The biggest April fool is.... us, for always going to Milan! That said, as ever, we did find a few gems amongst the senseless corporate trash..... And after Milan we had the joy of viewing the latest addition to the Vitra Campus, the Factory Building by SANAA......
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March 2013 was a month of travelling: Stuttgart, Chemnitz, Weimar, Dessau..... its amazing we found time to actually write anything.......
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IMM Cologne kept us busy into February, but the month also saw the opening of an Eileen Gray retrospective in Paris, a visit to the Louis Kahn exhibition at the Vitra Design Museum and the sad passing of James Irvine....
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January 2013 was, as every January, dominated by IMM Cologne, and all that that entails. In particular IMM Cologne 2013 brought us Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec's investiture as A&W Designers of the year and a delightful Alvar Aalto Stool 60 exhibition at Ungers Archiv für Architekturwissenschaft. January 2013 was in addition the opening of the exhibition "Extraordinary Stories About Ordinary Things" at the Design Museum London.....
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In our recent post from Florence we reported on the attempts being made there by the local authorities to help support and advance the local craftsfolk. Since 2008 the Chambers of Commerce from five of Florence's nearish neighbours have followed a different, though just as valid path towards achieving the same. Under the title "Rethinking The Product" the Chambers of Commerce from Lucca, Pisa, Pistoia, Prato and Terni pair young designers with local businesses and set them specific challenges.
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While we can't be certain that the artist, designer and choreographer Oskar Schlemmer would have completely agreed with the claim that "Life is a cabaret", we do know where he placed cabaret in the great scheme of cultural happenings: a little lower than theatre, but slightly higher than varieté. ""Stage" in general", Schlemmer wrote in 1925, "encompasses all that lies between religious cult and naive public amusement, both are not that what the stage is; the calculated impact on man of
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"In a best case scenario, and when the technology is advanced enough, the opaque cover can be replaced by an OLED and so become the light source itself."1 We admit to having wondered when we saw Ionna Vautrin's Binic lamp on the "Light for tomorrow" table at the Vitra Design Museum's Lightopia exhibition. "Nice lamp", we thought, "but not exactly revolutionary." First upon reading in the catalogue did we understand. Inspired by ships funnels Binic is formally very reminiscent of Vico
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It being that time of year when the only exhibition most of us are interested is the one displaying "presents with my name on them", there are only very few design exhibitions opening this December. Very few. But some. Here a selection of the more interesting ways to work off that extra roast potato or twelve........ "Mensch Raum Maschine. Stage Experiments at the Bauhaus" at Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau, Germany Despite the current theatre surrounding the decision not to renew Stiftung Bauhaus
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When we met Italian designer Alberto Meda at Orgatec 2010 he told us that he was working on his next project for Vitra. And that it would be a chair. And that was all he told us. At Orgatec 2012 the secret was revealed when Vitra released the office swivel chair Physix. Presented as a continuation of an idea began by Mies van der Rohe with his MR20 cantilever chair and continued by Charles and Ray Eames with their Aluminium Chair collection, Physix adds a new dimension to a familiar form
read moreWhile researching our post "Eames Alchemy. Or how Charles and Ray Eames turned steel into plastic….." the most remarkable discovery came in the New York Museum of Modern Arts' press release announcing the opening of the Low-Cost Furniture Design Exhibition:1 "Perhaps the greatest advantage of this chair is the extraordinary lustre and soft, smooth surface of the plastic which, strengthened by the silky threads of glass imbedded within it, quickly absorb room temperatures. Never before used in
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On Wednesday evening the winners of the Designpreis Brandenburg 2013 were announced in a ceremony held in the cavern-like grandeur of Potsdam's Nikolaisaal. Chosen from over 200 submitted entries the winning projects ranged from a campaign to encourage better glass recycling etiquette over a furniture production system that negates the need for large scale distribution and onto a book for dyslexics and an underground train for Singapore. We'll have more on the Designpreis Brandenburg later as
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"The new Eames plastic chair is a dream fulfilled"1 While one can, should, accuse the Walker Art Centre Minneapolis of being somewhat hyperbolic in their 1950 guide to "Useful Objects", there is no arguing with the fact that with their family of moulded fibreglass chairs Charles and Ray Eames took furniture design into uncharted territory. Or as Peter Smithson writes, "Before Eames no chairs (of the modern canon) were many coloured, or really light in weight, or not fundamentally rectangular
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In 1808 Napoleon had a problem. Or better put, in 1808 Napoleon had a whole continent of problems. Spain, Austria, Finland, England, Russia, Germany, Turkey. Noone it seemed was behaving in a manner that fitted with Napoleon's grand, global plans. How, for example, was he ever to find the time to conquer India if Europe wouldn't just quietly accept French domination? In an attempt to, at least partially, find a way out of the chaos a meeting was organised with Tsar Alexander I of Russia to
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As part of the bi-annual Europalia Arts Festival the Belgian cultural institute Grand Hornu is currently presenting the exhibition "Living Objects - Made for India" Curated by London based design studio Doshi Levien "Living Objects" is, as the title cleverly implies, an exploration of everyday Indian objects, everyday Indian design as it were, and an exhibition that in the words of Nipa Doshi and Jonathan Levien should be seen as "...a vehicle to discuss Indian culture, Indian values and
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Do designers always know best? No, do they....? Back in July we celebrated the 60th anniversary of Arne Jacobsen's Ant Chair for Fritz Hansen, including mention of the heavy criticism that greeted its presentation, in particular the criticism that it only had three legs. Criticism that didn't concern Arne Jacobsen one jot. For Jacobsen the Ant Chair was conceived as a three legged chair, functioned as a three legged chair and would always remain a three legged chair. Eventually however
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As we are sure you will appreciate we tend to shy away from recommending anything we haven’t seen and/or tested ourselves. That said, the following five exhibitions, all opening in November, caught our attention. And certainly seem worth checking out..... "mein reklame-fegefeuer. herbert bayer. werbegrafik 1928 - 1938" at Bauhaus Archiv Berlin, Germany Appointed in 1925 as the first director of the printing and advertising workshop at Bauhaus Dessau the Austrian artist and typographer
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There is currently a lot of "buzz" in the contemporary furniture and interior design communities about bringing nature in to domestic spaces, of finding ways of integrating plants with furniture and furnishings, softening our harsh, uncaring modern world if you will. In recent months we have posted, for example, on Stephan Schulz's Domestic Landscape project, Green Lamp by Zuzanna Malinowska or Werner Aisslinger's Bikini Island concept for Moroso. While at the recent Designers' Open Leipzig
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Although, according to our strict definition of "design" the work of Leipzig ceramicist Claudia Biehne must be considered handwork, we're delighted Porcelain Studio Biehne & Passig are taking part in the Designers' Open 2013 Spots. When we dropped by the studio Stefan Passig asked how we first got to know the studio's work, and unlike the romance of a casual meeting under an escalator in a former department store, with Studio Biehne & Passig we really can't recall. Suspect however it was at
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Despite the unnecessary unpleasantness on show at Leipzig Messe, (post to follow, awaiting legal clearance) the 2013 Designers’ Open Spots program provides more than enough reasons to get out and explore Leipzig creativity. One particularly good example is Plagwitz Village based collective diefabrik. Our introduction to diefabrik came via their cardboard furniture collection, including the shelf system “Constructo” and the Lounger “Chair777″, shown at Designers' Open 2009. An introduction
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There are only very few furniture manufacturers who can claim to have been major players in two fundamental furniture design revolutions. Thonet is one of them. And if we're honest, the only one we can currently name. Although the Thonet story begins in 1819, the story only really begins to "pick up steam" in 1859 when Michael Thonet perfected his warm wood bending process. The result of over twenty years development, heartbreak, experimentation, bankruptcy, fleeting success and brutal
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Hot on the heels of Vienna Design Week 2013 and its very successful "Passionswege" programme news reaches us from Florence of an alternative approach to rejuvenating and invigorating traditional handicrafts. One that involves nothing more complicated than leaving the craftsfolk to do what they do. One of the confusing aspects about Florence is that despite the 8 billion tourists who visit the city every year, the streets of the town centre are still largely populated by small trades
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"How did the elephant get its trunk?" "How do you get concrete and mortar on to the upper floors of buildings? While you don't need to know the answer to the first question to answer the second: if the elephant didn't, the answer to the second would be a lot less convenient than the modern reality. The idea of using a trunk-esque system to transport concrete and mortar to higher floors was developed by the Stuttgart engineer Karl Schlecht in his 1957 diploma project at Stuttgart University.
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Back in October one of the joys of Orgatec 2012 in Cologne was watching visitors reactions to Hella Jongerius' Sphere Table for Vitra. Most were highly amused and assumed it was a new kids product. An opinion that quickly changes when you learn the background to the object. Developed for Hella Jongerius' recently completed redevelopment of the North Delegate's Lounge at the United Nations in New York, the Sphere Table is a response to a brief that said the lounge could contain no internal
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One of the take home messages from the Vitra Design Museum's Lightopia exhibition is that lighting design is rarely about the form of the final object - that is often little more than an expression of the designers artistic sensibilities - and much more is about, for example, the utilisation of materials in the construction or the method by which the light is generated and the luminescence distributed. This reality was wonderfully underscored by Austrian designer Sebastian Zachl's Passionswege
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