When Erich Mendelsohn's new Schocken department store opened in Chemnitz in 1930 Wasmuths Monatshefte für Baukunst, one of the leading architecture periodicals of the age, were unsparing in their praise "With his new Schocken department store in Chemnitz Erich Mendelsohn has achieved a new peak in his creativity", they announced.1 With the conversion of Mendelsohn's construction to the new Staatlichen Museum für Archäologie Chemnitz - the State Archaeology Museum in Chemnitz - the responsible
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Who creates the city? Who shapes its future? asks the introduction to the exhibition "Weltstadt - Who creates the city?" currently showing at the Deutsches Architektur Zentrum, DAZ in Berlin. Hang on.....? Haven't we seen similar questions somewhere else recently.....? Of course...... at Konstantin Grcic - Panorama at the Vitra Design Museum, in the context of which we wrote "How each of us responds and reacts to such challenges will ultimately affect the nature of our cities, and so
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Under the title "Dicht Säen" - "Sow Densely" - the sixth Bavarian Architecture Week from May 16th until May 25th 2014 will explore concepts and ideas of "Density" in contemporary architecture and urban planning. Topics that although being discussed at a Bavarian level and in a Bavarian context naturally have a wider importance and relevance. As our cities evolve questions of land use invariably arise: How much space does one need? How much space should one accept? Where does private end and
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Mayday! Mayday! Don't panic. It's just a public holiday. You'll survive. Barbecue something...... And afterwards, when everyone else is back at work and things have calmed down a little, why not enjoy one or more of the following design and architecture exhibitions opening around Europe this coming May. "Fritz Haller. Architekt und Forscher" at the S AM Schweizerisches Architekturmuseum, Basel, Switzerland Everyone knows Fritz Haller. He designed one of the few truly iconic and genuinely
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"What is the Paris Exposition?", asked Roger Gilman in the September 1925 edition of The Art Bulletin, "It is a new world of the applied arts. It is a new world of reality, reality in the square mass of concrete construction, reality in the smooth surfaces of machine products, reality in wonderful new materials offered by our mastery of science and transport, reality in the severe plainness of our practical age, reality in a marvellous effort to design everything and copy nothing. And it is a
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Anyone who has ever had the pleasure of strolling with us through Potsdam will know our feelings on recreating exact replicas of long since lost buildings. Yet much as we get annoyed, dismayed, confused, upset, angry, depressed and downright cross by the unjustifiable, untenable decisions taken in Brandenburg, we do appreciate that often such decisions have to be made. Such as in Dessau in context of Walter Gropius and László Moholy-Nagy's Masters' Houses. One and a half of four near
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Herewith we inform the directors of the Hochschule für bildende Kunst that the Provisional Republican Government has approved the request to rename the unified Hochschule für bildende Kunst and Kunstgewerbeschule as "Staatliches Bauhaus in Weimar"1 With this succinct letter from the Office of the Hofmarschallamt in Weimar on 12th April 1919, Bauhaus formally existed. A succinct letter that ended four long years of negotiation and planning, and which - arguably, and depending on your position -
read moreAs part of the accompanying fringe programme to the exhibition Konstantin Grcic - Panorama, the Vitra Design Museum is hosting a talk on Thursday April 17th by Berlin creative collective Raumlabor. Established in 1999 as a loose association of architects and artists Raumlabor have spent the past fifteen years exploring issues around urban renewal, interactive environments, the borders between public and private spaces. Cityscapes, to use the vocabulary of Panorama. For their Vitra Design
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"Potentially it is the simplest assignments, unencumbered by the complex mix of functional, technical or economic conditions, that allow an especially eloquent architecture" So mused the Sachsen branch of the German Architects Association, BDA, in awarding a "Special Recognition" in the 2013 BDA-Preis Sachsen to the project "Garage in Holzstapelbauweise" by Stuttgart based Reichel Schlaier Architekten. Created for a private client in the village of Marienberg, Sachsen, Garage in
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"When I walk into a building I see space, light and colour", so explains the Finnish photographer Ola Kolehmainen his relationship to architecture. How Ola Kolehmainen visualises this triumvirate is currently being presented in the exhibition Geometric Light at the gallery Haus am Waldsee in Berlin. Born in Helsinki in 1964 Ola Kolehmainen originally studied journalism before completing an MA in photography at the University of Art and Design Helsinki. His passion for architecture
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April 2014, as every April we can ever remember, means Milanese purgatory. Apparently it is meant to cleanse the soul, purify our thoughts and generally mitigate for the sins of the past, and so allow us to proceed to higher plains and greater virtues. And boy must we have sinned. We can't remember exactly when, far less how. We just hope we enjoyed it at the time. Because now we are paying. When, if, we return these are the new design exhibitions we're planning on visiting to help us
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Until May 8th 2014 the Aedes Architecture Forum Berlin is hosting the exhibition Visions of the Alhambra, a presentation of the new visitor centre/site entrance designed for the Alhambra palace/fortress/citadel complex in Granada, Spain by Álvaro Siza Vieira and Juan Domingo Santos. Originally constructed in the 9th century as a feudal fortress, the Alhambra served from the 11th century as a seat of power for Moorish rulers of Granada and subsequently as a citadel for the catholic conquerors
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It is a universally acknowledged fact that men only buy Playboy to read the articles. And we only visited the exhibition "Playboy Architecture, 1953-1979" at the Deutsches Architekturmuseum in Frankfurt in order to, to, to, tttoooooooo see the Eames DCW that is on display.....mmmm...... its not a chair you see that often..... aaahhh......mmmmmmmm..... or the Bertoia Diamond Chair? [Audible nervous cough. Depart stage left.] Originating from a project by students at Princeton University
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As the prevailing design ideology in post-War Germany die gute Form almost single handedly established the modern German design tradition, and so by extrapolation was responsible for defining the popular understanding of "German Design" Loosely translatable as "good form", gute Form can be considered as reducing an object, building or anything really down to its very essentials, of creating "a natural product, developed from its function and technical requirements, that in its form represents
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As a general rule we ignore rules. Especially those rules that start with "don't" However, when we were told not to photograph inside USM's new powder coating facility at their Münsingen HQ, we did as we were told. For fear that had we not one of the new robotic arms would have picked us up and dispatched us on a Willie Wonka-esque punishment journey leaving us permanently coated in one of USM's 14 colours. Built at a cost of some 20 Million Swiss Francs the new USM powder coating facility
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Although these days talk of necessary redevelopment, renewal, reinvention and change of function in Bremen is often undertaken in context of the local football team Werder; generally the focus is the former harbour areas. With the relocation of the oversea harbours from their former city locations, Bremen has found itself with large areas of land and innumerate buildings looking for a new identity and new functions. Bremen of course isn't the only maritime metropolis having to come to terms
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Until June 10th the Bauhaus Archiv Berlin is presenting "New Architecture! Modern Architecture in Images and Books", an exhibition devoted to architecture photography and architecture publishing of the 1920s and 30s. And an exhibition that illustrates just how little the genres have evolved over the intervening decades. The central focus of New Architecture! is the life, work and archive of the architecture critic and art historian Walter Müller-Wulckow. In addition to his journalistic and
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"It is simple to prove that despite all distractions to the contrary from the cultural community in western Germany that also in the area of industrial design no real, definitive, new impetus can be expected; the foundation for such is missing and the wheel of development is being turned back, advancement stopped and that regardless if Germany - and the future in general - is thereby endangered..... We, the artists of the German Democratic Republic, are the opinion that owing to our
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There are, we would argue, three phrases that have come to popularly define modernist architecture and design: "Ornament is crime", "Less is more" and "Form follows function". The first is derived from the 1908 text "Ornament and Crime" [Ornament und verbrechen] by the Austrian architect Alfred Loos. The second is most commonly associated with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, although its origins are much, much, older. The latter can be found in American architect Louis H. Sullivan's essay "The
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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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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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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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