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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Until February 8th 2015 the Deutsches Architektur Zentrum, DAZ, in Berlin is presenting the exhibition "The Urburb: patterns of contemporary living" Developed by Ori Scialom, Dr. Roy Brand and Keren Yaela Golan The Urburb was Israel's contribution to the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale and aims to place the current state of urban planning and architecture in Israel in context of historical developments. To this end The Urburb features four so-called sand printers - industrial plotting
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Just as it seems that the press conference ahead of the opening of the Martin-Gropius-Bau Berlin's new exhibition, "VKhUTEMAS – A Russian Laboratory of Modernity", is approaching its end, yet another, final, question is posed. Martin-Gropius-Bau Director Gereon Sievernich smiles warmly and responds with a very good natured "My, have you all got a lot of questions today!" Yes. Unsurprisingly. Exhibitions, or indeed any form of academic presentation, about the Russian art school VKhUTEMAS
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As many of you will be aware, for us no post about 20th century American design is complete with the addition of alcohol and George Nelson. And so by way of a reprise to our recent post celebrating Isamu Noguchi's birthday, we present, with thanks to Stanley Abercrombie's ever excellent and easily recommendable George Nelson biography, George Nelson's recollections on Isamu Noguchi and his role in the creation of the famous Ball Clock. An anecdote that in addition beautifully highlights the
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Time was when there was nothing nobler than a Christmas market. And no finer way to wile away the adventtide than with a glass of Glühwein and possibly a bag of chestnuts roasted by an honest, if somewhat overly familiar, urchin, while strolling through a festive bazaar. Time was. Time, however, is. And as the number, and for all the variety, of Christmas markets grows, so does the quality decline. Consequently, as we approach an age when no one will ever again be able to enjoy the physical
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One of the advantages of having been running our "5 New Design Exhibitions" series for over a year is that we now possess what we can optimistically refer to as an "archive" And looking in that "archive" we discover that for December 2013 we recommended four exhibitions in Germanophone countries and one in Holland. And for December 2014 we're doing the same. It's not deliberate; it is just the case that only museums and galleries in Germany appear to open design and architecture exhibitions
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While it is widely understood that Leipzig is currently the most important European centre in terms of on-line designer furniture retailing, less well understood is that the town has always been an important European centre for innovative approaches to the sale and distribution of contemporary furniture. The exhibition F.G. Hoffmann - Court Carpenter and Entrepreneur at the Grassi Museum for Applied Arts Leipzig aims to rectify that. Born in 1741 on the estate of Puschwitz Manor, Sachsen,
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Until February 22nd the Berlin Gallery Haus am Waldsee is presenting the exhibition "Architectural Utopia Reloaded", a retrospective dedicated to the experimental architecture collective Haus-Rucker-Co. Haus-Rucker-Co - Architectural Utopia Reloaded at Haus am Waldsee, Berlin Established in Vienna in 1967 by the architects Laurids Ortner and Günter Zamp Kelp together with the artist Klaus Pinter, Haus-Rucker-Co principally concerned themselves with the creation of a new understanding of
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For an institution associated with so many interesting and important figures in the UK furniture industry, there is a remarkable dearth of information on the London College of Furniture. Most of what there is relating to the, obviously fabled, music instrument making department. And so it is perhaps more appropriate than fitting that to mark the 50th anniversary of the London College of Furniture an exhibition celebrating the institution is being staged by its successor Sir John Cass Faculty
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Much as Andy Warhol predicated we'd all be famous for 15 minutes, he also understood we'd all be dead forever. And that he dealt with the inevitably of death in all its poetic, brutal and unjust facets in works of art every bit as lively, critical and complex as those he created to deal with the vagaries of celebrity, trash culture and consumerism can currently be experienced in the exhibition "Andy Warhol – Death and Disaster" at the Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz. Much like displaying a
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Following three years closure and an investment of some four million Euros the Kunstgewerbemuseum Berlin - Berlin Museum of Decorative Arts - is once again open to the public. In addition to architectural and interior design adaptations and conversions by Berlin based architects KUEHN MALVEZZI and refreshed displays chronicling the development of popular culture since the middle ages, the past three years have also brought the museum a permanent fashion section and new dedicated special
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Explaining the background to their contribution to Stylepark's Being Home 4+4 installation programme at Orgatec Cologne 2014 Marcel Besau and Eva Marguerre a.k.a. Besau Marguerre stated their belief that the best ideas rarely strike at the desk and that, and in particular in a home office context, any space is a potential work space. The garden, for example. On the balcony. In the dining room. Or in the kitchen. And so why not take the kitchen into the office. So, or similar, is possible
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Whereas the vast majority of successful and popular furniture designers have an architecture or handcraft background, there are naturally exceptions. One of the best known and most fascinating being without question the sculptor and artist Isamu Noguchi. Born on November 17th 1904 in Los Angeles as the first and only child of the American writer Leonie Gilmour and the Japanese poet Yone Noguchi, the young Isamu was raised in Japan until 1918 when he was sent to the Interlaken boarding school
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Despite the transient nature of the definition of "design", an important role of the designer is unquestionably solving problems. And an important role of the industrial designer is solving problems in context of industrial production. One of the earliest, and most elegant, examples of this dates back to the very beginnings of industrial production: the disposable safety razor blade. The patent for which was granted to King Camp Gillette on November 15th 1904. According to popular legend the
read moreIn our recent design calendar post on the 85th anniversary of the opening of the New York Museum of Modern Art, MoMA, we noted that they are currently presenting an exhibition under the title "Design and Violence" Although "presenting" is perhaps not the correct phrase, for rather than display objects as part of a traditional exhibition in their spacious if crammed base in Manhattan, for Design and Violence the MoMA are staging what they refer to as an "experimental online curatorial project".
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As older readers will be aware, one of our all time favourite projects is, was and probably always will be the majestic Spore Vase by Paulo Sellmayer. Not just because as an object it teaches us so much about contemporary society and the absurdity of the perceived control we have over the natural world; but because through discovering and dissecting Spore Vase we learned and understood an awful lot about our job and our responsibilities. Since we saw Spore Vase in Smalle Haven in Eindhoven we
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Until December 20th the Paris dépendance of Galerie kreo is presenting an exhibition dedicated to the vivacious variety of contemporary wooden furniture design. Presented under the sparklingly original title "only wood" the exhibition presents a mix of previously displayed objects and new works. Amongst the older works on show a special mention must go to the Woodwork lamp by BIG-GAME, a work premièred at Galerie kreo's 2008 La Liseuse exhibition, the Cork #3 storage system by Martin Szekely
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"The belief that New York needs a Museum of Modern Art scarcely requires apology. All over the world the rising tide of interest in the modern movement has found expression not only in private collections but also in the formation of great public galleries for the specific purpose of exhibiting permanent as well as temporary collections of modern art. That New York has no such gallery is an extraordinary anachronism. The municipal museums of Stockholm, Weimar, Düsseldorf, Essen, Mannheim,
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Given the urban-centric view of the world most of us posses it's all to easy to forget that social and cultural change, and the associated problems, challenges and opportunities they bring, aren't limited to our cities. An exhibition of photographs of the Ostrach valley in Bavaria by local photographer Christian Heumader attempts to reinforce this point. Presented at the Schwäbisches Bauernhofmuseum Illerbeuren near Kempten im Allgäu as part of the Architekturforum Allgäu's LandLuft programme,
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