The first post in our, hopefully short, new series "Things we missed at IMM Cologne 2014" is devoted to the new Pegasus Home Desk by Ippolito Fleitz Group / Tilla Goldberg for Munich based manufacturer ClassiCon. We know why we missed it in Cologne, call it youthful arrogance, we just can't believe we did. Not only does the Pegasus Home Desk exude a formal parity with a horse saddle, but it functions as a sort of home office saddle bag - the leather desk top can be rolled up from the left
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The much discussed experiment Bauhaus reaches its first conclusion with the opening of its own institute in Dessau on December 4th 1926. The impact, if any, which this group of architects, to which Gropius belongs, will have on our building culture is something we can leave to history to decide. This new style, a style which a large percentage of our population is not accustomed to, and to which the majority wont take, doesn't offer any room for traditional architecture, but plenty of space for
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Until April 16th the DMY Design Gallery Berlin is presenting the exhibition "Lifetimes" by Berlin based designer Birgit Severin. The inaugural exhibition in the new DMY Design Gallery. Following the demise of the "original" DMY Gallery in Berlin's stilwerk "design shopping centre", DMY appeared to have decided to concentrate on their global series of exhibitions and running Germany's most important design contest, the Designpreis der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Silence can however be
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On Thursday February 13th the 2014 Designpreis Halle jury met to peruse the entries submitted for this years competition. And select the winners. Initiated in 2007 the Designpreis Halle is an international, inter-disciplinary design competition staged every three(-ish) years. Following the theme "Electricity" in 2007 and "Travel" in 2010, entrants for the 2014 Designpreis Halle were set the challenge of "Water". How who approached the topic and why wont however be unveiled until the awards
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If you visit the Bussalp restaurant above the Swiss resort town of Grindelwald you can experience a curious, inconspicuous, almost underwhelming, piece of furniture design history. USM window fittings. Just don't expect steel tubing and chrome plated brass balls, that all came much, much later...... The story of the USM Haller modular furniture system starts in 1885 in the Swiss village of Münsingen with the establishment of a locksmith and ironmonger business by Ulrich Schärer, a
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In 1982 Danish furniture manufacturer Fritz Hansen acquired the rights to the complete works by the designer Poul Kjærholm. In 2003 Fritz Hansen ceded their rights to selected objects, mainly tables. In January 2014 Fritz Hansen reacquired said rights from Poul Kjærholm's son Thomas Kjærholm who had not only administered the rights in the intervening decade, but had also established a company who produced and distributed the "discarded" objects. Although the decision to reacquire the
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By way of unwinding ahead of his forthcoming solo exhibition at the Vitra Design Museum, German designer Konstantin Grcic is currently presenting an absolutely beguiling collection of glass furniture objects at Galerie Kreo Paris. We've not actually seen the objects, we've only seen the press photos, and as any fool know press photos are not the most reliable media for assessing design objects. But..... Created in collaboration with a sadly unnamed Frankfurt glass workshop - why must the
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On Saturday March 22nd the third edition of the Munich Creative Business Week formally opens. We know, we know, that's what we thought when they launched in 2012. Munich? Creativity? No wonder they're concentrating on the business aspect, we chortled into our banana milkshakes. Typical Bavarians! Which of course is very, very unfair. For in a manner similar to Stuttgart, Munich is home to a lot of creativity. Just a creativity that is a lot more self-assured and so reserved than the brash
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Since 2013 the Ungers Archiv für Architekturwissenschaft Köln has been a member of the organisation "Iconic Houses", a platform that aims to network architecturally important 20th century residential houses and so not only raise awareness of contemporary architectural heritage but also promote and encourage preservation and innovative use of such. True to this aim in 2013 the curators of the van Schijndel Huis in Utrecht started a series of events in which a house is presented by its director
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It is almost certainly more by chance than design, but in the week that Verner Panton would have celebrated his 88th birthday the Vitra Design Museum Gallery opened an exhibition devoted to his inimitable Visiona 2 exhibition from 1970. Presented as part of the warm up to the forthcoming "Panorama" exhibition from and by Konstantin Grcic, "Visiona 1970: Revisiting the Future" explores the background to and realisation of the Visiona 2 showcase, including an accessible, usable, sitonable
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In the context of his Paimio Sanatorium project Finnish architect Alvar Aalto is reported as once saying, "The main purpose of the building is to function as a medical instrument".1 Among the ways Aalto expressed this position in Paimio was, for example, through the fact that illumination, wall colours, heating systems et al were designed not only for the patients comfort, but with the patients position in mind i.e. offering different conditions depending on if the patient was expected to be
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On the 10th February 1932 "Modern Architecture: International Exhibition" opened at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Much more than simply being the very first architecture exhibition staged in and by the MoMA, Modern Architecture represented the first exhibition ever specifically devoted to the new architecture of the day and perhaps most importantly bequeathed said architecture a name: The International Style. If you will, with Modern Architecture, modern architecture had officially
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A week or so ago it was announced that Los Angeles based Gehry Partners had been selected to build a new tower block on Berlin's Alexanderplatz. As a general rule we read such announcements. And then carry on with more important things. However, the day after the announcement the Berlin based, Dutch architect/curator/critic Lucas Verweij tweeted in response to a Guardian article on the project: "Ohh Please, not this standard gentrification trick for Berlin" And immediately the words of
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By way of an addendum to our addendum to our "5 New Design Exhibitions for February 2014" post...... Until June 8th 2014 the Villa Esche in Chemnitz is presenting a special exhibition devoted to the artist and industrial designer Marianne Brandt. Built in 1903 by Henry van de Velde for the Chemnitz textile magnate Herbert Eugen Esche, the Villa Esche is not only a wonderful example of Henry van de Velde's approach to architecture and his understanding of his responsibilities in context of the
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"One of the typical activities in modern architecture has been the construction of chairs and the adoption of new materials and new methods for them. The tubular steel chair is surely rational from technical and constructive points of view: It is light, suitable for mass production, and so on. But steel and chromium surfaces are not satisfactory from the human point of view. Steel is too good a conductor of heat. The chromium surface gives too bright reflections of light, and even acoustically
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By way of an addendum to our "5 New Design Exhibitions for February 2014" post.... The Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam is currently showing "Pinned Up at the Stedelijk, 25 years of design", the first major retrospective of the work of Dutch designer Marcel Wanders. Presenting over 400 objects the exhibition promises to cover Marcel Wanders' complete career since the release of the Set Up Shades lamp in 1989 and in doing so present a chance to better understand the man, his thinking and his works.
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"In the development and designing of furniture one prevailing problem is the means for securing parts of the furniture together particularly when the parts are made of thin materials such as plywood or metal. This problem is particularly difficult when a certain amount of twisting or give between the parts is desired so as to provide resiliency to one of the parts. In general efforts to solve this problem have failed."1 So begins a patent application filed by Charles Eames on 28th July 1958.
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Fate may have been hard on February by abstractly depriving it of its rightful quotient of days, taunting it indeed by giving it a 29th every four years as if to say "....it could be soooo good....": fortunately the museums of this world are less divisive, treat February as if it was any other month and February 2014 sees a wealth of interesting new exhibitions. In an architecture heavy selection our recommendations from the new openings include Arabian architecture at the Louisiana Museum of
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It's probably indicative of the transiency of the contemporary furniture business, but during the recent Maison & Objet in Paris, Milanese manufacturer Kartell celebrated 10 years of the lamp Bourgie by Ferruccio Laviani. Time was when 10 years was but the blink of an eye for a lighting design object; these days, objects that survive a decade are the grand old men of the company's portfolio. To celebrate ten years of Bourgie Kartell asked 14 designers to re-imagine Ferruccio Laviani's
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During the 2014 Passagen design festival the Cologne flagship store of Italian kitchen and bathroom manufacturer Boffi presented an exhibition of objects by six young(ish) designers. And no we're not being deliberately provocative or derogative with our (ish). We know a couple of the designers involved. And know that they would admit they're not the youngest cats in the park any more. Presented under the title "Young Perspectives" and curated by the Cologne based "Design Services Agency"
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"Wood will be driven out of living spaces; even metal and glass, although much newer in domestic situations, are losing their importance. Plastics are on the advance....."1 What had caused the German magazine Stern to pronounce in February 1970 so unequivocally on the future of home furnishings? Stern had seen Verner Panton's Visiona 2 exhibition at Cologne Furniture Fair. And knew it had seen the future. "It is certain that a new age is rolling through our homes. What is coming is not just
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Our coverage of IMM Cologne 2014 may be reaching its conclusion, but we still have a few gleaming gems to bring you, the brightest of which was to be found on the Thonet stand: the new S 1200 desk by Randolf Schott from and with the Thonet Design Team. While classic Thonet desks such as Marcel Breuer's S 285 can work very well in a contemporary home office and/or as an informal place of work in a living room, they do bring with them a certain formal heaviness owing to their abstraction from
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It may have been because at IMM Cologne 2014 they were given a larger stand than in previous years. It may just have been that the time was ripe. The "why" is however ultimately unimportant, what is important is that at IMM Cologne 2014 Augsburg based Müller Möbelfabrikation presented a series of new products that decisively extended the company's portfolio, a series of new products that, in our opinion, make Müller Möbelfabrikation a more rounded, more complete company. And which achieved
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Following on from "Modernes Japanisches Design" in Cologne - contemporary Korean Design in Berlin. Organised by the Korean Trade Ministry and the Korean Institute of Design Promotion (KIDP), Korea Design is a touring showcase presenting projects from 15 Korean designers / design studios. Following its premier in London during the 2013 London Design Festival, Korea Design is currently showing in Berlin. Amongst an entertaining collection of lighting, furniture, accessories and more conceptual
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