Amongst the great many delights of the exchange, the interplay, between German and English is the word 'Gift': German English Gift Poison Geschenk Gift An interplay that, apart from all the other joys it brings, allows one to rephrase Virgil's "timeō Danaōs et dōna ferentēs" 'Beware Greeks bearing gifts' as 'Beware Germans bearing Gift'.🤣 With the exhibition The Gift. Stories of Generosity and Violence in Architecture the Architekturmuseum der TU München explore architecture as a
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Badekarren in Katwijk by Wilhelm Gutmann, 1908 (Image Public Domain, courtesy of Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main) ... ... Wilhelm Gutmann used the occasion of Grassimesse Leipzig 1920 to present...... .......we no know. Or more accurately, in terms of Wilhelm Gutmann generally we no know hardly nothing. Certainly we no know an awful lot more than the we no know about the other Grassimesse 1920 designers featured thus far in these dispatches. Despite the fact that, arguably, there should
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"Why are the sounds we play in our apartments always music?" asked the Danish architect and designer Verner Panton, "aren't the sounds of a chicken farm, waves, the wind and many other things just as beautiful?"1 Questions that force one to question the difference between 'sounds' and 'music', but for all to question our relationships with the myriad 'noises' that accompany daily life. With the exhibition Sound Sources. Everything is Music! the Weltkulturen Museum, Frankfurt, provide a space
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Occasional table by Rita Koralevics from the Paper-up Collection, as seen Magyar Design, Otthon Design Budapest 2024 The first thing that drew us to Paper-Up a.k.a Rita Koralevics' occasional table was the construction: the small wooden batons on the side implying it was possibly worth taking a closer look. So we did. And it very much was. Didn't disappoint. Revealing as it did a deliciously simple, efficient, unhurried, construction principle that actively contributes to not only the
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A living room design by Gertrud Lincke featuring two Arbeitskojen, Work Bunks/Berths, on the left and right, home office à la the 1920s (undated, but before 1927, possibly 1924/5) In 1926 the Dresden based architect Gertrud Lincke will opine that "women are decisive, paramount, when it comes to setting up a home", and that not because of what you think, but because, "they are the most negatively impacted by the housing crisis and all that comes associated with it". However, she will lament
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Components of the Bold collection by András Kerékgyártó for Brave Home, as seen at Magyar Design, Otthon Design Budapest 2024 András Kerékgyártó wasn't the first Hungarian designer whose work we saw, that would have been Marcel Breuer, but András is, arguably, that active Hungarian designer who has featured most often in these dispatches. A position achieved not on account of any formal legal agreement, just to clarify, but simply because he invariably produces good, interesting work worthy
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Polc íróasztallal by Woodoo, as seen at Magyar Design, Otthon Design Budapest 2024 Budapest, indeed Hungary as a whole, was an important centre of that which today is known as Art Nouveau, or Szecesszió to be more precise, if an expression of Art Nouveau, Szecesszió, that all too often tends to get overlooked by the expression of if its near neighbour Vienna. But a Szecesszió which one can't overlook walking through and around Budapest. Nor can one overlook Szecesszió standing in the
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The Budapest born photographer Robert Capa is quoted as once opining that, in context of photography, "it is not enough to have talent, you also have to be Hungarian"1, and in terms of furniture design there was, arguably, a period when that was also true; for all during that, all too, brief period between the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian empire in 1918 and the outbreak of the 1939 - 1945 war, an inter-War period that, amongst other episodes, saw the Magyar trio Marcel Breuer, Kálmán
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An (early) interior (and possibly early furniture) by Dr Josef Frank, undated, but before 1915 "Living rooms intended to serve more than purely representational purposes are not works of art or well-coordinated harmonies in colour and form, whose individual components (wallpaper, carpets, furniture, pictures) comprise a finished whole in which they are inextricably linked", opined Dr Josef Frank in 1919, and that not least because, "any new item added would be perceived as awkward,
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Chairs by Elisabeth von Baczko realised by Korbmacher Kapsch, Bremen Just a few short years ago Dr. Karl Schaefer, the new Director of the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne, opined that furniture and interior design required "a clear, well-disciplined architectural appreciation for the corporeal and its dimensions, for the tectonic and for the material, a certain dryness and an unapologetic sincerity" and for all "penetrating, deliberative understanding more than unbridled fantasy",
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After several years of preparation, and a lot of, at times (very) heated, discussion, this past March saw the staging of the inaugural Grassimesse Leipzig in the city's Rathaus. Instigated by Dr. Richard Graul, Director of the Leipzig Kunstgewerbemuseum by way of a response to, an answer to, the increasing concerns amongst many professional creatives regarding the quality of contemporary objects of daily use presented at the bi-annual Leipzig Fair, for all the quality of the novel machine
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So unwilling are we here at smow Blog to blow our own trumpet, we don't even own a trumpet. Why would we, we'd never blow it. It would just lie in the corner, unused, wastefully untooted. However, 2000 smow Blog posts is an occasion very much demanding of a fanfare. Technically 2001 smow Blog posts, the nature of these things meaning this post didn't appear as planned between Transform! Designing the Future of Energy at the Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein and 5 New Architecture & Design
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As Letitia Elizabeth Landon so very, very, nearly wrote in 1823, Of all the months that fill the year Give April's month to me, For the architecture and design museums are then so filled, With sweet variety! Our sweet variety in April's month of 2024 can be found in Dessau, Brussels, Rome, Paris and Dresden....... "The Gesture Speaks" at the Bauhaus Museum, Dessau, Germany For all that the Bauhauses were, without question, art and design and craft and architecture, they were also movement;
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As we all know from the 1st Law of Thermodynamics, energy cannot be created nor destroyed, only transformed from one form to another. And as a species we've developed a myriad ways of transforming one form of energy to another. We burn oil. We burn coal. We burn gas. We burn wood. We burn an awful lot, don't we..... But we also employ, for example, the kinetic energy of wind, waves and photons or the potential energy of Uranium atoms. With Transform! Designing the Future of Energy the
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"To meet the needs of a living architecture," opined Otti Berger in 1930, "we need clarity about what fabric is, and further, what fabric in space is".1 With the showcase Otti Berger. Weaving for Modernist Architecture the Temporary Bauhaus-Archiv, Berlin, allow one to begin to approach appreciations of what both Otti Berger understood as fabric, "and further, what fabric in space is", and in doing so not only enable differentiated perspectives on Weaving and Modernist Architecture but allow
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It would inarguably, and inexcusably, be little more than employing a lazy, cheap, unwarrantable, stereotype and innuendo to opine that Hamburg is an apposite location for an exhibition exploring and discussing human societies' relationships with water, being as it is a city where the incessant, clinging drizzle is only interrupted by the regular torrential downpours; rather, Hamburg is an apposite location for an exhibition exploring and discussing human societies' relationships with water, as
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Vitra A Fehlbaum; A Campus; A Commonwealth According to the Sagas of the Dolls of Wood, that most authoritative account of the early (hi)story of the Commonwealth of Vitra, the contemporary Vitronians trace their origins back to a joining of forces of the Graeter, a Basel based people whose primary trade was the creation of display systems for shops and shop windows, and the Birsfelden Fehlbaum, a primarily office based people at that time under the guidance of a Willi and an Erika; a Willi
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There is a convincing argument to be made that in our contemporary age perfection is one of our primary aims, one of our guiding aims, individually and collectively. A convincing argument to be made that perfection is, to paraphrase a Shane MacGowan, 'the measure of our dreams'. And there are no shortage of experts out there to tell us all how to achieve that perfection, in all areas of life and work and love and home and hobby. With Perfectly Imperfect – Flaws, Blemishes and Defects the
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In the popular narrative of architecture and design in the second half of the 20th century the phrase 'Postmodern' is widely used; a wide use, and an equally wide, unquestioning, popular acceptance of what is meant, that all too often not only blinds us all to the heterogeneity of the period but also impedes meaningful debate and discussion on the motivations, positions and realities of that period. And on the lessons of the period. With Bold and Beautiful. Estonian private houses from the
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In Shakespeare's A Winter's Tale Perdita bewails that she has no "flowers o’ th’ spring" to make garlands for, and to strew over, her beloved Florizel; "flowers o’ th’ spring" including violets, primroses, oxlips or "daffodils, That come before the swallow dares, and take the winds of March with beauty". Whereby in her infatuation with, and fearless youthful love for, Florizel, Perdita fails to appreciate that it wasn't fear of the winds of March that kept the swallows away, swallows love a
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As Europe begins to ardently shake of the last remnants of winter and the first green and blue and yellow and white specks appear in parks and gardens, as the chance that summer might just arrive becomes tangible.... October can seem a mighty long way away. Unimaginable. But it is approaching. As is the 2024 Grassimesse. The path thereto has been laid and until Wednesday May 15th are all called upon to apply....... Staged in and by the Grassi Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Leipzig, and
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"When architecture is born, a place is born" opined Japanese architect Tsuyoshi Tane in 2018, continuing, "humans began to understand that by building architecture, a meaning is given to a place, and then that place has a story that can be passed on to others". But for Tane architecture doesn't just bequeath a place meaning and a story, it also "gives memories to a place", memories of the past and memories of the future, collective memories that help create bonds. But memories that are
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As noted from the exhibition Der ungesehene Designklassiker at the Deutsches Stuhlbaumuseum, Rabenau, alongside the introduction, re-introduction, enabled to the EW 1192 by Horst Heyder, a work that was, in all probability, the most widely found, most widely used, chair in the DDR and, potentially, one of the chairs existent in the greatest population densities anywhere ever, and thus a chair that inarguably shouldn't need to be re-introduced, but which on account of the nature of the
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Basketry has something of the archaic about it, almost anachronistic, has echoes of a past we've all long moved on from. With the exhibition All Hands On: Basketry the Museum Europäischer Kulturen, Berlin allow for, demand, a critical reassessment....... All Hands On: Basketry, Museum Europäischer Kulturen, Berlin Presenting its narrative over the course of four chapters — People, Protection, Material and Pattern — four chapters which, and at the risk of opening with an unforgivable pun,
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