"We feel ourselves beholden to the traditions of Bauhaus"1 opined Rolf Kuhn, Director of the Dessau based Zentrum für Gestaltung, in the catalogue for the institute's 1988 exhibition Experiment Bauhaus. And while that may have been the case in the late 1980s, it certainly wasn't always so in East Germany. With the exhibition Shaping everyday life! Bauhaus modernism in the GDR the Dokumentationszentrum Alltagskultur der DDR in Eisenhüttenstadt allow for not only an exploration of the
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"Sometimes one has to remind oneself that this change took place in one generation - such is the gap between the woman of today and of yesterday, between the girl of then and of now." So begins the German magazine Die Woche's 1930 article "Mädchen wollen etwas lernen", "Girls want to learn something", an article which opens Four "Bauhausmädels" and is subsequently extend by the Angermuseum Erfurt to explore not only what Gertrud Arndt, Margarete Heymann, Margaretha Reichardt and Marianne
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From you have I been absent in the spring, When proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim, Enticed us into the following architecture and design exhibitions....... William Shakespeare, Sonnet 98, From you have I been absent in the spring (extended, with apologies) "Bauhaus_Sachsen" at the Grassi Museum für Angewandte Kunst Leipzig, Germany When in 1925 it became clear that Bauhaus would have to leave Weimar, Leipzig was one of the city's to offer it a new home; as history records Walter
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Whereas at Bauhaus Weimar and Dessau architecture was essentially a subject of theory and experimentation, elsewhere in inter-War Europe architecture was theory and practice, and that, occasionally, on a large scale. Such as the Neues Frankfurt project. Instigated in 1925 by Frankfurt's then Mayor Ludwig Landmann and employing a team of some 148 architects, urban planners, garden designers, journalists et al, under the leadership of Ernst May and Martin Elsaesser, Neues Frankfurt realised
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Although Bauhaus did undeniably exist, sometimes we could all be forgiven for believing we had collectively imagined it. Not only on account of its ephemerality as an institution, but also because it existed in a period of history that is, generally, a little abstract, intangible, indecipherable for a majority of us. While today the popular image of Bauhaus is so ideal, represents such a utopia and eutopia, it has that tangible feeling of intangibility, of unreality, of something imaginary.
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As all familiar with the peculiar and idiosyncratic method by which these dispatches are produced will appreciate, come March 30th 2019 there will be a few fundamental changes, as the smow blog team are forced to abandon our familiar home on the internet and create a new one for ourselves in the analogue wastelands of the (dis)United Kingdoms. And as Brexit's unregulated shadow casts itself ever deeper, indelibly, suffocatingly, over the smow blog office, our thoughts turn, somewhat
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The Burg Galerie im Volkspark Halle is open every day, is täglich geöffnet; and with their new exhibition, opens the every day: presenting artistic and design reflections on daily routine(s), the Alltag, and in doing so allows for new perspectives on the what, wherewith and wherefore of our (perceived) daily realities..... täglich geöffnet @ Burg Galerie im Volkspark, Halle The first in a series of exhibitions being staged throughout 2019 under the title, ABC, täglich geöffnet presents 26
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For the fifth year in succession ArkDes, Sweden’s national centre for architecture and design, is hosting the Ung Svensk Form/Young Swedish Design award/platform exhibition: a showcase of 25 projects providing for 25 understandings of contemporary design in/from Sweden. Ung Svensk Form/Young Swedish Design 2019 Exhibition, ArkDes Stockholm As noted in our post from Ung Svensk Form/Young Swedish Design 2018, inaugurated in 1998 by Svensk Form (the Swedish Society of Crafts and Design) and
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"Beware the Ides of March" Julius Caesar was, allegedly, advised by the soothsayer Spurinna. And he probably wished he had. March 15th seeing his death at the hands of some 60 Senators, a death which led to civil war as opposing forces sought to control Rome's destiny. "Beware the 5th of the Calends of April" a modern day Spurinna would no doubt warn the good folks of the United Kingdom. March 29th looking as it is like being an equally fateful day. But while Caesar could have taken steps to
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No, it's not all shoulder pads and garish colour clashes....... although........ .......much more, with the exhibition 1980s - A new era in furniture design Stockholm's Museum of Furniture Studies explore furniture design in that most politically, culturally, socially and economically fluid of decades, and, and not completely unrelated, a decade which not only brought fundamental changes to understandings of furniture design, but arguably brought more abrupt, more curt, more enduring changes
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As regular readers will be aware, in these dispatches we, very, very occasionally, quietly bemoan a certain monotony at furniture trade fairs, protest that, if you will, we regularly find ourselves wading through an homogenous mass. On this occasion we will however let someone else make that observation on our behalf. In his 2015 book Swedish Design: An Ethnography the American anthropologist Keith M. Murphy notes of a visit to the 2006 Stockholm Furniture Fair, "[T]he only problem was, so
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It's been 8 years since we last visited an exhibition by Stockholm based studio Färg & Blanche. Then 2011, back in the days when we still had our own teeth, our own hair, dreams and aspirations which were in our control, it was the exhibition 20 designers at BIOLOGISKA, one of the most memorable locations we've ever viewed an exhibition in. And despite having been in many an impressive venues since, a multi-storey 360 degree diorama populated by stuffed animals in a range of habitats, remains
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The exhibition Against Invisibility – Women Designers at the Deutsche Werkstätten Hellerau 1898 to 1938 at the Kunstgewerbemuseum Dresden presents the biographies of 19 female creatives who despite being, to varying degrees, prolific in the early decades of the 20th century, became increasingly invisible post-War; and in doing so not only helps them to regain their visibility, not only ensures their contribution to the development of art and design in the first decades of the 20th century is
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Despite what some may have us believe, Bauhaus didn't appear one morning from the slowly clearing mists of the Ilm valley; rather, and for all its lasting allure, Bauhaus 'twas but a moment on a longer, wider, international helix. One which began its twisting long before Walter Gropius and his merry band arrived in Weimar, and which continues, winding its way ever onwards, to this day. With the exhibition From Arts and Crafts to the Bauhaus. Art and Design – A New Unity! the Bröhan Museum
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"The role of the architect is one of organisation. The house is the considered organisation of our ways of life"1, opined the Austrian architect Margarete Lihotzky in 1921. And in the course of a long, varied career, she repeatedly demonstrated what she understood by such; including most famously, if somewhat narrowly, in a kitchen design............. Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky (1897-2000) (Photo 1997, Werner Faymann, source https://commons.wikimedia.org) Born in Vienna on January 23rd
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"...a new generation, a new age, must develop forms and tenors for their interior and exterior worlds which correspond to its desire for well-being and its ideals" wrote Frankfurt city mayor Ludwig Landmann in 1926.1 With the exhibition Moderne am Main 1919-1933 the Museum Angewandte Kunst Frankfurt explore how such developments were approached and realised in Frankfurt and environs, and by extrapolation explore the contribution made by the region to the evolution of inter-War understandings
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According to the posters to be found liberally distributed throughout the city, IMM Cologne 2019 promised to present "1000 furnishings ideas for your home" And it may very well have done. We didn't count. Not least because.... What interest the number, if the ideas themselves ain't meaningful? What interest the number, if the ideas themselves ain't logical? What interest the number, if the ideas themselves ain't justifiable? Or reducing the thought to its essence, what interest the idea if
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Fortune, we are told, favours the brave. Misfortune the reckless, but fortune the brave. Thus, summing all the bravery we could muster, we descended into the unknown of the Bunker am Bahngleis and the exhibition Generation Köln.....* Karoline&Klemens&Thomas&Tim. Generation Köln @ Passagen Cologne 2019 As noted in context of Generation Cologne 2018, we're not huge fans of generic umbrella terms such as "Generation", finding them not only distracting and counter productive, but also
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Although founded twelve years before Bauhaus Weimar, and despite overlaps in personnel and biographies, it would be incorrect to draw a direct line from the Deutsche Werkbund to the Gropius school, even if a line of sorts can, should, be traced between the two institutions. A line which serves not only to connect the two but to underscore the role both played in the development of contemporary understandings of formal aesthetics in the first decades of the 20th century, and also the influence
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On December 10th 1869 Gebrüder Thonet voluntarily relinquished their 1856 Privilege in respect of "The manufacture of chairs and table legs made of bent wood, the bending facilitated by the action of steam or simmering liquids"; thereby ending not only a thirteen year monopoly during which time Thonet became a firmly established global brand, but also the culmination of a neigh on three decade story which highlights the importance of patent protection in the furniture industry. Biegen oder
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If you are planning visiting an architecture or design museum, anywhere in the world, in 2019, it will be staging a Bauhaus themed special exhibition. Guaranteed. There are literally millions of them lined up. If not billions. Which is no complaint. Or at least not unless they are exhibitions based on formulaic, lazy clichés. Then it is very much a complaint. But if they are exhibitions which take open, honest and unblinkered views on either the institution as a whole or a specific, ideally,
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Designer, grib magten! enjoined the 2018 Design School Kolding exhibition, Designer, seize the power! Which not only sounds a bit more revolutionary than one is use to from Danes, but also implies designers should be in power. A position on which, and as we oft noted, we're highly sceptical. Intimately involved in power systems yes, but designers in charge....... Consequently we thought it wise to set course for the Design School Kolding 2018 Graduation Exhibition. Designer, grib magten!
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Atop bonny Killesberg, and beside Kochenhof, (the) Akademie der Bildenden Künste, ABK, Stuttgart has been nurturing a basic kernel within a bright kettle of students of numerous creative disciplines since 1761. For their 2018 Rundgang the, we believe the word is, identity, was based on alternative resolutions of the initialism ABK, the central one being Alle brauchen Kunst - Everyone Needs Art. But do we need that applied, functional art developed in the year past at the ABK Stuttgart......?
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French designer Ionna Vautrin first reached a broad international public with her Binic lamp for Italian manufacturer Foscarini, a design which, it's fair to say, is/was one of those genuinely, gloriously, joyous moments in the (hi)story of lighting design, a work full of character yet devoid of vanity, universally applicable yet always individual. Ionna Vautrin is however more than Binic: before Binic Ionna had enjoyed a varied, international career working with a diverse roster of studios
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