Throughout 2015 some thirty European museums and cultural institutions will mark the 125th anniversary of Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh's death with a series of exhibitions, events and cultural exchanges. As previously noted, just as we have an innate mistrust of "lifetime achievement awards" for the living and lively, so to do we find "celebrating" deaths somewhat macabre. Especially in the case of Vincent van Gogh given the gory and tragic circumstances of his passing. But we famously don't
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Name: smow introducing Born: Leipzig, 2010 Alma mater: University of life Featured designers: Christoffer Martens Erik Wester Christian Lessing Eva Marguerre My Own Super Studio maigrau Stephan Schulz smow blog: smow introducing? (smow) blog: A series we used to publish in which we featured, younger, less well known, but in our opinion extremely talented and interesting designers and "introduced" them to a wider audience smow blog: "Used to publish", and
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Established in 1993 with a primary focus on producing the designs of Egon Eiermann, including most famously the re-edition of Eiermann's 1953 table frame, Stuttgart based furniture manufacturer Richard Lampert have quietly developed over the intervening twenty plus years into one of Germany's most distinctive and idiosyncratic furniture producers, and a manufacturer with a portfolio that effortlessly mixes contemporary design with older, established, pieces. Often in the same object. Whereas
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Premièred in 2012 as a platform to help connect design with business and to encourage greater design thinking by and acceptance of the value of design for industry, and as a sort of supporting fringe event to envelop and accompany the iF Design Award ceremony following the decision to host the event in the Bavarian capital, Munich Creative Business Week has developed over the years into a very interesting event which, although still largely promotional in character, does from time to time
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In our post from the exhibition Schrill Bizarr Brachial. Das Neue Deutsche Design der 80er Jahre at the Bröhan Museum Berlin we noted that, for us, the two most important legacies of the Neues deutsches Design movement and 1980s German Postmodernism are and were the number of protagonists from then currently teaching at German design schools, and those manufacturers who arose from the heady, damp haze of the period. Manufacturers such as Nils Holger Moormann. Established in the early 1980s
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When in 2013 the design facilitators from Depot Basel were forced to move from their original home in a former grain silo to their current home in a former bureau de change they not only gave up a venue which we once, and not entirely positively, declared as the "picture perfect location for a contemporary design gallery", they also gave up some 90% of their space: 800 sqm becoming just 65. What they however gained was display windows. Lots of display windows. And the question of how best to
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Among the more arrogant characteristics of us city dwellers is our assumed cultural and creative superiority over those who live in the countryside. A situation largely fuelled by the insular, self-absorbing nature of city life and the resulting belief that only an urban environment and its peculiar mix of influences and rituals can bring forth cultural evolution. And a state of affairs barely helped by contemporary technological, demographic, economic and political changes and their
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In our post on Plug Lamp by Form Us With Love for Ateljé Lyktan, we posed the question "where in Hades if not while at your desk are you likely to need both a light and a plug?" And where, if not in your kitchen are you likely to need both a light and herbs? Presented as part of the Hochschule für Technik Stuttgart Interior Design department's IMM Cologne showcase "Wir bitten zu Tisch", the Erleuchtung Kräutergarten - Enlightening Herb Garden - by Elisabeth Kocher and Anna-Lena Bast provides
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In our post on Rui Alves's Bridge Chair prototype from IMM Cologne we noted that, although generally approving of the piece, it wasn't as instantly accessible as much of Rui's work. It took us a little bit of time to find our way into it. One possible reason is and was what we referred to as the "deliberately overproportioned upholstered seat and back rest", and the associated unfamiliar but not unappealing form language with its vague reminiscence of Finn Juhl or Hans J Wegner, yet clearly
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Contrary to popular legend, a change is not as good as a rest. It's better. For whereas after a rest one just carries on ploughing the same furrow, change means new experiences and the gorgeous, invigorating, uncertainty of not knowing where the new path will take you. After neigh on 18 years of producing refreshingly individual objects from sheet steel, and sheet steel alone, in 2014 Augsburg based Müller Möbelfabrikation began a flirtation with wood in context of their Stack sideboard/room
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Much as the hardest move in yoga is unrolling your yoga mat, so to is the most challenging facet about most design and architecture exhibitions actually getting round to visiting them. Especially when it involves going out into February's cold air. The following five however seem well worth the effort. If unrolling your yoga mat is worth the effort is of course another question. And not one we have any intention of ever trying to find an answer to.................... Architecture of
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For its 13th edition the DMY Berlin International Design Festival will be staged in a new venue and under the auspices of a new organiser. Neither change coming particularly voluntarily. The former festival organiser DMY Berlin GmbH & Co. KG filled for insolvency in October 2014, and the process was formally opened on January 1st 2015. Given the nature of their business DMY Berlin GmbH was, though committed to the cause, never the most profitable of companies, and ever increasing financial
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If you're of a certain age, and of a certain background, you'll be familiar with the Roland TR-808 drum machine. If not, introduced in 1980 the Roland TR-808 was one of the first programmable drum machines, was, as such, a major influence on the development of electronic music in the 1980s..... and is infamous for sounding absolutely nothing like real drums, far less real percussion. Consequently, on account of its universally acknowledged auditory failings, the TR-808 was only produced for
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While the old adage "you are what you eat" can't be true, if it were we'd be a slovenly pile of beer and crisps, it is very true that you are how you cook. Cooking has largely developed with cultures, the way similar foodstuffs are prepared and cooked, for example, varying from region to region, and regardless of how technologically advanced society inevitably becomes, cooking will, we suspect, remain largely resistant to change. Cooking systems will evolve and adapt, but cooking processes
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We remember very clearly the first time we saw the work of Berlin design studio llot llov: it was at Designers Fair Cologne 2010, back in the day when the exhibition was held in the fading glory of the so-called Rheintriadem. Walking down a corridor, invariably trying to decide what we wanted for lunch, we glanced, more or less unconsciously, into one of the rooms and there hanging in the corner, radiating an unmistakable self-confident grandeur, was the macramé "flower cocoon" Lucille.
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In our post on the Drawers Table by 45 Kilo for My Kilos we noted "any product that can appear as fresh, contemporary and universally deployable six years after its release as it did on day one is, as a general rule, good." And what about a table which appears as fresh, contemporary and universally deployable 61 years after its release as it did on day one? Such is the case with the ess.tee.tisch t-6500 from Swiss manufacturer Horgenglarus. Originally launched by Horgenglarus in 1954 as the
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Parallel to the exhibition MAD ABOUT LIVING – 24 Designers from Brussels, Cologne is hosting an exhibition which nicely highlights one of the major differences between Belgian designers and their Dutch colleagues in terms of designing furniture and other domestic products Whereas Belgian designers simply produce furniture, Dutch designers produce concepts. OK we're generalising, and to be fair we do know a lot, a few, some, Dutch designers who produce perfectly "normal" furniture. But for the
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Presumably for reasons of brand unity the German Design Council's D3 Design Talent Contest for young designers has been renamed the Pure Talents Contest: a name that connects it with the very successful Pure segment - Pure Village, Pure Editions, Pure Startup - Cologne Trade Fair introduced to IMM furniture trade fair a couple of years ago, and also creates a nice link between those, generally, more contemporary producers in the Pure segment and the, generally, more contemporary young
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If we're correctly informed, and let's be honest we're not always, 2014 saw the Belgian General Consulate in Cologne host their first Passagen Design Week exhibition with an excellent showcase of new and less new works by Atelier Bonk and Cas Moor. Buoyed by the success of that experience for Passagen 2015 the Consulate is hosting the exhibition MAD ABOUT LIVING - 24 Designers from Brussels. Organised by the Brussels regional creative promotion agency, MAD Brussels, and staged in the fire
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As regular readers will be aware, for us there are two characteristics which define a proper desk: drawers and an endlessly large surface area on which to spread out and indulge in your work/life balance. Characteristics perfectly embodied by Drawers Table by design studio 45 Kilo for Berlin based brand My Kilos. What however is particularly pleasing and endearing about Drawers Table is that despite its wonderfully spacious dimensions, the well thought through design and carefully reduced
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Much as we tend to shy away from "Designer of the Year" awards, the presentation of German architecture and design magazine A&W's Designer of the Year award is always an early highpoint of the Passagen Cologne Design Week. Principally because it invariably results in a compact yet informative exhibition from and about the selected designer. An exhibition that is perhaps never independent nor critical, but which always provides an accessible overview of the designers oeuvre. Following on from
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Our favourite Portuguese designer TM Rui Alves is making his IMM Cologne début this year, with a new prototype under his own name and an old smow blog favourite being launched by Danish manufacturer Menu. Premièred as "Tailor Sofa" at Salone Satellite 2013 and now renamed Lounge Sofa by Menu the work initially caught our attention on account of being a "deliciously effortlessly reduced down piece [which] combines a turned wooden frame with a pressed felt seat to create a sort of simplified
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For a town which, we would assume, boasts the highest density of designers in Europe, and which hosts one of the continent's more eclectic Design Weeks, Eindhoven in January is a very lonely place for the design devotee looking for an exhibition in which to wile away a spare afternoon. Fortunately those exhibitions which are running "out of season" offer enough substance to keep you curious, questioning and satisfied for many a January to come, exhibitions such as Matter of Life. Growing new
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Following on from system design at the MAKK and the more autonomous product design featured at Objects in Between, we bring you an exhibition in Cologne presenting a third product design category: the collection. Whereas systems require a connector, a universal node, collections can be considered a series of related products which although created in the one context need not have a connection. Other than having been created in the same context. For their Passagen Cologne 2015 exhibition
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