Back in the year 1 BCE, Before Corona Epidemic, we developed a plan to use 2020 to tour through contemporary office design, a tour to be undertaken both physically and theoretically. A very simple plan developed in the knowledge that in October the Orgatec office furniture fair would be staged in Cologne, and that such a tour would, hopefully, allow us to approach Orgatec 2020 from differentiated and manifold perspectives. And a simple plan, which, and as with all simple plans, proved more
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Developed in the mid-1960s as an office furniture system, the inherent flexibility and variability of USM Haller's modular system has allowed it to naturally evolve alongside office practices and realities; for example, alongside the shift in recent decades from rigid to more flexible office scenographies, alongside the rise in recent decades of home working, or, most recently, with the USM Security Screen which naturally, and quickly, allows any existing USM reception desk to be effortlessly
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Bauhaus Weimar's centenary may now be behind us, but there remains a lot of discussion, consideration and reflection ahead of us. Not least in context of the rapidly approaching Bauhaus Dessau centenary. By way of an accompaniment to those reflections, considerations and discussions, and of engendering a differing perspective on both the schools and the contexts in which they existed, a Radio smow playlist devoted to music of, from and associated with the Bauhauses. Radio smow: A Bauhaus
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With the exhibition Citizen Office the Vitra Design Museum staged not only their first conceptual, research based, exhibition, but also one of the first museal reflections on "the world of the office". Reflections which not only pointed towards new directions and understandings then, but which offer insights and lessons for today....... Citizen Office. As visualised by James Irvine The ubiquity of office work in our contemporary society belies the relative youth of "the office" as a
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While we'd all much rather physically visit architecture and design museums, our current enforced virtual patronage does allow us all an excellent opportunity to begin to understand architecture and design museums as more than just an exhibition space with shop and café, and to begin to learn to interact with them, and for all their collections, in new, proactive, manners. To understand architecture and design museums as tools as much as institutions. And while a virtual visit can never
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Throughout his numerous lives and careers Isamu Noguchi practised as an artist, set designer, garden designer, furniture designer, lighting designer, etc.... yet through all incarnations he remained one thing: a sculptor. Isamu Noguchi's most popularly known work is inarguably his Akari lamps, yet before Akari there came a lamp which in many regards exists more in context of the man and his art than its more famous relations..... Lost Furniture Design Classics: Model 9 Table Lamp by Isamu
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"The work of the Dresden artist Margarete Junge is largely shrouded in darkness" noted the art historian Gert Claußnitzer in his introduction to the 1981 exhibition "Margarete Junge. Fashion sketches and flower studies"1 And while Margarete Junge's 2D works may have been allowed to shine, if only briefly, in the early 1980s, her 3D works remained stubbornly shrouded: only in recent years being afforded the opportunity, if only partially, to radiate as they once did. Thankfully. For the works,
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The 3316 Easy Chair by Arne Jacobsen a.k.a. The Egg is not only one of the most universally recognised works by Jacobsen, but also one of the most popular representatives of both the lounge chair and also of post-War furniture design. Yet, and as with the Easter egg, the Jacobsen Egg is an object whose simple, inviting charms often hide the much more complex, interesting, informative, instructive, realities of its origin and provenance. And so in a year when many an Easter egg hunt will be
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In context of the Radio smow Sofa, Couch, Settee Playlist we briefly discussed the settle as an early forebearer of the settee. Existing in a myriad expressions and forms, one variation on the settle was a pleasingly multi-functional, multi-talented, culinary adept, object. And one that has, sadly, vanished from the contemporary furniture landscape....... An early 19th century English bacon settle Originating in the middle ages, John Gloag suggests they were known as early as the 12th
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The museums may be closed, travel restricted and leaving your home, when possible, unadvised..... but that's no reason to restrict your cultural uptake, far less neglect the development of your architecture and design understandings. Or put another way, if you can't get to the museum..... let the museum come to you. Five online architecture and design exhibitions and museum collections to explore from your sofa, bed, garden, balcony, wherever..... Vitra Design Museum - Collection Online In
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In these days of uncertainty one thing is indubitable: we will all become much better acquainted with our sofa, our couch and our settee. To accompany us all, a Radio smow playlist dedicated to the sofa, couch, settee and an invitation to reflect on the symbolic, figurative and cultural role of the sofa, couch, settee... ...a triumvirate of terms which raises the very obvious question as to the difference(s) The short answer is that today there is essentially none, the term you use being a
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Back in the days of the Roman Republic Martius was the month in which troops mustered in preparation for the coming battle season, to prepare, as it were, to March into war. Please don't! The world's out of control enough as it is! Rather use the coming spring as your incentive, to (a) make up for some of those New Year's Resolutions you've long forgotten you'd made and (b) to march into a future of new impulses, new understandings, new perspectives, a new world. To march into an architecture
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It's not just the presence, or lack of, female designers in the contemporary furniture industry, nor just the presence, or lack of, female designers in museum exhibitions that informs and influences understandings of the contribution of female designers to contemporary furniture design and the (hi)story of furniture design, it is also the presence, or lack of, female designers in design museum and applied arts museum collections, those depositories and reserves of furniture design's history and
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"What is the goal?" asked Elsie de Wolfe in 1913 in context of domestic interior design. "A house", she answered, "that is like the life that goes on within it, a house that gives us beauty as we understand it and beauty of a nobler kind that we may grow to understand, a house that looks amenity."1 How Elsie de Wolfe understood such, and how over the intervening century and a bit understandings of life, beauty, nobler beauty, amenity, the goal(s) of domestic interior design have developed and
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With the 2020 edition Stockholm Furniture Fair celebrates its 70th birthday. Grattis på födelsedagen! We did think about taking along a cake, but knew the halls of Stockholmsmässan would be filled to the rafters with Kanelbullar, as indeed would we. And so by way of a present, a Stockholm Furniture Fair 2020 High 6!! EIO Lounge Chair from Nuen The first thing to say is that we feel that, for us, EIO is but the start of a journey. The second thing to say is that ahead of any trade fair one
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"In many workshops and offices it is regularly attempted to achieve both direct and semi-indirect lighting by means of large, single, light sources, that is, to work only with ample general lighting. Yet as pleasant as this type of lighting may be, in many cases it proves unsatisfactory on account of certain inherent shortcomings"1 So opined in 1926 the German engineer Curt Fischer. Rhetorically. For in 1919 he had already patented his first solution to resolving such "inherent shortcomings".
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According to Goethe, Without the Fastnacht's dance and masquerade ball February has little to offer at all.1 Rubbish! Absolute rot! Our recommendations for new architecture and design exhibitions opening during February 2020 in Weil am Rhein, New York, Vienna, Houston and Kerkrade which ably demonstrate that February has much more to offer than carnival, and for all that February can provide for a greater degree of cerebral gratification than sensual......... "Home Stories: 100 Years, 20
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On March 6th 1927 the exhibition Europäisches Kunstgewerbe opened at the Grassimuseum Leipzig, not only a presentation of contemporary European applied arts but the inaugural exhibition in the museum's (almost finished) new home on the city's Johannisplatz. With the exhibition Spitzen des Art déco the Grassi Museum für Angewandte Kunst Leipzig stage not only a presentation of European Art déco porcelain, but a reminder of both the Johannisplatz complex's Art déco heritage and the vibrancy,
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Apart from the chance to peruse and consider the collections and new products of and from a wide variety of manufacturers and labels, one of the real joys of visiting any furniture fair is the opportunity it allows to observe designers in conversation with manufacturers and labels. For all in pairings that currently don't formally exist. We never eavesdrop on such conversations, that would be rude, and to overplay our prowess as spies; but we do enjoy imagining what may arise from those
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In our post from the exhibition Design Gruppe Pentagon at the Museum Angewandte Kunst Cologne we noted that Gallery Pentagon was laterally based in Cologne's Bismarckstrasse. Bismarckstrasse 50 to be precise, a former cardboard packaging factory which in the 1980s was developed into spaces for creatives of various ilks..... .....Bismarckstrasse 50 is still home to creatives of various ilks, and is still home to a gallery, Galerie Martina Kaiser, where in context of the 2020 Passagen Interior
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Our increasingly networked, digital, virtual society is not only changing our relationship to innumerable everyday activities, activities such as personal communication, shopping or watching television to name but three, and thereby activities which a few short years ago seemed destined to remain unchanged for ever, but is also changing our relationship to work, be that in terms of what we do, where we do it or how we do it. Changes which invariably place both new demands on our furniture, and
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Within any regular pentagon one can locate, in numerous, manifold, relationships, the Golden Ratio, that centuries old guarantor of harmony, balance, beauty.... And within an irregular Pentagon? With the exhibition Design Gruppe Pentagon the Museum für Angewandte Kunst Cologne search for an answer in context of the 1980s Rheinland design quintet....... Design Gruppe Pentagon, Museum für Angewandte Kunst Cologne Established, more or less, formally in Cologne in 1985 by Gerd Arens, Wolfgang
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The long and winding (hi)story of furniture design is largely one of evolution not revolution, largely one of innumerable, often imperceptible, social, cultural, economic, technical, et al transformations, movements, hindrances and undulations which slowly, continually, combine and interact to widen and deepen the river as it flows. A process aided, abetted and accelerated by irregularly arising confluences where a new tributary flows into the unflinchingly onwards rolling mainstem. One such
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Off late, and certainly in a European context, January has become a month of forgoing, eschewing and general abstention, with campaigns such as Dry January and Veganuary extolling us to utilise our guilt at our dangerous, decadent, gluttony of late December as an impetus to radically alter our behaviour, as a catalyst for reduction. And while less is unquestionably more, and thus worth striving for, fundamental change is invariably more sustainably and meaningfully achieved through better
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