Our visit to the 2017 Royal College of Art London Graduate Show was one of the more sobering moments of our 2017 #campustour. Or as we wrote then, "...in a world controlled by RCA graduates every, but every, aspect of our lives will be controlled by autonomous smart technology. We will literally lose the ability to think for ourselves. The human brain will become the appendix of the 21st century." Donning a hat fashioned from aluminium foil and an old metal sieve, we headed once more to South
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"Welcher Fehler braucht ein system?", "Which errors/mistakes/imperfections does a system require?", asked the Kunsthochschule Burg Giebichenstein Halle's 2018 annual exhibition. And used the question as a celebration of the power of trial and error, of the value, importance, poetry, of imperfections, abrasion, the incorrect, the unintended, the random, the well planned but ultimately unsuccessful, and how any otherwise well-organised, professional and targeted system needs a nuisance factor,
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As Katie Melua informs us "There are nine million bicycles in Beijing. That's a fact. It's a thing we can't deny" But why chose to highlight Beijing's nine million bicycles? Why not focus instead on a city such as Münster where there are a great many more bicycles than the paltry nine million Beijing has to offer? Maybe Katie wasn't convinced people would believe her, wouldn't be so willing to accept that that's a fact. It's a thing we can't deny. Which all has nothing in the slightest to do
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Writing to his friend Heinrich Köselitz in August 1881 Friedrich Nietzsche remarked, "My dear friend! The August sun hangs over us, the year drifts by, it is quieter and more peaceful on the mountains and in the forests. On my horizon thoughts have arisen, the likes of which I have never known...." We like to imagine that those thoughts arose through his having visited an architecture and/or design exhibition. Were he still with us, we'd suggest he visited the following vista extending
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Since 2000 Utrecht has been home to, when not the world's longest poem, then certainly the world's longest-term poem: running its way down Oudegracht through the heart of the inner-island, De Letters van Utrecht is extended every Saturday by the addition of a new letter, a process planned to continue ad infinitum. And which is in many ways similar to how smow blog posts are formed: we start writing, adding new words at regular intervals, without any real plan, far less any intention, ever to
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Kassel isn't just birthplace of the Brothers Grimm but is also, in many regards, birthplace of the noble art of the Spaziergangswissenschaft, Strollology, a concept developed by Lucius Burckhardt during his tenure at Kassel University and which not only challenges conventional perceptions of the world around us, but for all encourages us to develop a differentiated understanding of how we perceive the world around us. But would our stroll through the 2018 Kunsthochschule Kassel Rundgang
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The 2018 Manchester Art School Degree Show was held under the title "Take Flight" But, .... and you're ahead of us, we know... how many of the projects would cause us to soar with delight. How many to flee in foreboding and terror......? Manchester School of Art Manchester School of Art Established in 1838 as Manchester Government School of Design, the second of a family of design schools initiated by the then government to help promote and support contemporary industry, the institute was
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We've long considered it an absolute cheek that German high-speed ICE trains stop in Hildesheim. Nothing against Hildesheim, but when one considers other cities in Germany where ICEs don't stop, or stop with an almost insulting (in)frequency, coupled to the closeness of Hildesheim to more major centres and their ICE hubs, it always seemed as if Hildesheim was being unfairly favoured by Deutsche Bahn. That was until we wanted to visit the Hochschule für angewandte Kunst Hildesheim's Summer
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The Proclaimers may have rightly celebrated the virtues of the Sunshine on Leith, but on the day we visited the 2018 Degree Show at Edinburgh College of Art's School of Design the city was very much in the grip of a North Sea haar which had drifted, unhelpfully, up the Firth of Forth. Or was it perchance an omen? Would that which greeted us in the exhibition be equally as nebulous, cold and opaque........? Degree Show 2018, Edinburgh College of Art, Evolution House Degree Show 2018,
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Whereas Frankfurt can, and very loudly does, claim to the birthplace of the German poet, playwright, scientist, statesman, etc, etc, etc Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, nearby Offenbach was not only the birthplace of his almost wife and long, long time love Lili Schönemann, but it was in the, then, relative, calm of Offenbach that Goethe's affections for Lili evolved and grew; "Lili was the first person I deeply and truly loved, and maybe she was the last", an octogenarian Goethe is reported as
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The building which Central Saint Martins calls home was erected in 1852 as store for grain arriving from Lincolnshire and awaiting its further distribution to London's bakers. Was, if you like, a transfer point, a hub, a location where general ideas became specific solutions, a place industry and trade called upon when needing raw materials for their latest project, a source for those whose work helped support and nourish the populace, a central institution in the development of the city and
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"We are children of the age of the steam engine, the telegraph and electricity. We have turned our backs on the beautiful, and that is why we no longer understand it", bemoaned the Dutch draughtsman, designer and educator Johannes Ros in his 1904 text "Het doel" [The goal/target/objective] How Johannes Ros and his contemporaries attempted a return to the beautiful, indeed what was understood as beautiful in the Netherlands at the turn of the 19th/20th centuries, and for all the particular
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The Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst Basel's Institute Industrial Design is sited in the city's Dreispitz district, a name derived from the district's (roughly) triangular form, and a term which translates into English as "cocked hat" But would the work of the Institute's students see conventional ideas, wisdoms and understandings knocked into a Dreispitz..... Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst Basel, Campus Dreispitz Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst Basel Tracing its history back to
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In October 2017 the Design Department of the Folkwang Universität der Künste Essen moved into its new home, the so-called Quartier Nord designed by Stuttgart based MGF Architekten. The 2018 Folkwang Summer Rundgang therefore not only offered an opportunity to explore the work undertaken by institute's students in the semester past, but also to explore their new home....... Folkwang Universität der Künste Essen, Quartier Nord..... Folkwang Universität der Künste Essen The most important
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Tracing its history back to 1899 the Sir John Cass School of Art, Architecture and Design a.k.a The Cass has an established place in the (hi)story of English design, for all in woodcraft based design including toys, music instruments and furniture. But as we all know a long history and illustrious alumni are poor hooks on which to hang the future of an institution, much more robust are the current staff, students and their work. The 2018 Cass Summer Show allowed some insights into the
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Our visit to the 2018 Glasgow School of Art Degree Show occurred before the recent fire, indeed this post was all planned to go, then came news of the fire ... and it seemed appropriate to wait. But not to archive it away altogether, for tragic and destructive as the fire unquestionably was, an art/design/architecture school is its staff and students and ideas and visions and understanding of the world. Not the bricks and mortar that surround it. Even if those bricks and mortar were arranged
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Lilla torg, the square in Malmö old town which the Form/Design Center calls home, traces its history back to Malmö's hanseatic days, the former market of yore having evolved over the centuries to become one large open air food court, bordered as it is on all sides by restaurants, bars and coffee shops, which spill gregariously out into the ever narrowing square. The functional, ordered, democratic supply of provisions, having become a self-satisfying celebration of the same. What would Émile
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The Dog Days of summer are with us and, as is traditional, the international curatorial community have removed themselves to the cooler climes of their storerooms, archives and libraries to sit out the heat until autumn's bracing breeze tempts them back out. Which, logically, means a great sparsity of new architecture and design exhibitions opening in July 2018. A sparsity however isn't a nontity and in four of the world's cultural and meteorological hotspots one finds exhibition curators
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Whoever thinks of Switzerland thinks of Swiss clockwork, Swiss railways, Swiss chocolate, Swiss precision. It's therefore all the more surprising that Dada has its European origins in Switzerland, and for all in the legendary Cabaret Voltaire in Zürich. But would the 2018 Zürcher Hochschule der Künste graduates prove as anarchic, confrontational, spirited and revolutionary in their creativity........? Zürcher Hochschule der Künste, Toni-Areal, Zürich. Zürcher Hochschule der Künste As noted
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19th century Sheffield was the City of Steel; as one of the major centres of steel and steelware in the British Empire, Sheffield was not only important in the evolution of functional-decorative & decorative-functional tableware, personal and household accessories, but also one of technical innovation, for all the development in the city of stainless steel revolutionising global product design and architecture. 20th century Sheffield was one of the main centres for the development and
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Anchored next to the Göta älv Bridge in Gothenburg is a decommissioned ferry. Repurposed as a car park. While in no way a substitute for an integrated urban transport concept that reduces our dependence on the car, it is a really nice example that recycling, reusing and reappropriating isn't just something for designers, is also a subject for architects and urban planners. And by extrapolation, us all. Suitably motivated we scaled and crossed the Göta älv Bridge and made our way the 2018 HDK
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In his Ron Arad monograph Restless Furniture Deyan Sudjic notes that the Sticks & Stones furniture crusher Arad developed for the exhibition Nouvelles Tendances staged by the Centre de Creation Industriel Paris in 1987 was itself only saved from the crusher through the post-exhibition "intervention of a friendly Swiss furniture manufacturer."1 While all Swiss furniture manufacturers are friendly, one particularly friendly Swiss furniture manufacturer springs to mind whenever the discussion
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During June 2018 the participative art installation Freiheit 2.0 in Stuttgart is exploring issues around Big Data, artificial intelligence and the future of our relationships with the digital, virtual, environment. In addition to a series of colloquia in which invited experts talk about aspects of the wider themes and engage in conversations with the project initiator Florian Mehnert, the three further pillars on which Freiheit 2.0 is built are a Self-Tracking App via which everyone can create
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"...this is also a sure sign for the development of our style that we gradually succeed in bringing the practical back in line with the ideal. It seems to me, this could now also apply to many aspects of our common aspirations."1 So wrote Peter Behrens in 1901 to the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum Krefeld's director Friedrich Deneken. With the exhibition The Practical and the Ideal the Kaiser Wilhelm Museum Krefeld explore not only how Peter Behrens' understood such and how he attempted to achieve just
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