On Wednesday October 22nd the exhibition "Martino Gamper - design is a state of mind" opens at the Pinacoteca Agnelli in Turin. Curated by London based, Italian born designer Martino Gamper, design is a state of mind premièred at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery London over the summer of 2014 and is in effect two exhibitions in one. In the first Martino Gamper presents a series of shelving systems dating from the 1930s to the 21st century; a collection of shelving systems that not only present
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Back in the day when the CD was new and exciting we remember watching a breakfast TV host spread honey on one to demonstrate how indestructible they were. Other CDs were attacked with keys, dowsed in hot coffee and stood on. These days we all know much better. CDs are destructible. We've seen the light. And at Dutch Design Week 2014 you can can see the light a recycled CD emits. Or at least the luminescence produced by a mass of recycled CDs in the thoughtfully and intelligently formed
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Proving that Eindhoven is full of old factories, but that they are not necessarily all former Philips factories, Sectie C is a former industrial estate on the eastern edge of Eindhoven that has become home to a, seemingly, thriving community of creatives. Featuring a nice mix of creative genres and small businesses Sectie C's real charm is the way the tenants have colonised the available space just as vegetation does in derelict industrial estates: offices constructed under the rafters like
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Time was when Leipzig hosted two fayres per year, one at Easter and one at Michaelmas. The Easter Fair has since given way to a grotesque faux middle ages market. And no we're not using grotesque as a synonym for the pains and discomforts of the middle ages as reflected in the stalls, shows and characters who compose the market experience. We mean its painful and uncomfortable. The Michaelmas Fair however has evolved much more agreeably and is now ably represented by the annual Grassimesse.
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It is very rare that one comes across an object where a manufacturer has combined two independently developed products into one. And even rarer that we like such an object. Our natural resistance reaction is to say, No. No. Not on our watch. Begone. We were however instantly taken with the so-called Blumenampel Edition by Zascho Petkow and Birgit Severin for Berlin based Atelier Haussmann. Possibly because initially we didn't know its provenance. That only became clear in conversation with
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In 1951 the German designer Wilhelm Wagenfeld created a glass punch bowl for Württembergische Metallwarenfabrik, WMF: the clou of which is a glass tube which passes through the lid and down to the bottom of the bowl. The ideas being to fill this tube with ice, when the ice, inevitably, melts the resulting water remains separate from the punch, can be thrown away and replaced with fresh ice. Thus ensuring your punch remains chilled, and unadulterated, until the last drop. A revolution in its
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Ever since Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec released their Alcove Sofa for Vitra in 2006 ever more furniture objects have appeared on the market which promise the owner the opportunity to create flexible room partition solutions. To create rooms within rooms and provide a place in which to separate yourself from a home that is becoming ever more an office. To find safety in the midst of the unending data, information and sensory flood. Or just amongst the kid's mess. And with very few exceptions,
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Despite what popular myth may have you believe, the Design Academy Eindhoven is not alone responsible for Eindhoven's current status as one of the most important design city's in Europe. But love it or loath it there is no getting away from the Design Academy's influence on the development of contemporary European design. And so of course on Eindhoven's current status as one of the most important design city's in Europe. Consequently the annual Design Academy Graduate Show is one of the
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At an otherwise disappointing presentation of projects by students from the TU Graz Institute of Spatial Design during Vienna Design Week, a genuine stand out project was the valet Servant by Katharina Wernig. Brazenly contradicting the position we took with Fidelio by Christian Spiess that a chair is the most natural form for a valet, Katharina Wernig has opted instead for a side table-cum-valet. Or at least side table-cum-semi-valet. For while in our book a valet must include an option for
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"Marcel Breuer seeing a pair of bicycle handle-bars decided to make chairs using the same industrial process. The new world constructor seeing a pair of bicycle handle-bars decides to use them as they are and save himself the trouble and expense of bending the tube."1 So articulated Jasper Morrison in his 1984 text "The Poet will not Polish" not only the theoretical background to his Handlebar Table, but much more the frustration and alienation being felt at that time by a young generation of
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Much like crisps, cardboard furniture is something with which we have a very troubled relationship. However whereas with crisps the problem is saying no: with cardboard furniture it is saying yes. We know that cardboard furniture makes sense, or at least can make sense. We even once developed our own cardboard chair, the (smow) chair But most cardboard furniture simply doesn't appeal to us. There is invariably something about the form, the construction or a pig ugly aesthetic we simply
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In 1907 a loose association of German architects, artists and industrialists joined forces as the Deutsche Werkbund - the German Industrial Association. Principally established with the aim of helping German industry adapt to the technological advances of the age and so help them both prepare for the forthcoming industrialisation and ensure that the coming challenges were met with high quality products and healthy, happy workers, the Deutsche Werkbund founders were additionally motivated by a
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As already noted, until Friday October 31st smow Cologne are presenting the exhibition Stadt-Land-schafft. Making use of smow Cologne's generous window space and even more generous Waidmarkt frontage, Stadt-Land-schafft presents eight interpretations of urban topology and the conflict/synergy between our natural and our built environments. And so, for example, Aachen based K2 Architekten present the installation Barb[el] which reflects on how city and countryside merge with one another without
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Ask most people what they identify as the central feature in the work of Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí and they'll probably mention the abstract Gothic revival forms of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona or the flowing, organic mosaics of Park Güell. Certainly something visual, potentially something decorative. Ask art historian, critic and internationally recognised Antoni Gaudí expert Daniel Giralt-Miracle, and he won't. "The skeleton is the central feature of Gaudí's work, everything else
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Just to be clear: Despite posting twice about them in little over week, we're not paid to do PR for Budapest based architecture/design collective Architecture Uncomfortable Workshop. We've never even met AU Workshop. Nor spoken to AU Workshop. Nor had Email contact with AU Workshop. However, during our 2014 Danube Design Voyage we have been introduced to numerous examples of the collective's work. And have generally been very impressed with what we have seen. Such as their table which was
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In his 1936 film "Modern Times" Charlie Chaplin is famously swallowed by the wheels of progress in a short yet cutting critique on the problems and challenges technological and social change were bringing for the common man. Over a decade earlier the Hungarian artist and author László Moholy-Nagy had also began to approach and study the problems and challenges of modernity, of increasing technological innovation and the associated flood of new sensory experiences, and in their winter 2014/15
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At Bratislava Design Week 2014 Jakub Pollág and Václav Mlynář a.k.a. Studio deFORM re-premièred their Transmission light family; "re-premièred" because although initially created in 2012 for Prague based Kavalierglass, since earlier this year the lamp family have been part of the portfolio of another Czech glass manufacturer, Lasvit. Constructed from a series of concentric glass structures which become ever more elongated as their diameter shrinks, the Transmission lamps present an
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Although it is probably fair to say that today Bauhaus is best remembered for its architects and designers, art played a central role in the institution's programme. Albeit a central role which today is often over shadowed by the legacy of those artists who taught at Bauhaus. To rectify this situation the Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau are presenting "Bauhaus. The Art of the Student", an exhibition which explores both Bauhaus' importance as an art college and also looks beyond the likes of Lyonel
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In 2014 the exhibition "madeinhungary" celebrates its 10th anniversary. What began as a presentation of contemporary Hungarian product design hosted as part of the Budapest "Home Trend" trade fair has existed since 2013 as an independent event staged during Budapest Design Week. And has slowly evolved into a sort of annual family get together for the Budapest design community. For the 2014 edition organisers, curators and project initiators Szilvia Szigeti and Tamás Radnóti have compiled a
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For some 200 years Wiener Silber Manufactur have produced the finest silverware. Exquisite cutlery, table services, coffee pots and sugar bowls designed by both the firm's own craftsman and also developed in co-operation with external designers: works by leading protagonists of the Wiener Werkstätte such as Josef Hoffmann or Kolo Moser being joined over the decades by designs from and by the likes of Oswald Haerdtl, Otto Prutscher, Gregor Eichinger or Claesson Koivisto Rune. Yet regardless of
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Having announced in our introductory Bratislava Design Week post that we are in favour of a global network of regional design weeks that focus on local designers, we did of course start our coverage of Bratislava Design Week 2014 with a product designed by a Swiss designer and manufactured by an Austrian company. In our defence Fidelio by Christian Spiess was being displayed as part of the exhibition "Work is all around" and as such was in Bratislava because curators Lubica Husta and Viera
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Whether 'tis nobler in the muscles to suffer The slings and arrows of short telomeres, Or to rise up against a sea of troubles, And by standing, extend them? In addition to articles on the wonders of handmade Swedish butter, the problems of supermarket etiquette and ill thought through editorials on the Scottish referendum, the English newspaper "The Guardian" occasionally publishes readable articles, one such being Dr Luisa Dillner's recent "Is sitting down bad for my health?" Citing
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In context of a 2014 summer semester project students from Vienna Technical University's Department for 3D Design and Model Construction were asked to develop a project which explored artificial light's potential to define a given space, and which in particular should encourage people to gather there. The results are being presented during Vienna Design Week in what is, without question, one of the best designed exhibitions at this years festival: a blacked out lower ground floor space in
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We're spending an awful lot of time at Vienna Design Week 2014 photographing mirrors. If we were at all competent at what we do we would now wax lyrical about how mirrors are the "top tr**d" at Vienna Design Week 2014, an indication of contemporary designers desires to reflect the ills of modern society, to make us face up to our own social responsibility and question the increasing narcissistic nature of the human existence as exemplified by the ubiquitous selfie, and for all the daily flood
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