When we spoke with Vitra's Chief Sales Officer Josef Kaiser at NeoCon Chicago he told us that at "Orgatec 2016 we will be trying to be more interesting for architects, without losing the focus on the dealers, which will be challenge, but one we’re looking forward to, not least because this year we have our own hall" What that meant in practice could be experienced in Hall 5.2 at Cologne Messe. Or in the Vitra Messe - Vitra Trade Fair - as we've taking to calling it, seeing how it was,
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Although geographically the (hi)story of Vitra begins in Basel, spiritually it begins in America and arrives in Switzerland in 1957 with the licences to produce works by US designers such as Charles and Ray Eames, George Nelson, Isamu Noguchi and Alexander Girard; and then grows over the subsequent decades under the influence of the close co-operations which thus developed, for all those with George Nelson and Charles and Ray Eames. Given this close affinity with and to America it was perhaps
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Although Stuttgart based design studio Jehs+Laub are in many respects best known as the winners of the inaugural Moormann Bookinist Cup, they are also one of Germany's most prolific and successful furniture design studios. Markus Jehs and Jürgen Laub met while studying Industrial Design at the Hochschule für Gestaltung Schwäbisch Gmünd, their friendship developed over the course of a practical semester in New York, led them to complete a joint Diploma Project and ultimately saw the
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With its postal address of "Am Weissenhof 1" it should come as no surprise that the Akademie der Bildenden Künste, ABK, Stuttgart was not only the first building on that now fabled site on Stuttgart's Killesberg, but also that it played a role, when albeit a relatively small one, in helping create the fable: Professor Adolf Schneck designing two of the houses, the school's workshops, under the supervision of Hilde Zimmermann, being responsible for the kitchen of one of Schneck's houses, while
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At the risk of getting political, the term "neoconservative"/"neocon" hasn't always had the best reputation, especially not in Europe where its connotations of American supremacy through military force has long made it a subject for suspicion, intrigue and popular rejection. Thus for us it is all the more amusing that one of America's main contemporary furniture trade fairs should be "NeoCon". The imagery the name conjures up easily keeping us amused for the duration of a transatlantic
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In addition to the exhibition of their work in Cologne, the A&W Designer of the Year crown also allows the recipient to select one young designer for the so-called A&W Mentor Prize: essentially a chance to invite a young designer whose work they admire to share the spotlight with them. Previous mentees have included Stefan Diez, selected in 2005 by Richard Sapper, Oskar Zieta, selected in 2011 by Tokujin Yoshioka, and the very first mentee, Konstantin Grcic, selected by Achille Castiglioni in
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For reasons far too abstract, intangible, and potentially libellous, to go into, we didn't report on the inaugural presentation of USM's new Privacy Panels staged during Orgatec Cologne 2014. Fortunately, and no doubt buoyed by the success of the Cologne presentation, USM are also presenting the Privacy Panels in Milan. When Fritz Haller developed his modular office furniture system for USM it's ability to divide internal spaces in a responsive and functional yet reduced and unobtrusive
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Such was the quality of the new products we saw during our autumn tour they kept us going well into November; indeed it wasn't until a cold dank Friday in Chemnitz ahead of the opening of the exhibition Andy Warhol – Death and Disaster at the Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz, that we even realised it was November.
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......and continued over Budapest and on to Berlin - where amongst other delights we partook of the exhibitions Sensing the Future: László Moholy-Nagy, die Medien und die Künste at the Bauhaus Archiv Berlin and Schrill Bizarr Brachial. Das Neue Deutsche Design der 80er Jahre at the Bröhan Museum - and onto Cologne for the Orgatec office furniture trade fair.
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Explaining the background to their contribution to Stylepark's Being Home 4+4 installation programme at Orgatec Cologne 2014 Marcel Besau and Eva Marguerre a.k.a. Besau Marguerre stated their belief that the best ideas rarely strike at the desk and that, and in particular in a home office context, any space is a potential work space. The garden, for example. On the balcony. In the dining room. Or in the kitchen. And so why not take the kitchen into the office. So, or similar, is possible
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On seeing a lamp grace a Jean Prouvé desk on the Vitra stand at Orgatec 2014 we termed it "a genuine reminder that good design is often the simplest solution" On seeing a lamp grace a Jean Prouvé desk in the VitraHaus, we concurred. Quietly noting that it was, in addition, "a genuine reminder that a good name is often the simplest solution" Plug Lamp by Form Us With Love for Ateljé Lyktan is both those things. Packaged in the most delightful and engaging object. A desk lamp with an
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We don't consider ourselves slouches when it comes to the effort we make in regards of presenting ourselves at Orgatec Cologne, but we do have to doff our ornately feathered caps to the colleagues at Stylepark. In keeping with their curated "Featured Editions" programme at IMM Cologne where design studios are asked to create an installation around a given design object, for Orgatec 2014 Stylepark asked four designers to create a 12 sqm presentation reflecting their interpretation and
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For just about as long as Thonet have been producing furniture one of the company's most important designers has been "Thonet Design Team", a description we've always considered to be a rather disparagingly sterile and unnecessarily nebulous description for Thonet's team of in-house designers. Every serious contemporary furniture manufacturer has an in-house design team who are responsible for both helping adapt external designers works to the company's production patterns and also creating
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At the risk of overusing the phrase "a concept that grows on us the more XXXX adds to it" and so reducing a genuine sign of respect to irrelevant dribble: Stefan Diez's New Order system for HAY is a concept that grows on us the more Stefan Diez adds to it. What began life as relatively simple contemporary shelving system is being presented at Orgatec 2014 as a fully fledged office system. We've always liked New Order, but the more it grows, the more it appeals. Apart from the systems
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In comparison to the annual IMM Cologne furniture fair the corridors and halls of the Messe Cologne always seems curiously empty at the biennial Orgatec office furniture trade fair. Until that is one reaches the Vitra stand. And the crowds. The almost congenital attraction of Orgatec visitors to Vitra is unquestionably related to the high-calibre roster of international designers responsible for the Vitra office programme. At Orgatec 2014 that programme has been extended by, amongst other
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Whether 'tis nobler in the muscles to suffer The slings and arrows of short telomeres, Or to rise up against a sea of troubles, And by standing, extend them? In addition to articles on the wonders of handmade Swedish butter, the problems of supermarket etiquette and ill thought through editorials on the Scottish referendum, the English newspaper "The Guardian" occasionally publishes readable articles, one such being Dr Luisa Dillner's recent "Is sitting down bad for my health?" Citing
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We've spent a lot of 2014 travelling backwards on trains, racing towards the future with our eyes fixed firmly on the past. We know its a metaphor. We just hope it isn't an omen. Time will, as ever, tell. And with this being late September, the next five weeks will see us travelling backwards through the European design landscape with an unhealthy, and fate taunting, regularity. Our Autumn Tour 2014 begins at Vienna Design Week where, aside from the Passionswege projects, were particularly
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As we recently noted, summer is slowly giving way to autumn and with it the realisation that long sunny days lounging in gardens or on poolsides will slowly give way to long sunless days in office chairs. Autumn 2014 also means for us Orgatec, Europe's largest office furniture trade fair, and an invariable flood of "new" office chair "designs." Consequently, it should come as no surprise that we recently took our copy of Jonathan Olivares' A Taxonomy of Office Chairs from the (smow) bookshelf.
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Our coverage of IMM Cologne 2014 may be reaching its conclusion, but we still have a few gleaming gems to bring you, the brightest of which was to be found on the Thonet stand: the new S 1200 desk by Randolf Schott from and with the Thonet Design Team. While classic Thonet desks such as Marcel Breuer's S 285 can work very well in a contemporary home office and/or as an informal place of work in a living room, they do bring with them a certain formal heaviness owing to their abstraction from
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It may have been because at IMM Cologne 2014 they were given a larger stand than in previous years. It may just have been that the time was ripe. The "why" is however ultimately unimportant, what is important is that at IMM Cologne 2014 Augsburg based Müller Möbelfabrikation presented a series of new products that decisively extended the company's portfolio, a series of new products that, in our opinion, make Müller Möbelfabrikation a more rounded, more complete company. And which achieved
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What with the sweet afterglow of Vienna Design Week behind us we entered October 2013 full of enthusiasm - not least because it meant the opening of the new (smow) Cologne store. The month nearly nose-dived on account of a hideous plagiarism in Leipzig, but was more than rescued by Alison and Peter Smithson at the AIT ArchitekturSalon Cologne.......
read moreIMM Cologne kept us busy into February, but the month also saw the opening of an Eileen Gray retrospective in Paris, a visit to the Louis Kahn exhibition at the Vitra Design Museum and the sad passing of James Irvine....
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When we met Italian designer Alberto Meda at Orgatec 2010 he told us that he was working on his next project for Vitra. And that it would be a chair. And that was all he told us. At Orgatec 2012 the secret was revealed when Vitra released the office swivel chair Physix. Presented as a continuation of an idea began by Mies van der Rohe with his MR20 cantilever chair and continued by Charles and Ray Eames with their Aluminium Chair collection, Physix adds a new dimension to a familiar form
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There are only very few furniture manufacturers who can claim to have been major players in two fundamental furniture design revolutions. Thonet is one of them. And if we're honest, the only one we can currently name. Although the Thonet story begins in 1819, the story only really begins to "pick up steam" in 1859 when Michael Thonet perfected his warm wood bending process. The result of over twenty years development, heartbreak, experimentation, bankruptcy, fleeting success and brutal
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