"When I was very small, a little boy of five or six years old, I was certainly no infant prodigy, but I did do drawings with houses, with vases and flowers, with gypsy caravans, merry-go-rounds and cemeteries........"1 Thus began one of the more interesting design journeys of the twentieth century. Ettore Sottsass (Photo Barbara Radice, 1984 © and courtesy Studio Ettore Sottsass) Ettore Sottsass: From Architect to Designer Born In Innsbruck, Austria, on September 14th 1917 as the son of an
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(a+b)÷a = a÷b ≡ harmony? Or, the contemporary relevance of the Golden Ratio In addition to those artificial laws decreed by state and church our lives are also defined by innate laws, those of mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology and Murphy. But is there a law of harmony? A law which defines perfect proportions and thus the ideal form of any object? Proponents of the Golden Ratio would answer yes. With their exhibition Divine Golden Ingenious. The Golden Ratio as a Theory of Everything?
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Slowly but surely September is becoming Europe's summer. Whereas July and August increasingly fail to produce anything even vaguely "summery", we can always rely on September to deliver long balmy afternoons, and even longer, balmier, nights. Often juxtaposed with crisp, misty mornings under a fresh blue sky. It's almost as if September knows that once it is gone, autumn will grasp us by the shoulders and drag us, selfishly, into winter. As if September knows it is our last refuge. "Get out
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If a central component of the Bauhaus philosophy was, in essence, to make art useful for industrial production and thus give art a contemporary relevance and function, what to do in a post-industrial world?* The answer from the German art historian and architecture theorist Heinrich Klotz was to unify art with digital technology, and thus give art a contemporary relevance and function. Or the Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie Karlsruhe, to give it its formal name; and an institution
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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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As East Berlin's Art and Design College the Kunsthochschule Berlin Weissensee was in many ways symbolic of East Germany's difficult relationship with Bauhaus and the legacy of inter-war functionalism. On the one hand the DDR needed the reduced, cost effective, mass-market, industrial objects striven for during the period. On the other a need to define a new, socialist, tradition for the new, socialist, state meant an almost dogmatic rejection of everything associated with the pre-war "Germany",
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"Does the world really need ever more chairs?", is arguably the question we are most regularly asked. Alongside, "What do you actually do all day?" The answer to the second question depends on who posed it, in how far we hope to impress them or in how far we fear they may stop us doing what we do were they to discover what that actually is. The answer to the first question is "Yes" Or "Yes, if the new chair represents an advance over existing chairs" A chair being not something you sit on,
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On the steps leading to the entrance of the Hochschule für Gestaltung Schwäbisch Gmünd is embossed "Ich will Designer werden" - "I want to be a designer." With the criticism from Schwäbisch Gmünd alumni Markus Jehs concerning the quality of the discourse in global design education still ringing in our ears, we felt a very real need to grab a marker pen and add ", because..." We didn't. That would have be vandalism. Although if we're correctly informed graffiting on design schools is allowed,
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Such are the vagaries of the autumn/spring cycle in the global design exhibition industry, and it is an industry people, let's not fool ourselves otherwise, August is traditionally a very lean month: curators are on holiday, critics are on holiday, exhibition designers are on holiday, protagonists are on holiday. Who wants to open an exhibition? The following five museums. That's who.......... "Dream out Loud" at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Holland Whereas museum exhibitions generally
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The 18th century Prussian Monarch Friedrich der Große, or Alte Fritz - Old Fritz - as he is popularly known, has many claims to fame, not least of which is his promotion and advancing of the cultivation of the potato in the lands under his command, thus making him responsible for the tuber's contemporary popularity in northern Germany. And hence his other title: The Potato King. Friedrich was also a patron of the applied arts and handicrafts and in 1763 took over Johann Ernst Gotzkowsky's
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An important commercial, financial and administrative centre since the middle ages Cologne has contributed greatly to the development of European society, culture and politics, while with the Kölner Dom the city is home to not only one of the largest Gothic cathedrals in Europe, and thus one of the most important religious institutions on the continent, but posses an excellent example of logical, considered, coherent, urban planning: by building the cathedral on a raised platform directly next
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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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For reasons which we believe are in some form or other closely related to Ley Lines, or similar, all long distance trains in Germany pass through the station Kassel-Wilhelmshöhe. It's not a situation over which Deutsche Bahn have any control, is rather a natural phenomenon, or as Louis H. Sullivan would no doubt phrase it, "This is the law" Thus we have passed through Kassel a lot. Without ever having visited the city. A situation we rectified this year with a visit to the Rundgang end of term
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Born and raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan, a town famous for some 150 years as a, if not the, centre of American furniture production, it is perhaps not surprising that Tom Newhouse choose to pursue a career in furniture design. Upon graduating in 1972 from the School of Art and Design at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Tom Newhouse took up a position as a staff designer with Herman Miller, a situation he himself refers to as a "marvellous beginning", before in 1978 he established his
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If the (hi)story of 20th century architecture and design is unimaginable without the contribution made by Austria/Hungary/Austria-Hungary; then the contribution made by Austria/Hungary/Austria-Hungary is unimaginable without the contribution of Otto Wagner. Otto Wagner (1841–1918) Otto Wagner: An Architect's Journey from Viennese Historicism to..... Born in Vienna on July 13th 1841 Otto Koloman Wagner studied first at the Wiener Polytechnikum and subsequently the Berliner Bauakademie, before
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Tulga Beyerle, Director of the Kunstgewerbemuseum Dresden, once gave us a piece of advice, the context of which we've long since forgotten, but not the content "only work with people you like" Much as we have tried to follow Tulga's sage advice, such are the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune under which we suffer, we haven't; unlike, we presume, Tulga who has now gone one step further and transformed the premise into the exhibition Friends + Design. Friends + Design at the
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After four weeks of competition at venues throughout France the 2016 Design EM prepares to bid adieu, au revoir and a heartfelt merci....and thus an opportune moment to reflect. Whereas the first few days were more notable for off-field activities than on-field, and for all those off-field activities of design fans from Russia and England, Design 2016 slowly developed into, if not a classic tournament, then certainly an honest and realistic reflection of contemporary European design. And also
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Whereas the careers of most product and furniture designers follow a very similar path and pattern over apprenticeship, internships and college, Belgian designer Alain Gilles took a "somewhat" different route: a degree in political science being followed by five years working in the Brussels' office of international finance concern J P Morgan, before, aged 32, he began to study product design. And that with a fair degree of success. Since establishing his own studio in 2007 Alain Gilles has
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"Photography is the medium par excellence of our time. As a visual means of communication, it has no equal."1 So wrote the American photographer Berenice Abbott in 1941. How she set about proving such can be explored in the exhibition Berenice Abbott – Photographs at the Martin-Gropius-Bau Berlin Berenice Abbott - Photographs at the Martin-Gropius-Bau Berlin Born in Springfield, Ohio in 1898 Berenice Abbott initially, and only very briefly, studied journalism at Ohio State University before
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Inaugurated in July 212 BC* the Ludi Apollinares were Roman games staged in honour of Apollo and featuring a mix of chariot racing, plays, dances and ritual sacrifice. The following five new exhibitions opening in July 2016 may lack the excitement of the chariot race, but in many respects are much more appropriate means by which to celebrate the Greco-Roman God of the arts, poetry, music and knowledge. And no gilded ox, goat or heifer need suffer. "Fast Forward: The Architecture of William
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Being principally an office furniture fair NeoCon doesn't really attract "fringe events" the way home furnishing focussed trade fairs do; office furniture, allegedly, lacking much of the flair, emotion and excitement of its domestic relatives. In the past however the so-called Guerrilla Truck Show did attempt to provide an alternative, more independent, take on design, than the sanitised corporate vision presented at NeoCon. Staged during NeoCon week in Chicago's Fulton Market district the
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In our recent conversation with Birgit Severin and Guillaume Neu-Rinaudo about their Heimat Lamp project they told us that the lamp was not only their first joint project but in many ways a test joint project to see how well they cooperated. Or perhaps better put, if they could cooperate. And was a test which they obviously both passed, for at Salone Satellite 2016 in Milan Birgit and Guillaume presented new, joint, projects, and a new, joint, venture, the design studio "Proof of Guilt" For us
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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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