As Europe begins to ardently shake of the last remnants of winter and the first green and blue and yellow and white specks appear in parks and gardens, as the chance that summer might just arrive becomes tangible.... October can seem a mighty long way away. Unimaginable. But it is approaching. As is the 2024 Grassimesse. The path thereto has been laid and until Wednesday May 15th are all called upon to apply....... Staged in and by the Grassi Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Leipzig, and
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"When architecture is born, a place is born" opined Japanese architect Tsuyoshi Tane in 2018, continuing, "humans began to understand that by building architecture, a meaning is given to a place, and then that place has a story that can be passed on to others". But for Tane architecture doesn't just bequeath a place meaning and a story, it also "gives memories to a place", memories of the past and memories of the future, collective memories that help create bonds. But memories that are
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As noted from the exhibition Der ungesehene Designklassiker at the Deutsches Stuhlbaumuseum, Rabenau, alongside the introduction, re-introduction, enabled to the EW 1192 by Horst Heyder, a work that was, in all probability, the most widely found, most widely used, chair in the DDR and, potentially, one of the chairs existent in the greatest population densities anywhere ever, and thus a chair that inarguably shouldn't need to be re-introduced, but which on account of the nature of the
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Basketry has something of the archaic about it, almost anachronistic, has echoes of a past we've all long moved on from. With the exhibition All Hands On: Basketry the Museum Europäischer Kulturen, Berlin allow for, demand, a critical reassessment....... All Hands On: Basketry, Museum Europäischer Kulturen, Berlin Presenting its narrative over the course of four chapters — People, Protection, Material and Pattern — four chapters which, and at the risk of opening with an unforgivable pun,
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Edition 33 as seen at Passagen Interior Design Week Cologne 2024 Established in Munich in 2020 by Max Neustadt, an alumni of the Technische Hochschule Rosenheim and ECAL, Lausanne, with periods working with Nils Holger Moormann and Stefan Diez on his CV, Edition 33 have a, for us, agreeably responsible and sustainable business model: new products are 'launched' but only actually produced, only actually become a component of the Edition 33 portfolio, once 33 orders have been received. We're
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Arguably little characterises contemporary society, certainly contemporary European society, better than our relationship with sleep. And, arguably, little charts the path of human society, again certainly European society, better than the (hi)story of our relationship with sleep. With the exhibition Uneversum: Rhythms and Spaces the Estonian Museum of Applied Art and Design, Tallinn, explore and reflect upon sleep, spaces of sleep, rhythms of sleep, and for all on our relationships with
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For all that as a species we like to think that we are in control of the wider universe, like to think that our mastery of physics and mathematics has put us in charge, little underscores the fallacy of that position as neatly as the Gregorian calendar, an apparently flawless invention, one that defines our lives, where everything sits so snugly.... until every four years we have to add an extra day to stop it all going haywire. Unless that is the year is exactly divisible by 100, but not by
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Imagine you were one of the best selling and most widely used chairs in your country. But (hi)story had forgotten you. Imagine you were informative in context of elucidating important, but rarely illuminated, chapters in the (hi)story of furniture design. But (hi)story had forgotten you. Imagine you were instructive in context of the practice and craft and industry of furniture design. But (hi)story had forgotten you. Imagine you were in use in a great many locations. But no-one saw you.
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Born in Coburg, Franken, in 1961 Cornelius Réer took his first steps in the world of glass via an apprenticeship at Glashütte Süßmuth, Immenhausen, near Kassel, followed by periods working in Austria and Sweden and a nine month course at Brierley Hill Glass Center in Dudley, England, before returning to Franken and establishing his own studio in Fürth in 1992. If a return to Franken punctuated by long absences: the next 11 years seeing Cornelius lead an, essentially, nomadic life, travelling
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The Augenwohl felt lamp by Dorothee Becker for Design M from the early 1970s, as seen at Dorothee Becker – aus dem persönlichen Nachlass, Passagen Interior Design Week Cologne 2024 Born in Aschaffenburg, Bayern, on March 30th 1938 into a family of small traders, her mother's family running a butchery, her father operating a drugstore, Dorothee Becker enjoyed, a, by all accounts, happy, comfortable, childhood on the Bavarian/Hessen border, if an early biography that is still to be fully told.
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"Projektowanie i realizacja form powłokowych jest problemem złożony", opined the Polish architect Witold Lipiński in 1978, "design and implementation of shell structures is a complex problem". And it certainly is. For all a complex mathematical problem, and that of a degree that, for Lipiński, for all when combined with the associated technical challenges, "greatly limit[s] plastic ingenuity", meaning as it did that architects were invariably restricted to forms "mathematically defined in a
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Beetlechair by Alexander von Dombois, as seen at Passagen Interior Design Week Cologne 2024 There is an argument to be made, indeed one we will make here without offering any evidence, we'll save that for another day, there is an argument to be made that some of the earliest forbearers, if not the earliest forbearers, of our contemporary side chairs were three legged: the three-legged stool is an object known across time and geography and class, and there is a particularly satisfying,
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Chemical Connection by Karoline Fesser (in cooperation with Karl Weber), as seen at Siebter Himmel, Passagen Interior Design Week 2024 We're sure Karoline Fesser won't mind us observing that she is a seasoned regular at Cologne's Passagen Interior Design Week, having made her debut in, by our calculations, 2012; and if you do mind Karoline, sorry! But, we've gone done it now! Yet despite the regularity of her appearances, there is never a sense of déjà vu, never that dull lifeless in a room
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Since 1990 the annual IMM Cologne furniture fair has been accompanied by the Passagen Interior Design Week. A design week, a design festival, that, and although it is often a bit overly commercial for our tastes, also always features a nice mix of emerging and establishing designers, small platforms, design schools, and others removed from the more predictable, superficial, profit-orientated corners of the furniture and design industries. A mix of creatives who help remind what design, what
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"Why are you studying in the pottery?", enquired Paul Klee of Else Mögelin in 1921 after seeing her paintings of the village of Dornburg, home of the original Bauhaus Weimar pottery workshop, "these watercolours look as if they are designs for tapestries". With Else Mögelin. Ich wollte, gegen alle Hindernisse, weben the Brandenburgisches Landesmuseum für moderne Kunst, Cottbus, explain and explore what happened next, and thereby help introduce an interesting and informative, if all too
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Time was when new architecture and design exhibitions opened every month. Some months more. Some months less. But every month enough for a list. Time was. But time is. And today you'll struggle to find new showcases opening in August and January. If that's a collective decision made by the global museum community, or pure chance, we no know. We can but observe it's existence as an actual thing. Or put another way: we can find, globally, but one, as in 1, new exhibition due to open in
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USM Haller A Fritz; A Ball; A System Within the diaries of Heidi, those central documents in the re-telling of the earliest (hi)story of the contemporary Switzerland, it is recorded that one of the oldest examples of vernacular Swiss furniture is the modular metal storage system of the Usm. As Heidi explains, over a great many generations the Usm were primarily developers and builders of windows, specifically metal windows for which they employed the abundant brass to be found in the
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According to Germanic folklore, "If December is wild with rain, then leave your fields and get thee to an architecture or design museum" Our five locations for escaping the rains of December 2023 can be found in Cottbus, Rome, Maastricht, Tallinn and Zürich....... "Else Mögelin. Ich wollte, gegen alle Hindernisse, weben" at the Brandenburgisches Landesmuseum für moderne Kunst, Dieselkraftwerk, Cottbus, Germany In context of their 2019 exhibition Unknown Modernism the Brandenburgisches
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Line and Round, I O, was established in Budapest in 2017 by Annabella Hevesi, a Masters graduate from the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design and Gábor Bella, a Masters graduate from the "School of Life", with a background in carpentry and numerous years experience in a variety of construction/interior/design fields, including the creation, development and realisation of escape room games, a concept that enjoys a particular popularity in Hungary, and in which context Annabella and Gábor
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There is an argument to be made that popular understandings of, and the popular presentation of, inter-War European avant-garde architecture and design tend to focus on Germany and Russia, and on Functionalism, popular foci that tend to cause us all to forget that the inter-War European avant-Garde was a homogenous mix of positions and, and as with the Art Nouveau before it, an international moment defined by its variety of regional dialects. With the exhibition Hej rup! The Czech Avant-Garde
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Postmodernism ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ With the exhibition Everything at Once: Postmodernity, 1967–1992 the Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn, request a more considered response....... Everything at Once. Postmodernity 1967-1992, Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn .......not that it initially appears that that is their aim: one enters Everything at Once: Postmodernity, 1967–1992 through a heavy curtain into a darkened space filled with music and videos from, amongst others, Roxy Music, The Specials or Afrika Bambaataa &
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Back in the spring Haitian musician Wyclef Jean informed us all he'd be "Gone Till November". And so he should be back any day now; and given how busy he's invariably been all summer, earning as he has been enough money to buy out blocks, he's probably not had a chance to visit an architecture or design museum. And so, we assume, will be absolutely desperate to stimulate his cognitive faculties. Our five recommendations for new exhibitions opening in November 2023 for Wyclef Jean, or indeed
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Thonet A Michael; A Twist; A Portfolio of Patents According to the Felsbilder of the Nymphs of Loreley, that most important of sources of information of the earliest (hi)story of the contemporary Rheinland, the Thonet arose in the community of Boppard, a community framed on the one side by a series of swinging aqueous curves as the Rhein meanders its way slowly through the metamorphic rock of the Rhenish Massif, and on the other by a range of peaks of that Massif on whose flowing curving
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3D printed ceramics by Babette Wiezorek, as seen at Grassimesse 2023, Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Leipzig For all that a Wilhelm Wagenfeld is popularly known as one of the more craft orientated designers of the early 20th century, he was no adherent to 'tradition' as understood as doing that which has always been done, and was no adherent of, no fan of, craft as an unchanging practice, railing against those who practised craft as such as participants in a "Maskentanz", a Masked Ball, a
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