Back at Designers Open 2011 Norwegian designer Caroline Olsson caught our attention with "Curious", a wooden lamp inspired by pencil cases. At Salone Satellite 2013 Caroline has gone one better and is presenting a wooden lamp that is a pencil case. Which seems like an obvious development. Nothing more complicated than an oblong birch box, the beauty with Pencil Light is the metal mechanism that allows the lid to be raised, lowered and positioned. The illumination is in the lid, set a little
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Those Milan Design Week visitors brave enough to venture north of Garibaldi Station, yes there is civilisation up there, will be rewarded by an exhibition that demonstrates just how easily architecture, art and design can co-exist without threatening one another's integrity. Design, architecture and art combined in a borderless display of unity, tolerance and respect. Which sounds like a nice response to the current political situation in Italy. It isn't meant as such, but.... Magic Moments
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As it was our first event of Milan Design Week 2013, we're honouring Artemide with the first post from Milan Design Week 2013. And in specific Empatia by Carlotta de Bevilacqua and Paola di Arianello, for us the stand out object in the Artemide 2013 collection. It will sound like damning Carlotta and Paola with faint praise when we say that the overwhelming majority of the new Artemide products are architectural lighting - all technically very interesting, just architectural lighting - and
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Before Milan Design Week and Furniture Fair really get started we took the opportunity to relax a little and to visit Milan's contemporary art fair, MIART, and for all their new "Object" section devoted to contemporary design. Curated by Michela Pelizzari and Federica Sala "Object" presents 10 design galleries from Italy, France, Israel and the Lebanon. Ten international galleries presenting an equally cosmopolitan pallet of objects, ranging from limited edition pieces from the 1950s over the
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Back in March 2011 we bemoaned the position of the fence surrounding the Vitra production facility in Weil am Rhein, and for all the disruption to the view across the Vitra Campus. Before the construction of the VitraHaus the fence offended no one, but since.... "Mr Fehlbaum, tear down this wall! Or at least move it a little bit. Please.", we cried. Paraphrasing the lonesome cowboy. And much like Mikhail Gorbachev needed two and half years to respond to Ronald Reagan, so too will it take
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In little under a week the Doors of Hell will once again open to release Milan Design Week on our unsympathetic, unapologetic world. The normally pleasant, quiet and reasonably priced Lombardian metropolis will be overrun by molten rivers of corporate greed and naive student hope, transforming the canals, parks and former industrial sites into burning pits of contradiction, imitation and pure gold. Survival is a question of ignoring reality and convincing yourself that everything is brilliant
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As with so much of Ron Arad's commercially available, serially produced, furniture designs the story of Tom Vac starts a long, long way away from the domestic conformity one has become accustomed to seeing them in. In this case the story begins on a street corner in Milan. In 1997 the Italian architecture and design magazine Domus launched a PR campaign which involved asking contemporary designers to create an installation which embodied the fundamentals of the magazine. The first commission
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Following on from the 2011 exhibition "Kibbutz and Bauhaus", the Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau is currently presenting a further exhibition devoted to the global reach of Bauhaus. Or perhaps better put, a further exhibition devoted to exploring the extent of the global network to which Bauhaus and its students belonged. This time the journey goes to India. And whereas "Kibbutz and Bauhaus" was largely concerned with architecture and urban planning, "Bauhaus in Calcutta" is pure art. In 1922 the
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Until June 23rd 2013 the Klassik Stiftung Weimar are presenting the exhibition "Henry van de Velde. Leidenschaft, Funktion und Schönheit" Conceived to celebrate Henry van de Velde's 150th anniversary "Leidenschaft, Funktion und Schönheit" is, according to the Klassik Stiftung Weimar, the first exhibition to fully explore van de Velde's complete creativity from his earliest artistic endeavours over his applied arts and furniture design work and onto his architecture, interior design and
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For us the biggest surprise with the announcement that Designers' Open 2013 would be staged in the Glass Hall at Leipzig Messe was the fact that it surprised us. The new organisers are after all Leipzig Messe........ However, somehow it never occurred to us that they would stage it in Schkeuditz. Yet, according to the official press release, having considered "...a multitude of locations...." in Leipzig they decided to host it themselves. A decision we can't pretend to support. For us
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On Friday March 22nd the Ungers Archiv für Architekturwissenschaft Cologne present a new edition of their Ex Libris series. We first discovered Ungers Archiv when we visited the exhibition Stool 60 by Alvar Aalto during IMM Cologne 2013. And we're very impressed, especially by the library, or as we put it "...one of the most comprehensive and enchanting private architecture libraries you’re likely to come across." However much as the Internet is full of spam until you start looking for
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In 1991 a couple of "fools" - not our words, not even their words, rather the politely paraphrased words of an institution in Baden-Württemberg who really should have more foresight - decided to launch a sales fair for contemporary designer furniture in Stuttgart. A sales fair where young designers could present their self-produced work direct to the buying public. In 1992 the first blickfang Stuttgart attracted some 42 exhibitors; no mean feat when you consider that blickfang was one of the
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Until April 9th the Wasserschloss Klaffenbach Chemnitz is presenting the exhibition Eames by Vitra. As we wrote in our initial post, Eames by Vitra presents a complete overview of the Charles and Ray Eames chair canon complemented by texts, photos and videos that explain the background to the Eames Studio. It is not an exhibition that completely explains the creative phenomenon that was Charles and Ray Eames. But then it doesn't set out to be. It's all about the chairs. Eames by Vitra in
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In a recent idle moment, we got to thinking.... if the Chinese - at least according to popular perception - just keep copying design ideas from others. Why don't we copy their designs? That'll teach them! We reasoned. A reasoning which of course brought home just how pointless the idea was. It would't teach no one nowt. The cheeky dogs at Droog Lab however have copied Chinese designs. But not out of revenge, rather as an exploration of the possibilities presented by copying. "The
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Its probably fair to say that had Porsche wanted to build their new museum in Stuttgart city centre, the planning permission process may have taken "some time" And would invariably still be "under consideration". Fortunately they decided to build the museum next to their factory in the Stuttgart suburb of Zuffenhausen, a location where they have more or less feudal sovereignty, and so we are all now able to behold what is without question the most imposing and brazen architectural project
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As many of you know we officially gave up reporting on private design awards a couple of years ago - for us the emphasis in such awards is more often than not too heavily biased towards generating income for the organisers rather than helping or otherwise furthering the designers and their works. And as such don't merit our support. While some awards are obviously more honourable than others; we decided ignoring all would be fairest. However as Angela Merkel continues to teach us: what is
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In the past couple of years we have often referred to, but never actually shown, the shelf "Das Brett" by Belgian designer Kaspar Hamacher. A shelf that is one of our abbiding memories of Milan 2010. That and nearly drowning..... The release of Watn Blech by Bernhard Osann for Moormann however provides the perfect opportunity to right that wrong. What attracted us to Das Brett, and has always remained with us, was the very simple principle behind the piece. By gently inclining the shelf
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A couple of years ago N.W.A. frontman Ice Cube shot a short celluloid tribute to Charles and Ray Eames. Without even having to use his AK ... We didn't think anything more culturally acontextual could happen to the pair. And now ? On Thursday March 7th the exhibition "Eames by Vitra" opens at the Wasserschloß Klaffenbach in Chemnitz. A Charles and Ray Eames exhibition. In Chemnitz. The story of Charles and Ray Eames as furniture designers starts with their collaborations with Hermann
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Following quickly on the heels of the Eileen Gray retrospective at the Centre Pompidou Paris, on Friday February 22nd the Musée d'Art Moderne de Saint Etienne Métropole is opening an exhibition devoted to another Grand Dame of French Modernism, Charlotte Perriand. However, in contrast to the all-encompassing Eileen Gray exhibition, "Charlotte Perriand et le Japon" focuses on one period of Charlotte Perriand's biography. Or better put the role played by one country in her biography. Born in
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On Friday February 23rd the Vitra Design Museum open their 2013 spring/summer exhibition, Louis Kahn - The Power of Architecture. Organised in conjunction with the Netherlands Architecture Institute "The Power of Architecture" is the first major Louis Khan retrospective in over two decades and promises to present the most comprehensive study ever of one of modernism's more interesting and alluring sons. Albeit a son of modernism we suspect many of you will never have heard of. Born in
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We once started, but never quite got round to finishing, a post in which we extolled the joys of a dank, snowy day in Leipzig - because it meant we had an excuse to leave our bikes at home and use the James Irvine designed Mercedes-Benz Citaro buses that flow through the city. And on such a dank, snowy day we learn the very sad news of James Irvine's untimely death. Born in London Jame Irvine studied at Kingston Polytechnic and the Royal College of Art London before moving to Milan in 1984.
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If you visit the London Design Museum's new permanent collection exhibition "Extraordinary Stories About Ordinary Things" you will be treated to a most rare and wonderful piece of British modernist furniture, an object labelled simply: "Table for display of trousers" Created in 1936 by the English architect Joseph Emberton for Simpsons of Piccadilly, it is not only an object as unique in form as in function, but an object which brought us very much to mind of a fantastic collection of long
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From February 20th until May 20th 2013 the Centre Pompidou Paris is presenting a major retrospective devoted to the Irish artist, designer and architect Eileen Gray. As someone who once claimed "The future projects light, the past only clouds" we're not 100% certain the subject herself would approve; however, for us it is a welcome and long overdue Eileen Gray retrospective, and fittingly one being staged in the city that more than any other influenced and defined her life, character and
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Older readers will be aware that we have often held up the absence of some of Germany's most important designer furniture manufacturers as an unmissable indicator of an inherent weakness in the IMM Cologne brand. Those same readers will therefore understand the confusion we felt on seeing that Wilde+Spieth would, finally, be attending IMM Cologne in 2013. We were delighted they were participating. We however now have one argument less. Based in Esslingen near Stuttgart, Wilde+Spieth were
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