise of industrially produced glassware, but also by the development of new materials, materials more robust and more durable than the famously fragile and transient glass. The candlemaker and

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smow | 14.05.2022

smow Song Contest 2022

Following smow Turin's thoroughly unexpected, if in no way undeserved, victory in the 2021 smow Song Contest, it's off to Piemonte for the 2022 edition. A 2022 smow Song Contest being held very much in context of events 20 years previous....... 2002 was a very different world than the one we know today. In 2002, for example, following the ousting of the Taliban girls were allowed to attend school in Afghanistan; Chechens stormed the Dubrovka Theater in Moscow demanding an end to Russia's

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5 New Architecture & Design Exhibitions for May 2022

5 New Architecture & Design Exhibitions for May 2022

"The May of life blooms but once", reflects Friedrich Schiller, continuing, "It has faded for me".1 Cheer up Freddie!!! And there's nothing quite like a good architecture or design exhibition to revitalise all your faculties. Our recommended fertilizers for the zest of life in May 2022 can be found in Berlin, Den Haag, Brussels, Pfäffikon SZ and Amsterdam....... "Organizing Things" at the Werkbundarchiv - Museum der Dinge, Berlin, Germany According to Rudolf Clausius's interpretation of

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Colourmarks Billboards by Rozbeh Asmani, as seen at Color as Program. Part One, Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn
Architecture | 26.04.2022

Color as Program. Part One at the Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn

"Green is beautiful" proclaims an anonymous youth, an anonymous youth blind since birth, from Sophie Calle's 1986 photography project The Blind, "because every time I like something, I'm told it's green. Grass is green, trees, leaves, nature too... I like to dress in green". An indication, a confirmation, that even for those who have never seen colour, colour can awaken associations, stir emotions, have agency on the human being. With the exhibition Color as Program. Part One the

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Isamu Noguchi, Museum Ludwig, Cologne
Architecture | 11.04.2022

Isamu Noguchi at the Museum Ludwig, Cologne

"Everything is sculpture" opined once Isamu Noguchi.1 But is it? The exhibtion Isa­mu Noguchi in the Mu­se­um Lud­wig, Cologne, allows one to engage with, reflect on, immerse yourself in Isamu Noguchi's life and work, and thus to better approach your own opinion on Isamu Noguchi's firmly held conviction..... Isamu Noguchi, Museum Ludwig, Cologne Born in Los Angeles, California, on November 17th 1904 to an American mother and a Japanese father we've discussed the Noguchi2 biography on

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The Historia Supellexalis J for Jongerius
Designer | 05.04.2022

The Historia Supellexalis: “J” for Jongerius

Jongerius A Hella; A Lab; An Open-ended exploration As the ancient scribe Oranje Tulpenbol of Old Amsterdam records in his letters to the Rotter Dam aan Maas, the contemporary Jongerius is largely a consequence of the contributions of a Jongerian universally known as Hella on account of the brightness and lucidity of her Jongerius, a luminescence and clarity which was key in enabling Jongerius rise from its native home amongst the peoples of the Netherlands and to disseminate freely across

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5 New Architecture & Design Exhibitions for April 2022

5 New Architecture & Design Exhibitions for April 2022

As here in the northern hemisphere winter cedes to spring, not only is nature once again reawakening from its long repose but so too is the international museum community; and that, one senses, with more vigour than in the most recent springs where the Covid pandemic induced upsetting of the established order of the museal ecosystem, through both enforced closures and fundamental disruptions of essential exhibition development processes, dimmed somewhat the promise of the annual spring blush.

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Plasticene - a world of plastic, as seen at Plastic: Remaking Our World, Vitra Design Museum
Designer | 29.03.2022

Plastic: Remaking Our World at the Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein

In 1997 Euro-popsters Aqua declared that "life in plastic, it's fantastic". And in 1997 a greater part of humanity would have readily, and unquestioningly, concurred with Aqua that plastic was indeed fantastic. And that plastics offered us an endlessly fantastic, undimmably bright, future.1 But that was 1997. Last century. An eternity ago. And, as so oft, the passage of time has shaken once firmly held convictions and forced fundamental re-appraisals of all that which once seemed so

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Hans Hollein at work in his Mobile Office under the watchful eye of ORF
Architecture | 23.03.2022

#officetour Milestones – Mobile Office by Hans Hollein

In December 1969 the Austrian TV station ORF broadcast a half-hour portrait of the architect Hans Hollein, including a presentation of Hollein's Mobile Office project: essentially an inflatable plastic bubble in which one person could sit and work. "Klingt vielleicht etwas verrückt", mused the presenter, "sounds perhaps a bit crazy". And in 1969 a device, a construct, that allowed for the creation of a private domain in the midst of a public space, unquestionably did sound "etwas verrückt".

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Radio smow: A Garden Furniture Playlist
smow | 18.03.2022

Radio smow: A Garden Furniture Playlist…….

With spring approaching thoughts invariably turn to days spent out of doors, and, for those fortunate enough, to thoughts of leisurely days spent sat in the garden. Leisurely days spent sat in the garden, ideally, listening to music. ¿Listening to music about being sat in the garden; sat in the garden listening to songs about garden furniture......? The (hi)story of garden furniture is, inarguably, and somewhat logically, as old as the garden itself; a concept that stretches back to the

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Gabriella Chair by Gio Ponti for Walter Ponti (Photo © and courtesy ermes ponti)
Designer | 11.03.2022

Lost Furniture Design Classics: The Gabriella Chair by Gio Ponti for Walter Ponti

"Dear Architect" wrote Maria Chinaglia Ponti in 1967 to the architect, but no relation, Gio Ponti, "why don't you design us some modern furniture? Daddy Walter is worried because our traditional stuff is not selling as it used to".1 An unsolicited request, from a company of whom he'd never heard, an architect of the status of a late 1960s Gio Ponti could have turned down, it wasn't as if a late 1960s Gio Ponti needed the commission; however, something about the letter from Maria Chinaglia

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Monobloc Hauke Wendler Rutger Fuchs Hatje Cantz
Everyday Design | 04.03.2022

Monobloc by Hauke Wendler

With furniture, as with so much in life, it is rarely the showy, high profile, works, or individuals, that teach us most, but those works, and those individuals, who in their anonymity and modesty accompany us in invisible silence. Or rather the anonymous and quiet could teach us most, if we spent less time being distracted by, letting ourselves willingly be distracted by, the noise of the showy. With the project Monobloc author and director Hauke Wendler, and a team of co-collaborators,

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5 New Architecture & Design Exhibitions for March 2022

5 New Architecture & Design Exhibitions for March 2022

"It was one of those March days" reflects Philip "Pip" Pirrip in Great Expectations, "when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade".1 And thus exactly the sort of dithering, indecisive, capricious, March day when rather than surreptitiously rowing down the Thames towards Gravesend, one should seek refuge in the consistent climate and warming intellectual atmosphere of an architecture or design exhibition. Our five Great exhibition

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MRS1 & MRS1 Low by Luis-Konstantin Schlicht, and uncredited photographic works, as seen at Sitting reconsidered. Design, Observe, Stage, the Burg Galerie, Halle
Designer | 22.02.2022

Sitting reconsidered. Design, Observe, Stage at the Burg Galerie, Halle

Each and everyone of us sits innumerable times each and every day in a wide variety of contexts, yet we rarely, if ever, consider the act of sitting. The exhibition Sitting reconsidered. Design, Observe, Stage at the Burg Galerie, Halle challenges us all to do just that....... MRS1 & MRS1 Low by Luis-Konstantin Schlicht, and uncredited student photographic works, as seen at Sitting reconsidered. Design, Observe, Stage, the Burg Galerie, Halle Originating in context of, and presented

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The Historia Supellexalis: "I" for Italy
Designer | 20.02.2022

The Historia Supellexalis: "I" for Italy

Italy A Peninsula; A Commonwealth; A Context Striding out into the Mediterranean Sea the contemporary commonwealth of Italy, for all its apparent unity, and for all its superficially stable, pastoral, political landscape, is very much a volatile, fervid synthesis of innumerable independent Stati and Popoli; independent Stati and Popoli whose individual characters and perspectives helped form not only the contemporary Italy, but together define the (hi)story of furniture design in the

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Living Like Dieckmann by Margit Jäschke & Stephan Schulz, as seen at Chairs: Dieckmann! The Forgotten Bauhäusler Erich Dieckmann, Neuwerk 11, Halle
Bauhaus | 16.02.2022

Chairs: Dieckmann! The Forgotten Bauhäusler Erich Dieckmann at Neuwerk 11, Halle

"...one only finds warmth of life and sincerity where human nature is allowed to flourish", opined the German designer Erich Dieckmann in 1931, "one shouldn't forget that in our apartments. Let's treat our contemporary homes to something humane. Something unelaborate, something provisional, with some leeway and space for things to grow as they wish over time."1 With the exhibition Chairs: Dieckmann! The Forgotten Bauhäusler Erich Dieckmann, the Kunststiftung des Landes Sachsen-Anhalt and

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smoVR, your reliable, safe and highly entertaining source for furnishing the Metaverse. And now you all know why smow is in ( ), never was of this world, never was of this dimension, was always in a space futher down the line.......
smow | 07.02.2022

Furnishing the Metaverse.......

We were obviously off ill on the day of the great global public debate about whether, given the myriad problems of contemporary societies, our resource emergencies, and the effortless manner in which we've managed to turn the Internet, the greatest tool ever placed at the disposal of a member of the Animalia, into a platform for hate and vanity and greed and crime; if given all that, if we all wanted to, if we all should, move to the Metaverse. But that debate must have occurred, for the

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HfG Ulm: Exhibition Fever, Bauhaus Building, Dessau
Bauhaus | 02.02.2022

HfG Ulm: Exhibition Fever at the Bauhaus Building, Dessau

"Exhibiting means selecting, emphasising, demonstrating as a model or an example", wrote Klaus Wille in his 1960 Diploma thesis at the Hochschule für Gestaltung, Ulm, continuing that, "the object is information. This information can be used for didactic, commercial or representative purposes. Aimed at individuals as consumers of products and ideas, the exhibition is used to educate, canvass and represent, to influence people, to get them to react in certain ways."1 The exhibition HfG Ulm:

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5 New Architecture & Design Exhibitions for february 2022 smow blog

5 New Architecture & Design Exhibitions for February 2022

According to the Roman scholar Marcus Terentius Varro February 7th marks the first day of spring. Which strikes us, as we're sure it does you, as a little early; however, there was reason in Varro's bold claim, for Varro further sets February 7th as the start of the year, and for all links February 7th with the rising of the west wind, a favourable, warming wind, whose arrival indicates the need to start cultivating your land and crops, specifically Varro advises, "these are things which

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Konstantin Grcic. New Normals, Haus am Waldsee, Berlin
Designer | 27.01.2022

Konstantin Grcic. New Normals at Haus am Waldsee, Berlin

Familiar as our objects and rituals of daily life are to us, to someone from the 16th century they would appear most, most, odd, just as their familiar 16th century objects and rituals would appear most, most, odd to someone from the 11th century: yet as Simon & Garfunkel teach us "that's not unusual, No, it isn't strange", for as societies develop they acquire new objects and rituals, daily life continually evolves anew alongside, and in conjunction with, new objects and new rituals. And if we

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Spot On: Women Designers in the Collection, Vitra Design Museum Schaudepot, Weil am Rhein
Designer | 24.01.2022

Spot On: Women Designers in the Collection at the Vitra Design Museum Schaudepot, Weil am Rhein

The popular (hi)story of furniture design is, no-one could argue, a very male (hi)story.1 Which doesn't mean that furniture design is a profession at which males excel more than females, a profession for which males have a natural affinity above and beyond that of females, that females' natural domains are textiles and colours; much more is because that popular (hi)story of furniture design contains flaws, biases, inaccuracies and under-illuminated corners. A great many of which can be traced

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Craft is Cactus. The Collection from 1945 to Today, Museum Angewandte Kunst, Frankfurt
Designer | 19.01.2022

Craft is Cactus. The Collection from 1945 to Today at the Museum Angewandte Kunst, Frankfurt

The contemporary systematics of the family Cactaceae recognises four subfamilies, Cactoideae, Maihuenioideae, Opuntioideae and Pereskioideae; is however a classification very much in motion, one very much in an ongoing process of re-evaluation, re-definition, re-assessment, one which undergoes regular revisions. ¿An ongoing re-evaluation and re-definition and re-assessment and revision which could see the addition of a fifth subfamily, the Craftoideae? With the exhibition Craft is Cactus. The

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The Historia Supellexalis H for Hygge
Everyday Design | 14.01.2022

The Historia Supellexalis: “H” for Hygge

Hygge A Curse; A Malediction; A Torment As the runes in the Caves of Lego record, ever since the reign of the post-Viking autocrat King Mark Edsføring, furniture, lighting, textile and accessory design in Denmark has endured a great many trials as varied and various forces have sought to use them to their advantage, have sought to employ furniture, lighting, textile and accessory design in Denmark for their own benefit rather than letting furniture, lighting, textile and accessory design in

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Louise Brigham (1875 - 1956)
Designer | 10.01.2022

smow Blog Design Calendar: January 10th 1875 – Happy Birthday Louise Brigham!

"Boxing is not an exclusively athletic term in these practical and utilitarian days", noted John Crocker in 1913, rather, "the making of useful and ornamental things for the home, from the boxes, that in other days adorned the rear of stores, is the nucleus of armament that has made "boxing" a pursuit that contains both amusement and substantial results."1 And nobody contributed more to promoting and advancing the amusement and substantial results of the practical and utilitarian craft of

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