X-Base Chair An xpression; An xpansion; An xposition Whereas the English word 'furniture' has its origins in the middle French verb 'fournir', to furnish, the French 'meuble' and German 'Möbel' have their origins in the Latin 'mobile': capable of being moved. Much as with the so-called Curule Chair, one of the earliest known manufactured seating objects, a seating object so-called because the legs generally 'curuled', a seating object of the distant past that was as much a symbol of power as
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As the, then, still plain Walter Scott, so nearly opined in 1806: "November's sky is chill and drear, November's leaf is red and sear: Late, gazing down the steepy linn That hems our little garden in, I thought, what an excellent month to visit an architecture or design exhibition."1 Our five retreats from the chill and drear of November 2024 can be found in Chemnitz, Brussels, Winterthur, Krefeld and New York....... "Reform of Life" at the Kunstsammlungen am Theaterplatz, Chemnitz,
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'Do we still need wood, metal and plastic?' asks Hochschule Wismar graduate Aleksander Rasztawicki in context of his Diploma project Leichtigkeit, Lightness. A rhetorical question for Aleksander doesn't believe that we necessarily do. For Aleksander all we need is paper. Or more accurately all we need is vulcanised fibre, a material first patented in 1859 that is produced from cotton via a process which, in many regards, is a further development of the 19th century process of making paper
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Alfréd by Szebedy Vajk as seen at 360 Design, Budapest Design Week 2024 When we first approached Alfréd by University of Óbuda student Szebedy Vajk at 360 Design during Budapest Design Week 2024 we interpreted it as an abstracted giraffe. It certainly wouldn't be the first time an animal had served as the basis for a piece of furniture design. Indeed shortly after meeting Alfréd we met the giraffe-esque library ladder 3½ by vondingen at Grassimesse Leipzig. Others would at this point speak
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vondingen, as seen in The School of Athens at Grassimesse Leipzig 2024 As discussed with Grassimesse Project Manager Sabine Epple, in order to stage Grassimesse during Covid it was necessary to place exhibitors in the permanent exhibtion spaces by way of guaranteeing the legally required distancing. A concept that exhibitors and visitors very much took to and which thus has continued post social distancing reality, and that very much not only to the agreement of exhibitors and visitors but
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Faculty of Angewandte Kunst Schneeberg - Me and My Chair, as seen at Grassimesse 2024 The exhibition A Chair and You at the Grassi Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Leipzig, may have ended but its traces can still be felt at Grassimesse 2024, being staged as it is to a large degree in the A Chair and You scenography. Or more accurately the A Chair and You colour and atmosphere scheme, the more extreme elements of Robert Wilson's scenography having been removed. And the soundtrack in the Orangerie
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2024 smow-Designpreis Winner Nadja Schulze Following on from the co-winners of the inaugural Grassimesse smow-Designpreis Hevesi Annabella/Line and Round and Cornelius Réer the winner of the 2nd edition is Burg Giebichenstein Kunsthochschule, Halle, Interior Architecture Masters student, Nadja Schulze for her lighting projects LiLa, Bow and 360°. The latter a wall mounted lamp, family of lamps, that can be rotated through, well... 360°. A rotation that not only results in the cable being
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The 2024 Grassimesse Leipzig jury have two important tasks: selecting from the myriad international applications received those creatives entitled to exhibit within the exhibition halls of Leipzig's Grassi Museum für Angewandte Kunst, and thereby maintaining the ongoing quality claim of the Grassimesse in context of contemporary craft, design and applied art, and awarding amongst those selected exhibitors six of the seven Grassi Prizes.* Their first task was completed in late summer. Their
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In these dispatches we've oft and long and deep reflected over the (hi)story of, and contemporary reality and relevance of, the Grassi Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Leipzig's annual Grassimesse. So no need to repeat ourselves here, just an urgent need to get to Leipzig and the 2024 Grassimesse with its promise of not just some 78 exhibitors from 8 nations across a wide range of contemporary craft, applied art and design genres, but also, and amongst other specials, a showcase of Ukrainian
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The music by Peter Scherer, and music design by Daniel Hobi, play an important role in the film E.1027 - Eileen Gray and the House by the Sea; play an important role in enabling Beatrice Minger and Christoph Schaub's film to allow us all to approach the differentiated and more probable appreciation of Eileen Gray E.1027 - Eileen Gray and the House by the Sea admonishes we all need must approach. But can exploring Eileen Gray via music also allow one to approach that differentiated and more
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How many house plants are enough house plants? by Kateřina Husáková, as seen at Designblok Prague 2024 How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? How many roads must a man walk down Before you call him a man? How many Influencers does it take to change a lightbulb? How many house plants are enough house plants? Are there answers? Can there be answers? Must there be answers? No, no and no, But that's not the point. The point is the theorising, the posing of an abstract question,
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Konyky by Natalia Filonenko for Donna, as seen at Budapest Design Week 2024 According to our dictionary 'Konyky' is Ukrainian for 'Grasshoppers'. It might not be, our dictionary could be wrong. We suspect it is. But if it is correct, it's a curious name for Natalia Filonenko's stool/table/pouffe for Kyiv based manufacturer Donna. Surely Lobzyk, jigsaw, or Holovolomka, jigsaw puzzle, make more sense. For that is essentially what Natalia has done, transformed a random piece of a jigsaw
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Uniqueness in Mass Production by Fehérvári Panna Nóra, as seen at Budapest Design Week 2024 Before we go any further.... Uniqueness in Mass Production isn't the name of Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design, MOME, Budapest graduate Fehérvári Panna Nóra's lamps. Panna calls them MushLume, for understandable, and highly enjoyable, reasons, but sadly MushLume is the name of a Brooklyn, New York, based manufacturer of lighting crafted from mushroom mycelia, and so it's unlikely to remain
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Pulse sofa by Hevesi Annabella for Self and Scope, as seen at Budapest Design Week 2024 The publicity for 360 Design, the central showcase of Budapest Design Week 2024, that Hungarian Fashion and Design Agency, HFDA, showcase that was a component of Budapest Design Week before the HFDA took over the organisation of Budapest Design Week and it exponentially increased in stature, involved numerous objects by Budapest based designer Hevesi Annabella1, not least the sofa Dedas, a work we're most
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The 2024 edition of Orgatec Cologne, Europe's, possibly the world's, largest trade fair for office furniture and office design is being staged under the banner "New Visions of Work". And as that 2024 edition, and its new visions, approaches a report is published in the International Journal of Epidemiology that should provide for some animated discussions at the event: Standing to work at a desk may not be as good for you as you may have been told. And could even be problematic. But there is
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Much as with the narrator of Half Man Half Biscuit's 'I was a teenage armchair Honvéd fan' we've also long "dreamt about a love affair in far-off Budapest". Unlike said narrator however our ongoing yearning doesn't revolve around a football club in the Kispest district of the city whose black an red was once worn by the likes of Grosics Gyula, Kocsis Sándor, Bozsik József or Puskás Ferenc, but revolve around design. Nor are we hankering after a golden age of either Hungarian football or
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"J'ai toujours aimé l'architecture. Plus que tout" reflected Eileen Gray in 1973, 'I've always loved architecture. More than anything", continuing, 'but I didn't think I was capable of it'.1 A capability her first major project, the villa E.1027 at Roquebrune-Cap-Martin on France's Côte d’Azur, tended and tends to underscore she needn't have doubted. If a capability that over the decades has oft been as concealed and inaccessible as E.1027. With the film E.1027 – Eileen Gray and the House by
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Breaking the Glass Ceiling by Tina Marković and Karla Bastalić, as seen at Zagreb Design Week 2024 As previously noted, the theme of Zagreb Design Week 2024 was Breaking the Glass Ceiling, a theme that the organisers neatly, and pleasingly, expanded away from its conventional understanding in terms of gender parity and towards a demand for a design practice and design industry, or perhaps more accurately, a demand for a design practice and design industry in Europe, more inclusive that that
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The Paradox of Isoëtes. Future of Almost Lost Species by Adam Kvaček, as seen at Designblok Prague 2024 Presented in context of the 2024 Designblok Diploma Selection competition, it's difficult for us to discuss Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague, UMPRUM, graduate Adam Kvaček's project The Paradox of Isoëtes. Future of Almost Lost Species in all too great detail as that involves reading a thesis we've not seen. But a thesis that having seen The Paradox of Isoëtes at
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Olimp by Studio Raketa, as seen at Zagreb Design Week 2024 In context of critical reflections on the Bauhauses, reflections also intended to draw a distinction between the Bauhauses and the HfG Ulm, to explain that the HfG Ulm wasn't simply a post 1939-45 War continuation of the Bauhauses, Otl Aicher once asked, "is design an applied art, does it appear in the elements square, triangle and circle, or is it a discipline that draws its criteria from the task, from use, from production and
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Dreamer's Garden by Linda Procházka and Jive Lau, as seen at Designblok Prague 2024 For all that gardens, be they small private gardens or expansive public gardens are often considered as refuges of nature, as small islands of nature amid the brutality of modern society, all gardens are artificial constructions. Even the Garden of Eden was, if one so will, an artificial construction. Gardens exist as extensions of the human imagination, creativity, desires, ideals. They aren't natural.
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My Daughter's Room by Josef Tomšej, as seen at Designblok Prague 2024 (it's a video wall in the background, loved the concept, didn't make photographing it any easier. But still loved the concept) There is a much posed question in terms of chairs as to if we need ever more chairs. The answer is, we do. We certainly do; but, and as opined from A Chair and You at the Grassi Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Leipzig, we all do. Similarly, at each and every design week or furniture fair we invariably
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Two Hundred Tons, as seen at Designblok Prague 2024 It's more or less a century since the first steel tube furniture was developed, and looking around you it's relatively easy to believe that since then everything has been done, that steel tube furniture has reached its full potential. Or perhaps more accurately; because the contemporary popular understanding of steel tube furniture is the steel tube furniture from the earliest days of steel tube furniture, and because the steel tube
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Last time we were at Designblok Prague the roof blew of the venue. Not our fault (this time); but the consequence of an enormous, monstrous in every sense of the word, hurricane that blew across central Europe, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake that meant it took us, if we recall correctly, about 15 weeks to get home. And that via one of the more adventurous and improbable routes we've ever travelled. On the plus side we spent so long in Prague Central Station listening to
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Excito by Tea Gluvačević, as seen at Zagreb Design Week 2024 We're not sure how things are today in pre-school and primary education institutes, but when we were young every child regularly made a lantern by cutting some slits in a piece of paper, rolling it to a tube, and then squashing it a little. Which is a very simple, and slightly derogatory, certainly unfair, manner via which to describe the lamp, lantern, Excito by Sarajevo Academy of Fine Arts' student Tea Gluvačević. For not only
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