Since the late 1950s Bavarian porcelain manufacturer Rosenthal has cooperated with an impressive roster of international designers to create new objects and product families, notable cooperations including those with Raymond Loewy, Walter Gropius, Wilhelm Wagenfeld, Jasper Morrison or Patricia Urquiola. One of the firms most recent collaborations is and was with Offenbach am Main based Sebastian Herkner. A graduate of the Hochschule für Gestaltung Offenbach am Main, Sebastian Herkner
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Parallel to Berlin Design Week 2014 the Universität der Künste, UdK, platform designtransfer is presenting an exhibition highlighting a selection of student works from across the disciplines of industrial design, fashion and "Communication in Social and Economic Contexts" Featuring a bright spectrum of projects ranging from the theoretical to the painfully practical and which on occasion bend the border between art and design a little more than is helpful, "wild, connected, printed &
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Very much in keeping with the DMY Berlin 2014 focus on "Social Design" the DAD Galerie Berlin is currently presenting an exhibition devoted to works by the Dutch designer Pepe Heykoop created in context of the Mumbai, India, based Tiny Miracles Foundation. Founded in 2010 by Laurien Meuter the Tiny Miracles Foundation works with the Pardeshi community, a community of some 700 individuals who live rough in Mumbai's red light district, on a range of projects with the aim of helping them move
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Established in 1751 by Wilhelm Caspar Wegely and taken under royal control by Prussia's King Frederick II in 1763, the Königliche Porzellan-Manufaktur Berlin - the Berlin Royal Porcelain Factory - is not only Berlin's oldest handwork business but an undeniable symbol of Prussian pride and the unrestrained luxury of the fabled "white gold" And as such not the sort of place one would expect to find an old agitator such as the Italian designer, designer theorist and general design disdainer Enzo
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At the risk of being accused of wilful and negligent generalisation, contemporary industrial design arose from traditional crafts, driven by a desire to make the products of the artisan available to a wider public and at a more affordable price. Yet despite this desire to separate itself from crafts, design keeps looking to craft for inspiration. Almost as if it doesn't fully trust itself to break free. Scared of its independence. Or as we noted in context of the exhibition Le Feu Sacré at
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As the new exhibition Die Form ist nur Teil des Ganzen at the Wilhelm Wagenfeld Haus Bremen makes very clear, Wilhelm Wagenfeld was firmly of the opinion that those objects with which we surround ourselves should be created so as to make them not only functional but to make their use a relevant, natural and self-evident part of our daily routine. Form not so much following function as use. While remaining an attractive, aesthetically agreeable, indispensable part of every object. Wagenfeld was
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SOX is, in all probability, Berlin's smallest gallery. SOX is a circa 2m by 3m window. An oversized display cabinet in the heart of Berlin Kreuzberg. During Berlin Design Week 2014 SOX is hosting 4+1, the latest project from Berlin designer Mark Braun. A shelving/storage element constructed from pear, oak, ash and walnut the individual 4+1 units are accessible from both front and back and can be stacked on top of/next to one another to create the desired landscape. Each unit houses an
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If we’re honest we’re not entirely sure where or when we first saw the work of Gosia & Tomek Rygalik a.k.a Studio Rygalik, but it was certainly before their near legendary Baguette Table project at Vienna Design Week 2011 – yes, tables made from bread – and long before they shot their delightful short film celebrating 20 years of the Vitra Design Museum miniatures collection. What we are sure about is that the logical, uncomplicated nature of the products they create, the pairs commitment to
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Standing in the shadow of his gargantuan lamp, "The Worker", Pascal Howe is well aware of how easily his work can be misunderstood. "Many people think it is just a lifestyle product or similar", he smiles, "but it has a strong concept behind it and isn't just about the aesthetic, the material or the functionality" The exhibition "Pascal Howe - VDI 2860" at the DMY Design Gallery Berlin is part of process to correct such misinterpretations and to introduce the real Pascal Howe. Following a
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In design the term "readymade" is used to refer to products created by giving existing objects a new function; generally a new function far, far removed from the original. Examples of the genre include the Mezzadro stool fashioned from a tractor seat by Achille and Pier Giacomo Castiglioni, Jasper Morrison's 1983 Handlebar Table or David Olschewski's Clothes Peg Lamp, an object that never reached the fame of the previous two examples. But which is and was every bit as interesting. Berlin
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Until April 16th the DMY Design Gallery Berlin is presenting the exhibition "Lifetimes" by Berlin based designer Birgit Severin. The inaugural exhibition in the new DMY Design Gallery. Following the demise of the "original" DMY Gallery in Berlin's stilwerk "design shopping centre", DMY appeared to have decided to concentrate on their global series of exhibitions and running Germany's most important design contest, the Designpreis der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Silence can however be
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Visiting the HfG Karlsruhe Sommerloch exhibition was not just a memorable highlight of July 2013 - but also fitting as it marked the start of our own summer pause. Our own Sommerloch. In addition July 2013 saw us visit the Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart Rundgang, Art & Design Fit for a King @ Ampelhaus, Oranienbaum and Aus allen Richtungen. Positionen junger Architekten im BDA at Wechselraum Stuttgart......
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Following the pains and tribulations of Milan, June is a time to relax. To enjoy design once again. This year we did that at DMY Berlin, Design Miami Basel at with the new Vitra(mini)Haus in Weil am Rhein....
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Anyone familiar with the roads in Leipzig's Lower East Plagwitz Village District will be aware that to call them roads is to do a great disservice to the memory of John McAdam and Edgar Purnell Hooley. In a biblical sense a road is composed of tarmac. In a Plagwitz sense a road is composed of potholes, loosely linked by random slithers of tarmac. Over the years we've given up getting annoyed about the state of the roads and... no, we've not. That's a lie. We get cross about it every single
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Normally we don't pay any heed to design contest exhibitions at design fairs. It just doesn't feel right, looking at them being in our jaundiced minds akin to reading those appalling advertorial "special supplements" that the print industry have fallen back on for survival. However at DMY Berlin 2013 something drew our attention to the exhibition for the adream 2012 competition. A pink brick to be precise. And we're mighty glad it did. Although "adream 2012" sounds like some truly horrendous
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It's about ten minutes since we mentioned Belgium. And we know that one or the other of you are getting nervous. Fearing we may have forgotten the magical, if not mythical, Kingdom. Fear no more. Belgium is back. At DMY Berlin 2013 students from the Thomas More University College Mechelen presented examples of their work in a group exhibition. We believe the VOMO in the exhibition name is the post-graduate furniture course in Mechelen, we are however a little confused and so may have got
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As part of DMY Berlin 2013 the Belgian design critic, curator, journalist and lecturer Max Borka organised the exhibition "Refugium. Berlin as a Design Principle" in collaboration and cooperation with students from his d- SOAP course at the FH Potsdam. Presenting works by some 50 Berlin based designers Refugium not only presents works by the selected designers but also seeks/sought to explore what characterises the Berlin design community and what makes the Berlin design scene relevant and
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Design arithmetic is very simple: June + Berlin = DMY And since Wednesday evening DMY Berlin 2013 is in full swing. In addition to the Central Exhibition at Tempelhof Airport and the numerous satellite events scattered throughout the city this year's programme also features a series of events dedicated to 3D printing. Something we fear certain sections of the media will grasp onto as being evidence of a "t****", oblivious to the fact that it is a subject that has been feature of DMY Berlin
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We first came across the work of Polish born, Swiss based designer Oskar Zieta at DMY Berlin 2009. And in 2010 wrote in the context of DMY's Swiss country focus: One of the biggest Swiss stands was that from ETH Zurich with their FIDU technology. Which was displayed at DMY 2009. We like it, find it a fascinating process, like the furniture that they produce and last year had an interesting and long conversation with Oskar Zieta about the process and its development. For us there is no doubt
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Ever since DMY Berlin inaugurated their "Three from Ten" Awards in 2009 the Bauhaus Archiv Berlin has honoured the nominees and prize winners with an autumn exhibition. 2012 is no different and the exhibition "DMY Awards and Jury Selection 2012" can be viewed in Berlin until mid-October. It is of course only logical that the Bauhaus Archiv should take an interest in largely experimental and conceptual design projects. For although today heavily stained with cliché and tainted by the passing
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Green Lamp by Zuzanna Malinowska is essentially a plant pot with an integrated growing frame. Clearly intended for climbing plants, the beauty of the growing frame is that it is a lamp shade. And below the lamp shade is, naturally enough, a bulb. The plant grows, takes on the form of the growing frame and before you know it you have a lamp formed from a plant. Now we are assuming that Zuzanna has checked and the plant can't get burned by the bulb; or indeed catch fire. And if she has, then
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One of the defining images of DMY Berlin 2012 was without question Andrea Brena sitting cross-legged on his stand, up to his elbows in brightly coloured material and knitting with his arms. A sight that, as one can imagine, always attracted a crowd as numerous as it was curious. Although outwardly about knitting with your arms, the central theme of Knitted Army is much more about redefining the personal connection between user and object. About reclaiming furniture from the cold, dark cave
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We were famously first drawn to the work of Belgian designer Tim Baute aka Interror.be via a lamp he showed at Designers Fair Cologne 2010. And his SevenUp, a moody and reduced down chandelier, remains one of our reference products. Tim is however a metalworker by training and so it was good to see him presenting a new steel product range for his debut at DMY Berlin. And although named after the B-2 Bomber, the range doesn't have its origins in the secretive world of military aviation, but
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It's fair to say that until visiting DMY Berlin 2012 the only design object we knew from Rosenheim was Nils Holger Moormann's Volvo. However at Tempelhof Airport the students from the Interior Design department of the Hochschule Rosenheim demonstrated that the southern German town can also produce slightly more contemporary works. On an interesting and nicely varied DMY stand the two highlights for us were the table "T#9" by Rebecca Schmidhuber and the kitchen system "Stangenware" by Nina
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