Much as design is a child of the late 19th/early 20th century so to is childhood, or perhaps more accurately so to is childhood as it is understood today. With the exhibtion Design for Children the Bröhan Museum, Berlin, explore the relationships between design, children and childhood over the century and a bit of their co-existence....... Design for Children, Bröhan Museum, Berlin For all that childhood is an unavoidable phase of every human life, over a great many centuries its was,
read more
Grassimesse Leipzig 2024 Compact: Aleksander Rasztawicki - Leichtigkeit 'Do we still need wood, metal and plastic?' asks Hochschule Wismar graduate Aleksander Rasztawicki in context of his Diploma project Leichtigkeit, Lightness. A rhetorical question for Aleksander doesn't believe that we necessarily do. For Aleksander all we need is paper. Or more accurately all we need is vulcanised fibre, a material first patented in 1859 that is produced from cotton via a process which, in many
read more
Budapest Design Week 2024 Compact: Alfréd by Szebedy Vajk When we first approached Alfréd by University of Óbuda student Szebedy Vajk at 360 Design during Budapest Design Week 2024 we interpreted it as an abstracted giraffe. It certainly wouldn't be the first time an animal had served as the basis for a piece of furniture design. Indeed shortly after meeting Alfréd we met the giraffe-esque library ladder 3½ by vondingen at Grassimesse Leipzig. Others would at this point speak of a t****
read more
Grassimesse Leipzig 2024 Compact: vondingen As discussed with Grassimesse Project Manager Sabine Epple, in order to stage Grassimesse during Covid it was necessary to place exhibitors in the permanent exhibtion spaces by way of guaranteeing the legally required distancing. A concept that exhibitors and visitors very much took to and which thus has continued post social distancing reality, and that very much not only to the agreement of exhibitors and visitors but to the benefit of the
read more
Budapest Design Week 2024 Compact: Konyky by Natalia Filonenko for Donna According to our dictionary 'Konyky' is Ukrainian for 'Grasshoppers'. It might not be, our dictionary could be wrong. We suspect it is. But if it is correct, it's a curious name for Natalia Filonenko's stool/table/pouffe for Kyiv based manufacturer Donna. Surely Lobzyk, jigsaw, or Holovolomka, jigsaw puzzle, make more sense. For that is essentially what Natalia has done, transformed a random piece of a jigsaw puzzle
read more
Budapest Design Week 2024 Compact: Uniqueness in Mass Production by Fehérvári Panna Nóra Before we go any further.... Uniqueness in Mass Production isn't the name of Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design, MOME, Budapest graduate Fehérvári Panna Nóra's lamps. Panna calls them MushLume, for understandable, and highly enjoyable, reasons, but sadly MushLume is the name of a Brooklyn, New York, based manufacturer of lighting crafted from mushroom mycelia, and so it's unlikely to remain their
read more
Olimp by Studio Raketa, as seen at Zagreb Design Week 2024 In context of critical reflections on the Bauhauses, reflections also intended to draw a distinction between the Bauhauses and the HfG Ulm, to explain that the HfG Ulm wasn't simply a post 1939-45 War continuation of the Bauhauses, Otl Aicher once asked, "is design an applied art, does it appear in the elements square, triangle and circle, or is it a discipline that draws its criteria from the task, from use, from production and
read more
My Daughter's Room by Josef Tomšej, as seen at Designblok Prague 2024 (it's a video wall in the background, loved the concept, didn't make photographing it any easier. But still loved the concept) There is a much posed question in terms of chairs as to if we need ever more chairs. The answer is, we do. We certainly do; but, and as opined from A Chair and You at the Grassi Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Leipzig, we all do. Similarly, at each and every design week or furniture fair we invariably
read more
Excito by Tea Gluvačević, as seen at Zagreb Design Week 2024 We're not sure how things are today in pre-school and primary education institutes, but when we were young every child regularly made a lantern by cutting some slits in a piece of paper, rolling it to a tube, and then squashing it a little. Which is a very simple, and slightly derogatory, certainly unfair, manner via which to describe the lamp, lantern, Excito by Sarajevo Academy of Fine Arts' student Tea Gluvačević. For not only
read more
Aalto by Jasna Faginović, as seen at Zagreb Design Week 2024 Back in the day sofas, as with all other furniture objects, were solid, immutable, unresponsive objects. Were what they were and remained that for infinity, regardless of how everything else around them changed. Then the human species discovered modularity. A moment as important, and as fundamental, for the human species as the discovery of fire, the wheel, or the potato chip. And since when sofas have been modular. Except they
read more
Kućni Bench by Lana Veble, as seen at Zagreb Design Week 2024 One of the (great many) consequences of our contemporary European society is the physical toll all the sitting takes on our bodies; a cost for our contemporary conveniences that means for ever more of us regular physical exercise is important, necessary, be that organised sport or simply a few exercises, stretches and bends at home. But much as nobody wants a home-office desk in their home that screams OFFICE at you, so to does
read more
In 1991 the German, designer, theoretician, educator and co-initiator of the Hochschule für Gestaltung Ulm, Otl Aicher, opined that "die Relation von Form und Material lässt sich nirgendwo so gut nachweisen wie bei Nahrungsmitteln, also etwa bei Teigwaren"1, 'the relationship between form and material is nowhere better demonstrated than in foodstuffs, such as pasta'. With the exhibition al dente: Pasta & Design the HfG-Archiv, Ulm, explore not only the relationships between form and material
read more
In the exhibtion A Chair and You at the Grassi Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Leipzig, there is more than A Chair and You can look at them, study them, explore them, converse with them. But not sit on them. In the presentation Stühle zum (Be)Sitzen on the first floor landing of the Grassi Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Leipzig, there is more than A Chair and You can look at them, study them, explore them, converse with them. And sit on them. Thirteen chairs which unite more than just thirteen
read more
Rowac at Berlin Design Week 2024 By the time the Peter-Behrens-Bau was inaugurated in 1917 Robert Wagner’s Rowac Schemel, one of the earliest seating objects crafted from lightweight sheet steel, had been on the market for almost a decade. If it was used in the workshops and offices of the Nationale Automobil-Gesellschaft, NAG, who, at that time, called the Peter-Behrens-Bau home, or by the wider AEG family to whom NAG was a member, and who so defined the industrialisation of the early 20th
read more
Badekarren in Katwijk by Wilhelm Gutmann, 1908 (Image Public Domain, courtesy of Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main) ... ... Wilhelm Gutmann used the occasion of Grassimesse Leipzig 1920 to present...... .......we no know. Or more accurately, in terms of Wilhelm Gutmann generally we no know hardly nothing. Certainly we no know an awful lot more than the we no know about the other Grassimesse 1920 designers featured thus far in these dispatches. Despite the fact that, arguably, there should
read more
Components of the Bold collection by András Kerékgyártó for Brave Home, as seen at Magyar Design, Otthon Design Budapest 2024 András Kerékgyártó wasn't the first Hungarian designer whose work we saw, that would have been Marcel Breuer, but András is, arguably, that active Hungarian designer who has featured most often in these dispatches. A position achieved not on account of any formal legal agreement, just to clarify, but simply because he invariably produces good, interesting work worthy
read more
Polc íróasztallal by Woodoo, as seen at Magyar Design, Otthon Design Budapest 2024 Budapest, indeed Hungary as a whole, was an important centre of that which today is known as Art Nouveau, or Szecesszió to be more precise, if an expression of Art Nouveau, Szecesszió, that all too often tends to get overlooked by the expression of if its near neighbour Vienna. But a Szecesszió which one can't overlook walking through and around Budapest. Nor can one overlook Szecesszió standing in the
read more
The Budapest born photographer Robert Capa is quoted as once opining that, in context of photography, "it is not enough to have talent, you also have to be Hungarian"1, and in terms of furniture design there was, arguably, a period when that was also true; for all during that, all too, brief period between the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian empire in 1918 and the outbreak of the 1939 - 1945 war, an inter-War period that, amongst other episodes, saw the Magyar trio Marcel Breuer, Kálmán
read more
There is a convincing argument to be made that in our contemporary age perfection is one of our primary aims, one of our guiding aims, individually and collectively. A convincing argument to be made that perfection is, to paraphrase a Shane MacGowan, 'the measure of our dreams'. And there are no shortage of experts out there to tell us all how to achieve that perfection, in all areas of life and work and love and home and hobby. With Perfectly Imperfect – Flaws, Blemishes and Defects the
read more
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
read more
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,
read more
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
read more
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.
read more
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.
read more
