If you are planning visiting an architecture or design museum, anywhere in the world, in 2019, it will be staging a Bauhaus themed special exhibition. Guaranteed. There are literally millions of them lined up. If not billions. Which is no complaint. Or at least not unless they are exhibitions based on formulaic, lazy clichés. Then it is very much a complaint. But if they are exhibitions which take open, honest and unblinkered views on either the institution as a whole or a specific, ideally,
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Much as ever increasing co-working is altering understandings of and relations to work practises and office spaces, so to is ever increasing co-habitation altering understandings of and relations to domestic practises and spaces. Albeit domestic understandings that are altering without as much public discourse as afforded those occurring in the workplace. With the exhibition Together. The new architecture of the collective the Grassi Museum für Angewandte Kunst Leipzig explore, and thereby
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Slowly but surely the temperatures across Europe begin to fall, along with the leaves and the hours of daylight. Hibernation approaches. And by way of an accompaniment to the imminent long sleep, a Radio smow beds playlist. ...and so to bed! Back at the 2018 KABK Den Haag graduation festival the project Windows Without a View by Rudi van Delden investigated how you can "reclaim the missing third of your life”, i.e. when your in bed, and for all explored "the bedroom as the new office
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Designer, grib magten! enjoined the 2018 Design School Kolding exhibition, Designer, seize the power! Which not only sounds a bit more revolutionary than one is use to from Danes, but also implies designers should be in power. A position on which, and as we oft noted, we're highly sceptical. Intimately involved in power systems yes, but designers in charge....... Consequently we thought it wise to set course for the Design School Kolding 2018 Graduation Exhibition. Designer, grib magten!
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Atop bonny Killesberg, and beside Kochenhof, (the) Akademie der Bildenden Künste, ABK, Stuttgart has been nurturing a basic kernel within a bright kettle of students of numerous creative disciplines since 1761. For their 2018 Rundgang the, we believe the word is, identity, was based on alternative resolutions of the initialism ABK, the central one being Alle brauchen Kunst - Everyone Needs Art. But do we need that applied, functional art developed in the year past at the ABK Stuttgart......?
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French designer Ionna Vautrin first reached a broad international public with her Binic lamp for Italian manufacturer Foscarini, a design which, it's fair to say, is/was one of those genuinely, gloriously, joyous moments in the (hi)story of lighting design, a work full of character yet devoid of vanity, universally applicable yet always individual. Ionna Vautrin is however more than Binic: before Binic Ionna had enjoyed a varied, international career working with a diverse roster of studios
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As we all learned from the exhibition Peter Behrens. The Practical and the Ideal at the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum Krefeld, the city was an important location in the development of the young Peter Behrens, not least through the role played by the museum's founding director Friedrich Deneken in helping Behrens take his first steps from pure to applied arts; help which included not only giving Behrens' work space in the museum but also mediating commissions with Krefeld manufacturers. One of the more
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At Orgatec Cologne 2016 Vitra staged, in effect, their own trade fair, renting an entire hall and inviting family and friends along to share the space and their ideas on the future of work. And obviously had a lot of fun and/or success with the concept. For at Orgatec Cologne 2018 they once again staged the Vitra Fair....... Work Vitra - Work, Orgatec Cologne 2018 Back in our post from the Vitra Design Museum Schaudepot's exhibition Ron Arad: Yes to the Uncommon! we hinted that if Vitra
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History is not only written by the winners, and re-written by those who can't accept the facts of their defeat, but history is also the story of the visible, those who are invisible having nothing to contribute. With the exhibition Against Invisibility – Women Designers at the Deutsche Werkstätten Hellerau 1898 to 1938 the Kunstgewerbemuseum Dresden not only re-introduce nineteen, largely, forgotten female creatives, and therefore allow their contributions' to history to be recorded, but in
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How many stories can a city tell? There are the public, collective, communal stories told by its buildings, by its peoples, by its industries, by the development of its cultural institutions and through the actions of famous/infamous citizens; but there are also the myriad private, individual stories, the scurrilous, the appalling, the romantic, the comic, the tragic, the improbable, and of course the secret, whispered, ones. At the risk of sounding like a city marketing platform, a city is
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It is seldom that the largest, most centrally placed and intricately staged object in an exhibition isn't the central focus of that exhibition, but a conduit which introduces and guides the exhibition. Something you could ignore, but really shouldn't. However such is the case with the Kunstgewerbemuseum Berlin's new exhibition Inside Out. Understanding the art of furniture making Inside Out. Understanding the art of furniture making at the Kunstgewerbemuseum Berlin Although it's is widely
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Remember, Remember! The fifth of November Gunpowder, treason and plot...... Thus begins the traditional song commemorating, and urging us all never to forget, Guy Fawkes and his fellow conspirators attempts to overthrow the English parliament of the day, their plotting to install a new parliament, one more in line with their ideological position, for all one more in line with their ideological understanding of the English parliament's future relationship to the dominant extra-governmental power
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As previously, and repeatedly, noted, one of the defining aspects about an office furniture fair such as Orgatec Cologne is that wherever one looks one sees a similar vista. Whereas in terms of domestic furnishings there are enough genres of furniture and interpretations of those genres to allow for a, at least relatively when not necessarily satisfyingly, varied landscape, office furniture is much more limited, not only doesn't have the variety of genres, but has a few that are essentials;
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With a new name, but a familiar format, the 2018 Kölner Design Preis once again celebrates the city's design students and creative colleges, including an exhibition of all nominated projects in the Cologne Museum für Angewandte Kunst. 1st Prize: Unfolding Space by Jakob Kilian (KISD), as seen at Kölner Design Preis/Toby E. Rodes Award 2018 Exhibition, MAKK Cologne Inaugurated in 2007 the Kölner Design Preis/Toby E. Rodes Award is a by-nomination award, every creative college in Cologne
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Qu'est-ce que le design? What is design? A question as old as the word itself, arguably older. But one with an answer? In an attempt to approach one the Musée des Arts Décoratifs Paris asked Charles Eames, Verner Panton, Roger Tallon, Joe Colombo and Fritz Eichler, Qu'est-ce que le design?...... A view of Verner Panton's installation at Qu'est-ce que le design Musée des Arts Décoratifs Paris 1969 (Photo Pierre Jahan © and courtesy Musée des Arts Décoratifs Paris) Organised in context of
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Staged as part of the Biennale Interieur Kortrijk 2018 City Festival the showcase, We are the Next Generation, presents/presented works by graduates from design schools across Belgium and northern France. But are they......... We are the Next Generation @ Biennale Interieur Kortrijk 2018 The first thing to say is that the Biennale Interieur Kortrijk 2018 City Festival is/was staged in the town's former Sint Martin hospital, we're not sure how quickly the hospital had to vacate the
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It's probably no exaggeration to claim that musicians have at best an ambivalent, truculent, openly confrontational relationship with the office. When not writing about being in love, not being in love, wanting to be in love, wanting to not be in love, etc, they can be found pouring scorn and ridicule on those who dutifully waste their days in offices when there is all that freedom to be enjoyed. Thus one could imagine songs about office furniture being about as rare as occasions when Caílte
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The top story from Biennale Interieur Kortrijk 2018 is that use of the toilets is free. Jubilation all round!! Much as we like to think our campaign against the previous 50 cent charge was responsible, we suspect the answer lies elsewhere. But we made a stand, and that's what's important. As is the fact that freed from our rage at the intolerability of the charges, and the thus ensuing intolerable bladder pressure, we could concentrate freely on the objects on show. Accepting, as ever, that
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Whereas today the term "design" is regularly understood as an adjective or a noun, its origin is as a verb. It is something one does. The interesting and relevant being that everyone does it differently. With the exhibition Process the centre d'innovation et de design au Grand-Hornu explore Belgian designer Benoît Deneufbourg's definition of that verb. Benoît Deneufbourg. Process, CID - centre d'innovation et de design au Grand-Hornu Born in La Louvière, Benoît Deneufbourg initially
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With his two faces the Roman God Janus was able to look in two different directions at once, a skill he traditionally employed as a gatekeeper, as a guardian of transitions, observing the past while always having his view firmly on the future; but a skill which is also helpful in understanding design processes, allowing as it does one to see simultaneously both the finished article, and the research, experimentation and design philosophy that lead to it. Presenting works by eight Liège based
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Escalating tension between the nuclear powers, public discourses on gender equality/respect, racial equality/respect, religious equality/respect, thousands displaced through war and conflict in South East Asia, destabilising wars and conflicts in the Middle East, warnings about irreversible environmental stability and the long-term habitability of earth, thousands on the streets demanding change..... And the situation in 1968 wasn't very different. With the exhibition 68. Pop und Protest the
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The 2018 ArtEZ Academy of Art & Design Arnhem graduation exhibition was staged under the title, Liberty, but how many would the students be taking...... ArtEZ Academy of Art & Design Arnhem, Liberty 2018 ArtEZ Arnhem Formally established in 2002 through the fusion of existing creative colleges in Arnhem, Enschede and Zwolle, ArtEZ not only still maintains colleges in the three locations, but unites the three, and the word Art, in the name ArtEZ; not particularly elegantly, but effectively.
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The 6th edition of LuForm Aachen is being staged, as the title succinctly implies, in conjunction with the Reciprocity Design Triennale, an event nominally based in the Belgian city of Liège but which, and as with LuForm, integrates creatives and creative institutions from across the Meuse–Rhine Euroregion. And therefore a most logical and natural cooperation As an exhibition LuForm 6 also reflects one of the principle themes of Reciprocity 2018: fragility. Whereby, if the exhibitions in
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Recycling, reuse and reappropriation are not only subjects for product design, but also for architecture, which hopefully isn't new information, even if considerations on such (arguably) aren't always at the forefront of architects thoughts, far less architectural planning. Even if they (equally arguably) should be. With the exhibition Transform the S AM Swiss Architecture Museum Basel make an appeal not only for more, better considered, recycling, reuse and reappropriation in architecture,
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