Whereas the vast majority of successful and popular furniture designers have an architecture or handcraft background, there are naturally exceptions. One of the best known and most fascinating being without question the sculptor and artist Isamu Noguchi. Born on November 17th 1904 in Los Angeles as the first and only child of the American writer Leonie Gilmour and the Japanese poet Yone Noguchi, the young Isamu was raised in Japan until 1918 when he was sent to the Interlaken boarding school
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Despite the transient nature of the definition of "design", an important role of the designer is unquestionably solving problems. And an important role of the industrial designer is solving problems in context of industrial production. One of the earliest, and most elegant, examples of this dates back to the very beginnings of industrial production: the disposable safety razor blade. The patent for which was granted to King Camp Gillette on November 15th 1904. According to popular legend the
read moreIn our recent design calendar post on the 85th anniversary of the opening of the New York Museum of Modern Art, MoMA, we noted that they are currently presenting an exhibition under the title "Design and Violence" Although "presenting" is perhaps not the correct phrase, for rather than display objects as part of a traditional exhibition in their spacious if crammed base in Manhattan, for Design and Violence the MoMA are staging what they refer to as an "experimental online curatorial project".
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As older readers will be aware, one of our all time favourite projects is, was and probably always will be the majestic Spore Vase by Paulo Sellmayer. Not just because as an object it teaches us so much about contemporary society and the absurdity of the perceived control we have over the natural world; but because through discovering and dissecting Spore Vase we learned and understood an awful lot about our job and our responsibilities. Since we saw Spore Vase in Smalle Haven in Eindhoven we
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Until December 20th the Paris dépendance of Galerie kreo is presenting an exhibition dedicated to the vivacious variety of contemporary wooden furniture design. Presented under the sparklingly original title "only wood" the exhibition presents a mix of previously displayed objects and new works. Amongst the older works on show a special mention must go to the Woodwork lamp by BIG-GAME, a work premièred at Galerie kreo's 2008 La Liseuse exhibition, the Cork #3 storage system by Martin Szekely
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On seeing a lamp grace a Jean Prouvé desk on the Vitra stand at Orgatec 2014 we termed it "a genuine reminder that good design is often the simplest solution" On seeing a lamp grace a Jean Prouvé desk in the VitraHaus, we concurred. Quietly noting that it was, in addition, "a genuine reminder that a good name is often the simplest solution" Plug Lamp by Form Us With Love for Ateljé Lyktan is both those things. Packaged in the most delightful and engaging object. A desk lamp with an
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Cohesion is a concept with which we are very familiar. Largely because it is a state we never achieve. Much like the geometry's asymptote never touches its associated curve, so to do our lives approach cohesion, without ever achieving such a condition. It remaining something tantalisingly ahead of us. Infinitely so. And so it was with a particular personal interest we viewed the new 2014 Dutch Invertuals' exhibition: Cohesion. As is traditional with Dutch Invertuals the participating
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We don't consider ourselves slouches when it comes to the effort we make in regards of presenting ourselves at Orgatec Cologne, but we do have to doff our ornately feathered caps to the colleagues at Stylepark. In keeping with their curated "Featured Editions" programme at IMM Cologne where design studios are asked to create an installation around a given design object, for Orgatec 2014 Stylepark asked four designers to create a 12 sqm presentation reflecting their interpretation and
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It's now been twelve months since we decided to start recommending upcoming architecture and design exhibitions based on nothing more substantial and reliable than a press release or a PR agency text. A year in which we have recommended 60 exhibitions which sounded good, sounded worth visiting, sounded entertaining. Most of those that we subsequently visited were. A fact that has encouraged us to continue. And so to celebrate "5 New Design Exhibitions" first birthday, 5 New Design Exhibitions
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Established in 1998 by the artist couple Anna and István Regős as a gallery/shop in the cellar of their house in the Hungarian town of Szentendre, since 2013 Palmetta Design have operated a second gallery in Budapest where, in addition to offering a selection of international design items for sale, they present a regularly changing programme of art and design exhibitions. For Budapest Design Week 2014 that of course meant a design exhibition and specifically "Entrance Hall" a showcase of works
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On Friday October 24th the winners of the Saxony Design Award 2014 - the Sächsischer Staatspreis für Design 2014 - were announced at a, no doubt, suitably grand ceremony in Leipzig. Ran under the motto "Mehr Wert durch Design" - "More value through design" - the 2014 edition of the biennial contest looked for projects which help illustrate the potential of design in our modern post-industrial industrial economy. And which we suspect, although it wasn't explicitly stated, was intended to
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For just about as long as Thonet have been producing furniture one of the company's most important designers has been "Thonet Design Team", a description we've always considered to be a rather disparagingly sterile and unnecessarily nebulous description for Thonet's team of in-house designers. Every serious contemporary furniture manufacturer has an in-house design team who are responsible for both helping adapt external designers works to the company's production patterns and also creating
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In 2010 the spectacularly sinister sounding Hungarian Ministry of Human Capacities launched a programme to help promote products made in workshops employing persons with disabilities; and since 2013 the Segítő Vásárlás label - Design that Helps - has been coordinated by the Salva Vita Foundation. In June 2014 the Salva Vita Foundation organised a "Design Date" event which brought participating workshops and Hungarian design studios together with the aim of fostering new co-operations and
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Much as we all like to assume we all know everything there is to know about modernism, and convinced as we all are that we can name all the important protagonists and their key works. We largely can't. We can largely scratch the surface of modernism and name a handful of the best known protagonists and name a few of their better known works. Just how little the vast majority of us truly understand about modernism is currently being laid bare in the exhibition "Der entfesselte Blick – Die
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One of the highlights for us of Dutch Design Week 2014 is and was the showcase of works by Eindhoven based studio Ontwerpduo a.k.a. Tineke Beunders and Nathan Wierink. For although in the past we have seen various Ontwerpduo projects individually, there is no real alternative to seeing a studio's collection together in order to build a more complete picture of the designers and their work. In addition to reunions with those Ontwerpduo products with which we were already familiar, including the
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At the risk of overusing the phrase "a concept that grows on us the more XXXX adds to it" and so reducing a genuine sign of respect to irrelevant dribble: Stefan Diez's New Order system for HAY is a concept that grows on us the more Stefan Diez adds to it. What began life as relatively simple contemporary shelving system is being presented at Orgatec 2014 as a fully fledged office system. We've always liked New Order, but the more it grows, the more it appeals. Apart from the systems
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As long as we've been going to Vienna Design Week the festival has always included a focus on social responsibility. Design is not all about large companies presenting their latest projects or young designers developing expensive gallery pieces, design is also about helping to improve our world, be that the direct vicinity or at the global level. Vienna Design Week understand this. And always try to ensure we all do. One of the more interesting projects in this respect at Vienna Design Week
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The presentation of Dirk Vander Kooij's current collection during Dutch Design Week 2014 took place at Kazerne - the new star in Eindhoven's already well illuminated design sky. Established by designers/curators Annemoon Geurts and Koen Rijnbeek who used run the temporary Eat Drink Design "exhibition restaurant" during Dutch Design Week, Kazerne is their new permanent "exhibition restaurant". They obviously having tired of "popping up" once a year. Featuring a combination restaurant cum
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The history of furniture design is famously also a history of experimentation, re-configuring, re-thinking and often of designers changing materials in the course of product development. Charles and Ray Eames' plastic chair family famously began life as a steel chair family, Harry Thaler's aluminium Pressed Chair for Moormann began life as a wooden chair, and in contrast the first USM Haller units were wood, before the switch to steel. And so the fact that Budapest based designer András
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In comparison to the annual IMM Cologne furniture fair the corridors and halls of the Messe Cologne always seems curiously empty at the biennial Orgatec office furniture trade fair. Until that is one reaches the Vitra stand. And the crowds. The almost congenital attraction of Orgatec visitors to Vitra is unquestionably related to the high-calibre roster of international designers responsible for the Vitra office programme. At Orgatec 2014 that programme has been extended by, amongst other
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For us the passion, indeed interest, for living in a shared flat ended approximately 18 months before we moved out of our last shared flat. It ceased to be our thing. We needed our peace. We needed our space. We became anti-social. Some people however remain sociable. Even professionally. Some such as the design studios Daphna Laurens, Studio Mieke Meijer, OS ∆ OOS, Studio Maatwerk and Bogaerts Label who since summer 2014 have shared a space in the so-called TAB Building, somewhat inevitably a
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On Wednesday October 22nd the exhibition "Martino Gamper - design is a state of mind" opens at the Pinacoteca Agnelli in Turin. Curated by London based, Italian born designer Martino Gamper, design is a state of mind premièred at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery London over the summer of 2014 and is in effect two exhibitions in one. In the first Martino Gamper presents a series of shelving systems dating from the 1930s to the 21st century; a collection of shelving systems that not only present
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Back in the day when the CD was new and exciting we remember watching a breakfast TV host spread honey on one to demonstrate how indestructible they were. Other CDs were attacked with keys, dowsed in hot coffee and stood on. These days we all know much better. CDs are destructible. We've seen the light. And at Dutch Design Week 2014 you can can see the light a recycled CD emits. Or at least the luminescence produced by a mass of recycled CDs in the thoughtfully and intelligently formed
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Proving that Eindhoven is full of old factories, but that they are not necessarily all former Philips factories, Sectie C is a former industrial estate on the eastern edge of Eindhoven that has become home to a, seemingly, thriving community of creatives. Featuring a nice mix of creative genres and small businesses Sectie C's real charm is the way the tenants have colonised the available space just as vegetation does in derelict industrial estates: offices constructed under the rafters like
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