Birthday's are not only an occasion for celebration, but also for reflection on the year past, and on those milestone birthdays, for all the decadal birthdays, to reflect wider on the lives you've lived and the experiences you've enjoyed/endured, reflect on what you've gained, what you've lost, in those decades past. So, or similar, the Vitra Design Museum, who celebrate their 30th birthday in November 2019 and are marking the occasion with reflections, when not necessarily on their own three
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As this Bauhaus Weimar centenary year is making ever clearer, whereas Bauhaus may have been physically sited in Weimar, Dessau and (nominally) Berlin, approaching a better understanding of "Bauhaus" involves leaving those sites and following the many paths that either led to, or from, those sites. Paths that not only allow one to approach a better understanding of "Bauhaus", but for all to approach a better understanding of the wider developments of the inter-War years, of inter-War Modernism,
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On November 1st 1512 Pope Julius II celebrated the All Saint's Day Mass in the Sistine Chapel. The first public presentation of Michelangelo's frescos, and thereby the opening of a permanent exhibition still on show today. And still attracting a public. And while permanent exhibitions are good and important, for all in allowing an overview and an introduction to a subject, it is those ever changing temporary exhibitions that, should, ideally, allow for new insights and deepening of
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Having started this Bauhaus Weimar centenary year by exploring the path from Arts and Crafts to Bauhaus, the Bröhan Museum Berlin end this Bauhaus Weimar centenary year by exploring the path from Bauhaus to Arts and Crafts Scandinavia. Or more accurately put, by exploring Nordic Design. The Response to the Bauhaus. Nordic Design. The Response to the Bauhaus at the Bröhan Museum, Berlin As this Bauhaus Weimar centenary year winds down and Bauhaus mania fades, or at least until 2026 when
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László Moholy-Nagy may have given Marianne Brandt "mettle for metal", and metal may be the material with which she is most readily and popularly associated; however, as she wrote in 1922, "Ich bin ganz von Glas"..... I am entirely glass. Fragile? Transparent? Opaque? Metamorphic? Refractive? Sparkling? For its 7th edition the triennial International Marianne Brandt Contest sought projects exploring glass in all its interpretations, properties and essences; the 60 nominated projects being
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Our Mondo Contemporaneo is a very unhappy, unsatisfying, unrewarding, dark, place. Should we perhaps all consider a move to the colourful, dynamic reverie of Mondo Mendini? At the Groninger Museum you can undertake a trial visit............... Alessandro Mendini, Marcel Proust, & Poltrona di Proust by Alessandro Mendini, as seen at Mondo Mendini, The Groninger Museum, Groningen Born in Milan on August 16th 1931 Alessandro Mendini studied architecture at the Politecnico di Milano,
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While it is important, and relevant, that the centenary of the opening of Bauhaus Weimar is used to delve a little deeper into the (hi)story of both the institution and inter-War Modernism, design and architecture is more than Bauhaus. Thus following on from our October Bauhaus/inter-War Modernism focussed new exhibition recommendations, five more general, if anything but humdrum, architecture and design exhibitions opening in October 2019 in Groningen, Frankfurt, New York, Stockholm and Weil
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"After you have settled yourself in a place as favorable as possible to the concentration of your mind upon itself, have writing materials brought to you", so begins Secrets of the Magical Surrealist Art - Written surrealist composition, part of André Breton's 1924 Surrealist Manifesto, "Put yourself in as passive, or receptive, a state of mind as you can. Forget about your genius, your talents, and the talents of everyone else. Keep reminding yourself that literature is one of the saddest
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More or less…… ….. Back in May 2019 the sheer number of new architecture and design exhibitions opening globally allowed us to produce two recommendations lists: one featuring exhibitions with a strong Bauhaus/inter-War Modernism focus, and one more general, less focussed. Spring forward five months and with the global museum community now fully awoken from their summer slumber we once again find ourselves with a cornucopia of new exhibitions that invites two lists. An invitation we would
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It is highly unlikely any 18th century banquet in Dresden's Schloss Pillnitz would have been graced by a cake that came close to matching the Baroque grandeur of the location, certainly no cake that would have had a richness, plenitude or vitality to match; cake as it existed in the 1700s being a much flatter, breadier, monotone, delight, one which we today would barely recognise as cake, but which then was understood as cake, the whole cake and nothing but cake. Then additions were made to
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Belgium is uncharted territory for us. Not literately, we're in Belgium fairly frequently. Indeed so frequently that we are often asked why we don't move to Belgium. Because we've been to Belgium, we reply (JOKE!!)) But Belgium is uncharted territory in terms of our annual #campustour: the design school summer showcases in Belgium tending as they do to run parallel to those in London, and that in previous years we've had good reason to be in London at that time, we've, logically, not been in
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"This house is a work by Le Corbusier" announces a yellow and white sign on the edge of the Zürichhorn park, "I commissioned it in his honour, and as a location from which to spread his ideas amongst a wider public" With the exhibition Mon univers the Pavillon Le Corbusier Zürich attempt to do just that via an exploration of the Swiss architect, artist, designer, author, et al, through a very specific filter: that which he collected. A Spanish Tinaja, ships cowls, and furniture by Le
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It's almost impossible to reflect on design education without reflecting on Bauhaus. Especially this year. And especially when a tour of design school summer exhibitions takes you to Sachsen-Anhalt and Thüringen, to those (contemporary) German States where for 100 years Bauhaus both began and found its de facto end. And while there will be time in coming posts for those reflections on the Gropius school and the developments of the century past, the focus of our 2019 #campustour visits to
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The Chinese government warning pro-democracy demonstrators to end their street protests. Central Americans risking their lives, and dodging border guards and fences, to cross into America in search of the, much vaunted, American Dream. A dogmatic right wing English Conservative government showing their contempt for the people of Scotland. Thankfully, the world has moved on since 1989...... Postmodern furniture and the Brandenburg Gate, as seen at 1989 - Culture and Politics, The National
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With its abundance of forests, earths, coals and waterways the contemporary Nordrhein-Westfalen has long been an important centre of production, industry, trade and by extrapolation design and creativity; at various stages in history important impulses and innovation radiating from communities such as Aachen, Hagen, Krefeld, Essen, Soest or Düsseldorf....... .........and since the end of the 19th century from the myriad of art, applied art, architecture and design schools dotted throughout the
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In 1968 the East German designer Rudolf Horn opined that "the changed tenor of industrial production in the socialist society, in relation to its task of satisfying cultural needs on a mass scale, raises the question of how despite mass production the consumer can realise an individual [domestic] environment, and in addition forces us to consider the problem of how the cultured personality can creatively contribute to the design of their immediate surroundings."1 How indeed....? It was,
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If the recent history of Germany is one of East and West, the longer history is one of North and South; a history which, and simplifying to the point of falsehood, saw the rivalry and conflict between the Hanseatic League and the traders of the southern states become a rivalry and conflict between Prussia and the realms of Baden, Württemberg, Hessen and Bavaria: the latter being the most reluctant to ratify the 1870 November Treaties and join the new Deutsches Reich. A reluctance expressed not
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Partly for reasons of its size, and partly on account of the way the then nations of the contemporary Germany responded to the challenges and realities of late 19th/early 20th century industrialisation, Germany is home to a truly outrageous number of architecture and design schools, certainly more than it would be logical, prudent or congenial to pack into one post. And so to save your nerves, and our fingers, we'll present the German leg of our 2019 #campustour via a series of regional
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The Hungarian composer Béla Bartók was (reportedly) the opinion that, "in art there are only fast or slow developments. Essentially it is a matter of evolution, not revolution." A position one, arguably, could apply to all expressions of contemporary culture and society. And a position the exhibition SPACES. Interior design evolution at the ADAM Brussels Design Museum explores in context of domestic interiors. SPACES. Interior design evolution, ADAM Brussels Design Museum, Brussels
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For Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince Summertime may very well be a "Time to sit back and unwind", for us Summertime is when our year finally, finally, gets going. While others spend the long hot days of summer on the beach, in the mountains, riding around in their Jeep, their Benzos, Nissan or eating pizza at Lorenzos, we're to be found either riding backwards in trains, our eyes fixed firmly on the past as we race into the future, terrified that a metaphor is becoming an omen, or wandering the
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According to our old friend Roget possible synonyms for "August" include great, noble, impressive or worshipful. We can't promise the following quintet of exhibitions will exactly meet such qualities; however, they promise to be anything but frivolous, undignified or flighty explorations of their subject, and therefore certainly should be tending to the August in August 2019....... "New rollout. bauhaus wallpaper" at the Kulturgeschichtlichen Museum Osnabrück, Germany Although Bauhaus,
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In these dispatches we once doubted the prevalence of designer furniture in comics, noting and acknowledging the regular appearance of popular furniture designs in other visual media, we, off-handedly, opined, "... Designer furniture in a comic?" Elegantly proving us very, very wrong the Vitra Design Museum's exhibition Living in a Box. Design and Comics not only explores the use and depiction of designer furniture and lighting in comics, but also considers how comics have contributed to and
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According to the Greek philosopher Anaximenes of Miletus, air is the source of everything. And whereas in the intervening 2500 years we have come to better understand the true nature, character and properties of air, as the exhibtion Design on Air at the Centre d'innovation et de design Grand-Hornu illustrates, air remains a very potent, stimulating, and protean creative force. Design on Air, Centre d'innovation et de design au Grand-Hornu Omnipresent yet absent, perceptible yet
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On May 14th 2019 the European Court of Justice ruled that all employers are required "to set up an objective, reliable and accessible system enabling the duration of time worked each day by each worker to be measured." 1 On July 15th 1855 Johannes Bürk was granted a patent for just such a system. A system which, as the Uhrenindustriemuseum Villingen-Schwenningen's exhibition Time, Freedom and Control – The Legacy of Johannes Bürk explains, paved the way, certainly in spirit, for many of the
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