In February 1991 the grand doyen of Italian design Ettore Sottsass approached Vitra CEO Rolf Fehlbaum with a suggestion for a joint project looking at the nature and being of life and work in the office. The project wasn't aimed at developing office furniture, simply exploring the microcosmos "Office" in its multifarious facets. Rolf Fehlbaum willingly agreed and together with Michele de Lucchi, Andrea Branzi and James Irvine, Sottsass and Vitra set off an exploratory journey: researching,
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As more loyal readers will be aware we like nothing more than attempting to undermine Italy's claim to be the cradle of contemporary European architecture and design. It's all show and deliberate misinformation being our war cry. And so the exhibition L'Italia di Le Corbusier currently showing at the MAXXI in Rome is not the sort of show we really want to see presented. Because it seems to imply that Italy played a significant role in both the development of the young Le Corbusier's
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In addition to works by individual designers and artists Grassimesse 2012 also presented the results of the research project "Ü60 Design: Design for Tomorrow" No-one denies that our society is getting older and that in the coming decades an ever greater percentage of the population will be Ü60, so 60+ What is often forgotten is that the future 60+ generations will be different from the current 60+ generations and so the needs in the future are not the same as those at the present. Similar.
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Anyone who had anything to do with the UK childrens toy market of the 1970s - either as a user (child) or consumer (adult) - will be well aware that no matter how hard you try, how hard you push them and how devilish you are, Weebles wobble, but they don't fall down. Stand-up by Thorsten Frank applies a similar logic, albeit in the more urbane world of furniture. The concept isn't new, indeed it could even be said that stools that rock and flow with your body are a fully established furniture
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Established in 1996 by three friends with a shared passion for classic metal furniture, Müller Möbelfabrikation has grown steadily over the last decade and a half into one of Europe's most interesting contemporary furniture manufacturers. They don't do anything especially revolutionary, and there is certainly no danger of them ever redefining the fabric of furniture design. However, they are currently producing some of the most interesting, brash and accessible furniture on the market, and
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Older readers will be well aware of the high esteem in which we hold the Bauhaus educated designer Marianne Brandt. And of the fact that every time we write about her we invariably end up offending half of Saxony. So. Deep breath. Fingers crossed. Here goes..... In 2013 the Chemnitz Art Society Villa Arte will be hosting the 5th International Marianne Brandt Contest. A triannual celebration of international contemporary design the 5th edition of the competition not only continues the search
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The MoMa in New York famously houses some of the most famous works of Pop Art. And just as famously some of the most famous pieces of mid-20th century design. They are only separated by one floor; however, the layout and curation are very much of the infamous "ne'er the twain shall meet" style. And given the size and configuration of the MoMa it is inconceivable that any normal visitor would be able to consider what they are currently viewing on one floor in the context of what was viewed half
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Before we pack up our Yurt and leave Vienna Design Week 2012 to move on to design pastures new, a quick mention of the "Hartz IV Furniture" Workshop the Berlin designer Van Bo Le-Mentzel hosted at the Wien Museum. Originating in 2010 Van Bo Le-Mentzel's "Hartz IV Furniture" collection is.... well, we've never really been that sure. In essence it is a very good Open Design project, featuring as it does a comprehensive range and mix of objects, all of which can be easily constructed, even by
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This past week it's been hard to escape images of a bentwood bike purporting to have been created by a London based artist for German furniture manufacturer Thonet. We choose not to run the story. Something about it troubled us from the beginning. The fact that only computer generated, rendered, images were available, for example. Plus knowing what we know about Thonet, it just didn't make sense. Didn't feel like Thonet. Wasn't right. And now the confirmation from Frankenberg, it's all a
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A few years ago the phrase "food design" suddenly started cropping up a lot. It's the sort of phrase that makes us uneasy. It just sounds like the sort of shallow, self-indulgent thing Guardian readers get excited about and then book weekend courses in Tuscany to learn. We don't trust things like "food design". Fortunately for his Passionswege 2012 project with the Viennese jam and pickle maker Staud’s, London based designer Mathias Hahn chose to ignore the food and concentrate on the
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We missed "Croatian Holiday 2012" when it was originally shown in Milan, and so were suitably pleased to find it on the Vienna Design Week programme. Featuring 15 projects inspired by tourism, Croatian Holiday 2012 understands its main aim as stimulating a debate about the role, function and importance of design in tourism. Principally in Croatia, somewhat obviously. The objects presented could, broadly speaking, be split into two groups: those that base themselves on aspects of Croatia's
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Pretty much ever since we first saw Tafelstukken by Daphna Laurens at DMY Berlin 2010 we've had a bit of thing for them. A fact that we are completely unapolgetic about. There is something wonderfully eloquent, dignified and timeless about their work. Something that draws you to them. Their works invariably comprise a mix of materials, a mix of materials which is always central to the objects, yet is understated in the design, almost as if it doesn't want to draw attention to itself. For
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Was it not Pulp who in 1995 prophesied that the world would soon be dominated and controlled by mis-shapes, mistakes and misfits: the great silent majority who feel themselves intimidated by their alleged imperfections and deviations from society's norm. If only they could realise that they were so numerous, that they have something to offer and that society's imposed ideas of perfection were our modern golden calf, their future would be so promising..... Under the title "Misfits Revisited"
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The outer edges of the (smow)blog galaxy recently witnessed some pretty ugly scenes. A new, Windows Seven, laptop was bought. The unfortunate purchaser's printer however wasn't Windows Seven compatible. And the manufacturer had no plans to release the necessary driver. Consequently a functional, reliable printer was rendered useless. And a new machine had to be bought. Manufacturer 1 - Consumer 0 Much wailing and gnashing of teeth ensued. But it's not just software alone that is
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Do we need to repeat why we are such committed fans of the annual Vienna Design Week Passionswege programme? We hope not. But if we do, Matylda Krzykowski @ Norbert Meier Brushmaker and Petz Horn Manufacturer provides the perfect answer. Norbert Meier has been making brushes of all shapes and functions since 1973. And his workshop looks like it. Not that that is a criticism. It's lovely to see. For Passionswege 2012 the Dutch/German designer/curator/journalist/good egg Matylda Krzykowski
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Ask the person next to you to quickly sketch a "Bauhaus Chair" And? What have they drawn? We're guessing the result is relatively quadratic, reduced and, assuming the person next to you is au fait with the works of Mart Stam, Marcel Breuer et al, it will have at least one semi-circular bracket, either on the back or under the seat. And it almost certainly closely resembles the Spaghetti Chair by Giandomenico Belotti for Alias. A chair that, ironically, is born of a tradition at contrast to
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There are a thousand good reasons to avoid travelling through Tel Aviv Ben Gurion Airport. And a couple of very good reasons. The public transport connections, for example, between Israel's only relevant international airport and Israel's only relevant metropolises are so arduous and poorly co-ordinated it makes one long for the days of The Crusades, when reaching Jaffa or Jerusalem from Europe involved little more taxing than travelling for eight weeks by horse and sailing ship. And then
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Imagine you spent your entire career researching and developing modular building systems. Imagine you gave the world radical new approaches to construction design and helped introduce the use of computer technology in architecture. And then imagine that most people only know your name in connection with one office furniture system. An office furniture system that you developed once as part of one contract for one company based in one small village in Switzerland. A system that despite its
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At the same time as he was developing the Ant Chair, Arne Jacobsen created a one-off range of office furniture that arguably represents the first tangible evidence of his move away from the natural materials and traditional handicrafts of his pre-war furniture and onto the mixed media, industrial products that have ultimately come to define his work. And so can truly be considered great lost furniture design classics. Not least because they really are lost! In 1951/52 - the records are a
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A couple of years ago we stood in a branch of a major German electronics chain in disbelieving silence. An electric pasta cooker. Disbelief turned to sorrow. An electric pasta cooker. With a 24 hour programmable timer. After 85 million years man had reached and passed the zenith of his evolution. We now found ourselves on the downward spiral back to the pond. Sorrow turned to loneliness. The experience did however highlight for us the paradox of a career as a product designer. You're
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You don't have to be a globetrotting design specialist to know that the Danes invented light, uncomplicated wooden furniture with free flowing organic forms. It's just one of those acknowledged truths we can all trot out at cocktail parties. Which makes it all the more surprising that the apparent counter-evidence should be found in the Danish Museum of Art and Design in Copenhagen. The Temple to Denmark's design history. While giving full credit to the museum for presenting Børge
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As The Smiths so succinctly put it, "Stop us, oh,oh,oh, stop us. Stop us if you think that you've heard this one before" But once again October is out there, lurking, tacitly, like some not especially friendly sounding nuclear submarine. And once more we find ourselves questioning not only the nature of our existence and the sociological sense of product design, but also why the European design weeks can't sit down together and plan their year better? As is traditional our October begins
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Ever since DMY Berlin inaugurated their "Three from Ten" Awards in 2009 the Bauhaus Archiv Berlin has honoured the nominees and prize winners with an autumn exhibition. 2012 is no different and the exhibition "DMY Awards and Jury Selection 2012" can be viewed in Berlin until mid-October. It is of course only logical that the Bauhaus Archiv should take an interest in largely experimental and conceptual design projects. For although today heavily stained with cliché and tainted by the passing
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Any email that starts "Please join us for A Taste of Austrian Design and Lifestyle in Stockholm" is going to get our attention. And quickly lose it when we realise that no one is actually offering to pay for us to join them. Just inviting us. If we should, by chance, happen to be in Stockholm. However on this occasion the affront was short lived. For despite numerous good reasons to ignore the exhibition - the word "Lifestyle" in the title and the objectionable construction of the
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