The nature of product design, and for all furniture design, being what it is, we all have a predisposition to categorise products and objects. Chair. Table. Lamp. Tea pot. For example. Yet, quite aside from the fact that we all invariably use products for purposes other than than that intended, the chair as the makeshift step ladder, the wine glass and makeshift candle holder or the Biro as makeshift knife, why should a product only have one function? Can it not have two or more without
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Following on from the success of smow Cologne's Passagen Design Week début in 2014 with the USM Haller exhibition Facetten, 2015 sees a presentation of tables from the German manufacturer ASCO. Established in 1998 with the aim of developing tables which radiate a timeless elegance, the ASCO collection combines table tops in a range of hardwoods with bases constructed from wood, metal or concrete to produce objects that are as domesticated as they are rustic and individual as they are
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The history of civilisation is in many respects a history of man understanding natural systems, for example, the inner workings of the human body, the principles of evolution or the nature of the solar system. Each understanding bringing us further forward and opening new possibilities. Similarly the history of industry and economics is the history of man developing systems. Back in 1895 William Painter, head of the Crown Cork & Seal company gave King Camp Gillette the advice that if he
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As we noted in our post from the exhibition Der entfesselte Blick – Die Brüder Rasch und ihre Impulse für die moderne Architektur at the Marta Herford, the (hi)story of architecture and design is often more about the protagonists you don't know than the ones you do. Such as the pioneering Dutch architect and designer Piet Klaarhamer: an early teacher of and influence on Gerrit T. Rietveld, one of the intellectual forefather's of Dutch modernism, and a man largely forgotten by history. In an
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Until February 22nd the Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz is presenting the exhibition Andy Warhol: Death and Disaster, according to the organisers "the first European museum exhibition devoted exclusively to this topic" Correct. The first European museum exhibition. But not the first European exhibition devoted exclusively to this topic. On January 13th 1964 Andy Warhol's first solo exhibition in Europe opened at Galerie Ileana Sonnabend in Paris. Although officially titled "Warhol", the exhibition
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As many of you will be aware, back in November we struggled to find five design exhibitions opening in December for our monthly 5 New Design Exhibitions feature. We've now, somewhat spectacularly, found a sixth. In the highly unlikely setting of Gorinchem, a town of some 35,000 inhabitants in central Holland. Under the title Van stoelen bezeten - Obsessed by Chairs - the Gorcums Museum in Gorinchem is currently presenting an exhibition of some 90 objects which according to the organisers
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Back at the end of 2014 we mused as to whether or not this might be an apposite moment to quietly remove ourselves from the high octane world of design blogging and seek out pastures new and a calmer, more sedentary, life. The melancholy of those late December days still lingers, yet with the IMM Cologne furniture trade fair and Passage Cologne design festival standing afore us like some bright eyed, white toothed, flaxen haired vision of our famously promising youth, we have no option but to
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As any fool know, Germany's most important contribution to art, architecture and design education was established in Weimar in April 1919. However, some three and half years before Walter Gropius welcomed the first students to his Bauhaus college, a further Germanic education institution was established, an institution which just as with Bauhaus took a new, modern, progressive, approach to art, design and architecture education yet an institution which in comparison to Bauhaus is still
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With ever more of our fellow train passengers displaying acute symptoms of over exposure to cheap Glühwein it can only mean that December is upon us. And the end of one the genuinely more enjoyable smow blog years. Indeed its fair to say 2014 was one of those years that makes you consider if its not time to hang up the old travelling socks and seek a more sedate, sedentary, existence. A fitting moment perhaps, but the correct decision? We've a couple of days to decide. And to accompany us
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Such was the quality of the new products we saw during our autumn tour they kept us going well into November; indeed it wasn't until a cold dank Friday in Chemnitz ahead of the opening of the exhibition Andy Warhol – Death and Disaster at the Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz, that we even realised it was November.
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......and continued over Budapest and on to Berlin - where amongst other delights we partook of the exhibitions Sensing the Future: László Moholy-Nagy, die Medien und die Künste at the Bauhaus Archiv Berlin and Schrill Bizarr Brachial. Das Neue Deutsche Design der 80er Jahre at the Bröhan Museum - and onto Cologne for the Orgatec office furniture trade fair.
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Following on from the relative inactivity of August September saw us wind back up towards the 2014 autumn design festival season. But before everything kicked of in Vienna, we enjoyed the exhibitions Okolo Offline Two – Collecting at the Kunstgewerbemuseum Dresden, Useful Exhibition by Sanghyeok Lee at the DMY Design Gallery Berlin, Alvar Aalto – Second Nature at the Vitra Design Museum and enjoyed a lovely chat with architect Eberhard Lange on the restoration of Egon Eiermann's Wohnhaus
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Nothing scares us quite like January. It wouldn't be so bad if convention didn't insist on the additive progression of the year. If the number could just remain the same we'd be fine with January. But no. Come the first of January comes further confirmation of our inevitable mortality. Thanks January! To comfort us, five particularly promising sounding new design and architecture exhibitions opening in January 2015...... "SYSTEM DESIGN. Über 100 Jahre Chaos im Alltag" at the Museum für
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August being holiday month our principle focus was board sports: Woody Skateboards for the summer and silbærg snowboards for the coming winter. And when not trying to dislocate our virtual collarbones we found time to bring you an interview with Daphna Laurens and a warning from the colleagues at smow Australia.
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Thanks to a unnecessarily long journey through Sachsen-Anhalt in an unnecessarily warm bus, July 2014 will remain indelibly scorched in our collective memory. On a professional note, July 2014 also saw the exhibitions Unter Zwischen im Ampelhaus, Oranienbaum and Summer Break VA / Neue Arbeiten at Direktorenhaus Berlin, and of course the flood of student exhibitions that arise every summer.
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... had things not continued apace in June. A month which saw us trawl trough Berlin with Niek Wagemans looking for material with which to build a bar for the Dutch Embassy, rub shoulders with some very glamorous individuals at Design Miami Basel and, most importantly, test the new Vitra Slide Tower in Weil am Rhein.
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If we remember correctly, the only Irish designer we have ever included in these pages is Eileen Gray. That may soon change because 2015 has been officially designated the year of Irish Design. Coordinated by the Design & Crafts Council of Ireland "Irish Design 2015" promises a year long series of exhibitions, fairs and conferences both in Ireland and overseas which aim to foster dialogue and collaboration and thus, so hope the organisers, encourage design led investment in Ireland and so
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May may have been slow in the past. May. For aside from DMY Berlin, Fritz Haller in Basel, Niek van der Heijden in Berlin, and Wilhelm Wagenfeld in Bremen we also got to visit Nürnberg and the new archaeology museum in Chemnitz. And so all things considered May 2014 may go down as one of our busiest months ever.....
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As all old thesauruans know "April" is merely a synonym for "Milan" And lo despite all promises to the contrary April 2014 once again found us in Lombardy, where, amongst other objects and exhibitions, we were very taken with the Alexander Girard reissues revealed by Vitra, the exhibition of Meisenthal Glassworks at the Institut Francais and the new Rival chair by Konstantin Grcic for Artek. Away from Milan April 214 saw us get to know the work of Pascal Howe at the DMY Design Gallery Berlin,
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According to our pictorial review of March 2013 it was "a month of travelling: Stuttgart, Chemnitz, Weimar, Dessau….. its amazing we found time to actually write anything……." March was 2014 was the same. Just replace "Stuttgart, Chemnitz, Weimar, Dessau" with "Frankfurt, Münsingen, Berlin, Weil am Rhein" It also explains the large number of half-finished drafts from March. Obviously we didn't find time to write everything!
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Cold as February 2014 unquestionably was, we managed to warm ourselves with exhibitions looking at the 1920s medial representation of Bauhaus Dessau, the life and works of Marianne Brandt and the work of Berlin based designer Birgit Severin. And got all excited by some USM window fittings!
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Whereas in years past we would have just blithely stated that January, as ever, saw us in Cologne for IMM Cologne and the Passagen design festival. January 2014 saw in context of the Passagen deign week the first in-store exhibition in the smow Cologne store: Facetten - a presentation devoted to domestic uses of the USM Haller modular furniture system. Elsewhere in Cologne we were very taken with Objects and the Factory, Design Flanders and Alle Metalle / All Metal. In addition January 2014
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On one of the very few occasions over the past 12 months when we've put down our axes and stepped, temporarily, back from the coalface of design culture that is the smow blog, we found ourselves on a cool September evening drinking Voll Damm bier underneath Barcelona Design Museum. No, not like that. It was positive. Our hotel was just round the corner and after a hard day on the beach we fancied an urban stroll and subsequently found a nice place to enjoy our Voll Damm against the backdrop
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We recently posted on current research which suggests that not only is sitting for long periods detrimental to our health, but that sport and movement cannot compensate for the negative effects of prolonged sitting. Taking such research as their starting point Amsterdam based architecture/philosophy studio Rietveld Architecture-Art-Affordances, RAAAF, and artist Barbara Visser created the somewhat polemically titled animation "Sitting Kills" from which they have now developed the installation
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