"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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"How did you first hear about kkaarrlls?" It's perhaps not quite a question on a par with "Where were you when Kennedy got shot?" or "How many roads must a man walk down, before you call him a man?", but when asked by Volker Albus, Product Design Professor and Prorector at the Hochschule für Gestaltung Karlsruhe and, together with Stefan Legner, co-founder and "boss" from kkaarrlls, you really have to respond. "Pure chance", being our less than brilliant answer. "Milan 2009, too early for a
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Vienna's fine, the sun shines most the time The feeling is "laid back" Plane trees grow and Herr Gruber's beer prices are low But you know we keep thinkin' about Making our way back Well we're Leipzig City born and raised But nowadays, We're lost between two shores Vienna's fine, but it ain't home Leipzig's home, But it ain't ours no more......... Which, and with obvious apologies to Niel Diamond, is a somewhat long, involved and frankly unnecessarily depressive way, of saying that the time
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We must admit to having had our problems with Vienna based design studio chmara.rosinke Not in a physical, fisticuffs sort of way you understand, and certainly not in a screaming insults across a crowded bar way, but in a pure critical styleee. With their project "Mobile Gastfreundschaft" chmara.rosinke, as far as we understand the whole madness, helped convince the t**** researchers and their lazy media morlocks that "nomadicity" would be a good horse to back. That's obviously not
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As we noted in our post on Depot_0411 by Marlene Klausner, "food" often crops up in the Vienna Design Week programme, as a general rule in the "Stadtarbeit" programme, a programme element that looks at how design can influence, benefit and, ideally, improve urban environments. In this context, in addition to Depot_0411 Vienna Design Week 2013 is hosting the project "Construisine" from the Berlin based designers Johanna Dehio and Dominik Hehl. A couple of years ago one of the Stadtarbeit
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What is luxury? For Passionswege 2013 the French/Swiss duo Bertille + Mathieu were paired with the Viennese crystal manufacturer J. & L. Lobmeyr, a company whose products grace Royal places, helped establish the Wiener Werkstätte and would by most popular, conventional definitions be considered "luxury", and have developed a delightful project that answers the question in an alternative, though equally valid, way. Lollipops. Sugar candy lollipops. Specifically Bertille + Mathieu have used a
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As far as we are aware the grand doyen of Austrian architecture Otto Wagner never devoted a great deal of his energy to glass. Save that is for the interior of his majestic Postsparkasse in Vienna. Shrouded in glass from floor to ceiling the interior resembles more a Victorian greenhouse than a savings bank. And as such is a more than fitting location for the exhibition SECOND LIFE - Upcycling Glass Design from Finland. Organised in conjunction with the Finnish Glass Museum Riihimäki, SECOND
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For reasons we've never truly understood "food" always crops ups somewhere, in some context during Vienna Design Week. Fortunately the organisers appear to have finally stopped designers growing herbs and vegetables in public places and have instead moved on to explore other, more practical, aspects of our modern relationship to what we eat and how we can best organise food production and distribution in the future. Among the projects this year is Depot_0411 by Austrian designer Marlene
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As we arrived in Vienna the first thing we noticed was our breath. It's autumn in Vienna. And we still haven't found our winter accommodation. When we do an object such as "Heat x Heart" may be just the thing to complete our winter retreat. Created by the Swedish born, London based designer Hilda Hellström in cooperation with E. Fessler Kamine, a Vienesse firm who have been involved with the production of heating ovens and oven tiles for over 200 years and whose products can be found, for
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It seems somehow fitting that our first post from Vienna Design Week 2013 should be from a Passionswege project. Passionswege is after all one of the major attractions for us of Vienna Design Week. For anyone new, or who has mistakenly stumbled across us, Passionswege is a programme within Vienna Design Week that pairs young designers with long established handicraft based manufacturers to develop a product/project that combines the tradition of the manufacturer with the new perspective
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"My, my, my, Delilah! Why, why, why, Delilah!" The morning of Friday September 27th 2013 was one of those misty autumn occasions that cause SANAA's immense new Vitra Factory Building in Weil am Rhein to merge, almost unseen, with the grey background. Even Herzog & de Meuron's new Basel Messe complex was reduced to nothing more grand than a continuation of the uncaring monotonous sky. The glitzing, shimmering palace of high summer just the weak shadow of a memory. And so it was perhaps fitting
read moreAs we noted in our designer barbecue post "... summer is bidding its final farewells" And with autumn's impudent chill invading ever more our pastoral calm the time for our hibernation approaches. And so we're currently exploring accommodation options. Fortunately it's been a bit of a "small house year" in these pages with, for example, Renzo Piano Building Workshop and Vitra's Diogene or Jean Prouve's Maison des Jours Meilleurs occupying our thoughts. Our first contact with reduced room
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In addition to Charles Eames and Eero Saarinen's superb modular case furniture system, a further highlight of the MoMa New York's 1940 "Organic Design in Home Furnishings" competition was Harry Weese and Benjamin Baldwin's winning collection in the "Furniture for Outdoor Living" category, a collection that included a tea wagon, table, benches, loungers and as a genuine highlight, a barbecue wagon. Resembling a coal bucket on wheels - and again owing to "issues" with the rights holder we sadly
read moreIn our post on Vitra's purchase of the Finnish furniture producer Artek we quoted from a letter George Nelson wrote to Charles Eames recounting a meeting with Alvar Aalto in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Below we quote more from said letter. We cannot prove or disprove any of the claims made therein. We assume it is all true. We say, you can keep your stories of rock star debauchery, your stories of film star excess, your stories of out of control poets and of the decadence of the European
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On Saturday September 14th London Design Festival 2013 opens to the public. We'll sadly not be there. Sadly because London in early Autumn is always a delightful thought, and also because the 2013 programme would appear to contain a few real gems. As many of you know we don't like recommending shows/exhibitions/products/anything really we haven't seen ourselves. And while at such events the genuine personal highlights are often found where and when one least expects them, there are a few
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At Design Miami Basel 2013 one of the more impressive presentations was without question the collection of Alvar Aalto furniture shown by Stockholm/Berlin based gallery Jackson Design. A presentation that included rare examples of Alvar Aalto's furniture for and by the Finnish manufacturer Artek. And all available for purchase. Basel based furniture manufacturer Vitra have gone one step further, and have purchased Artek. Following completion of his architecture studies in 1921 Alvar Aalto
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On Saturday September 7th the winners of the International Marianne Brandt Contest 2013 were unveiled at an awards ceremony in the Industry Museum Chemnitz. We'll have more on the winners, the 2013 contest and of course the accompanying exhibition real soon, but for now the winners. Congratulations to all! Product Design Award Product & Special Award Alessi: Susanne Schwarz, "Papier tragen" Appreciation Product, Special Award (smow) & Public Award: Anna Albertine Baronius, "2tables"
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"Do the books that writers don't write matter?", asks Julian Barnes in his 1984 novel Flaubert's Parrot. In a similar vein, do the posts that bloggers don't write matter? Among Julian Barnes' arguments for not disregarding the unwritten novel is that, "Besides, an idea isn't always abandoned because it fails some quality control test. The imagination doesn't crop annually like a reliable fruit tree. The writer has to gather whatever's there: sometimes too much, sometimes too little, sometimes
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We know what you're thinking, lost furniture designs from Eero Saarinen and Charles Eames. ??? Yup. Two of the most important, influential and best known protagonists of mid-century modern design have a product series that has vanished without trace. And in our opinion it vanished exactly because Saarinen and Eames are two of the best known protagonists of mid-century modern design. But let's start at the beginning.... In 1940 the Museum of Modern Art New York staged their "Organic Design
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In our post "Wilhelm Wagenfeld Reviews Design for Use, USA" we quoted Wagenfeld's assertion that "In the current age machines and handicraft are intimately interwoven with one another." The Bauhaus Archiv Berlin is currently presenting an exhibition which ably demonstrates that some 80 years later such harmonious constellations cannot only still be found, but are still producing results every bit as refined and timeless as those realised by Wilhelm Wagenfeld. Poesie & Industrie - Poetry and
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Having already been to Chemnitz once this year we really are loathed to go a second time. It somehow feels unfair. Unjust. Twice. In one year. Why us! However on Saturday September 7th the winners of the International Marianne Brandt Contest 2013 contest will be announced and the awards exhibition formally opened. In the Industriemuseum Chemnitz. And we will be there. In the middle of June the nomination shortlist was unveiled, and even though it contains just the names of the nominated
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As any fool know contemporary product design arose from traditional crafts. The birth however wasn’t the smoothest, and the conflict between the form loving traditionalists who believed in a future of craft based industrial production and the machine fixated modernists with their focus on functionality dominated the inter-war years. Post World War II the modernists had largely succeeded in establishing their position and in his review of the 1951 exhibition “Design for Use USA” Wilhelm
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