Back in the days of the Roman Republic Martius was the month in which troops mustered in preparation for the coming battle season, to prepare, as it were, to March into war. Please don't! The world's out of control enough as it is! Rather use the coming spring as your incentive, to (a) make up for some of those New Year's Resolutions you've long forgotten you'd made and (b) to march into a future of new impulses, new understandings, new perspectives, a new world. To march into an architecture
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It's not just the presence, or lack of, female designers in the contemporary furniture industry, nor just the presence, or lack of, female designers in museum exhibitions that informs and influences understandings of the contribution of female designers to contemporary furniture design and the (hi)story of furniture design, it is also the presence, or lack of, female designers in design museum and applied arts museum collections, those depositories and reserves of furniture design's history and
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"What is the goal?" asked Elsie de Wolfe in 1913 in context of domestic interior design. "A house", she answered, "that is like the life that goes on within it, a house that gives us beauty as we understand it and beauty of a nobler kind that we may grow to understand, a house that looks amenity."1 How Elsie de Wolfe understood such, and how over the intervening century and a bit understandings of life, beauty, nobler beauty, amenity, the goal(s) of domestic interior design have developed and
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With the 2020 edition Stockholm Furniture Fair celebrates its 70th birthday. Grattis på födelsedagen! We did think about taking along a cake, but knew the halls of Stockholmsmässan would be filled to the rafters with Kanelbullar, as indeed would we. And so by way of a present, a Stockholm Furniture Fair 2020 High 6!! EIO Lounge Chair from Nuen The first thing to say is that we feel that, for us, EIO is but the start of a journey. The second thing to say is that ahead of any trade fair one
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"In many workshops and offices it is regularly attempted to achieve both direct and semi-indirect lighting by means of large, single, light sources, that is, to work only with ample general lighting. Yet as pleasant as this type of lighting may be, in many cases it proves unsatisfactory on account of certain inherent shortcomings"1 So opined in 1926 the German engineer Curt Fischer. Rhetorically. For in 1919 he had already patented his first solution to resolving such "inherent shortcomings".
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On March 6th 1927 the exhibition Europäisches Kunstgewerbe opened at the Grassimuseum Leipzig, not only a presentation of contemporary European applied arts but the inaugural exhibition in the museum's (almost finished) new home on the city's Johannisplatz. With the exhibition Spitzen des Art déco the Grassi Museum für Angewandte Kunst Leipzig stage not only a presentation of European Art déco porcelain, but a reminder of both the Johannisplatz complex's Art déco heritage and the vibrancy,
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Apart from the chance to peruse and consider the collections and new products of and from a wide variety of manufacturers and labels, one of the real joys of visiting any furniture fair is the opportunity it allows to observe designers in conversation with manufacturers and labels. For all in pairings that currently don't formally exist. We never eavesdrop on such conversations, that would be rude, and to overplay our prowess as spies; but we do enjoy imagining what may arise from those
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In our post from the exhibition Design Gruppe Pentagon at the Museum Angewandte Kunst Cologne we noted that Gallery Pentagon was laterally based in Cologne's Bismarckstrasse. Bismarckstrasse 50 to be precise, a former cardboard packaging factory which in the 1980s was developed into spaces for creatives of various ilks..... .....Bismarckstrasse 50 is still home to creatives of various ilks, and is still home to a gallery, Galerie Martina Kaiser, where in context of the 2020 Passagen Interior
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Our increasingly networked, digital, virtual society is not only changing our relationship to innumerable everyday activities, activities such as personal communication, shopping or watching television to name but three, and thereby activities which a few short years ago seemed destined to remain unchanged for ever, but is also changing our relationship to work, be that in terms of what we do, where we do it or how we do it. Changes which invariably place both new demands on our furniture, and
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Within any regular pentagon one can locate, in numerous, manifold, relationships, the Golden Ratio, that centuries old guarantor of harmony, balance, beauty.... And within an irregular Pentagon? With the exhibition Design Gruppe Pentagon the Museum für Angewandte Kunst Cologne search for an answer in context of the 1980s Rheinland design quintet....... Design Gruppe Pentagon, Museum für Angewandte Kunst Cologne Established, more or less, formally in Cologne in 1985 by Gerd Arens, Wolfgang
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The long and winding (hi)story of furniture design is largely one of evolution not revolution, largely one of innumerable, often imperceptible, social, cultural, economic, technical, et al transformations, movements, hindrances and undulations which slowly, continually, combine and interact to widen and deepen the river as it flows. A process aided, abetted and accelerated by irregularly arising confluences where a new tributary flows into the unflinchingly onwards rolling mainstem. One such
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Off late, and certainly in a European context, January has become a month of forgoing, eschewing and general abstention, with campaigns such as Dry January and Veganuary extolling us to utilise our guilt at our dangerous, decadent, gluttony of late December as an impetus to radically alter our behaviour, as a catalyst for reduction. And while less is unquestionably more, and thus worth striving for, fundamental change is invariably more sustainably and meaningfully achieved through better
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In context of the 2013 exhibition Lightopia at the Vitra Design Museum a point of particularly intense illumination, pun intended, was the difference between light and lighting, and that the craft of the lighting designer is to bring a tangible form to an intangible material. With the exhibition Ingo Maurer intim. Design or what? Die Neue Sammlung – The Design Museum Munich celebrate, and remember, one of Germany's leading designer's of light..... Ingo Maurer intim. Design or what?, Die
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Looking back from the safety of 2019 it can be all too easy to assume that Bauhaus was a popularly received and much celebrated institution. ❌ From its very earliest days, even before the first students had arrived in Weimar, the institution met with tenacious criticism and steadfast resistance; and arguably nowhere more so than in Weimar. With the exhibition Mathilde von Freytag-Loringhoven. Painter, Author, Animal Psychologist and Bauhaus Critic the Stadtmuseum Weimar introduce one of the
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"Since the founding of the museum in 1864 there has been an ongoing committent to honouring the statute of the house, namely, to promote the art industries and the arts and crafts and to develop the taste of contemporary society"1 So noted the, then, Österreichisches Museum für angewandte Kunst's Director Wilhelm Mrazek in the catalogue to the museum's 1969 exhibition Sitzen 69, Sitting 69, an exhibition which sought "to develop the taste of contemporary society" in terms of sitting/seating.
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"...when we shall hear The rain and wind beat dark December, how, In this our pinching cave, shall we discourse The freezing hours away?" asks Arvirargus of his brother Guiderius in Shakespeare's play Cymbeline, before lamenting, "We have seen nothing" Easily solved old boy, a visit to an architecture or design exhibition should not only provide for new, stimulating, impressions but plenty of discourse throughout not only December but for many, many months to come. For all a visit in December
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Sitting unassumingly, and largely unnoticed, in the middle of Germany, the city of Gotha may have only little resonance with the majority, with the great unwashed; however, every European royal family can trace their lineage back to Gotha: most famously the English royal family through Queen Victoria's 1840 marriage to Prince Albert, but the royal houses of Sweden, Denmark, Spain, Holland, Norway, you get the idea, can all trace their lineage back to and through Gotha. Gotha and royalty ✔
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For all the popular associations of the inter-War years with the reduced and the paired down, with objects whose value was deemed inherent rather than something one added, one must remember that the inter-War years were also a period that brought forth the colours and confusions of Surrealism and the glitz and glamour of Art Déco: The Roaring of the Twenties being as much about a self-confidence of expression as a joyous relief that the war years were, once and for all, over. And thus that
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Birthday's are not only an occasion for celebration, but also for reflection on the year past, and on those milestone birthdays, for all the decadal birthdays, to reflect wider on the lives you've lived and the experiences you've enjoyed/endured, reflect on what you've gained, what you've lost, in those decades past. So, or similar, the Vitra Design Museum, who celebrate their 30th birthday in November 2019 and are marking the occasion with reflections, when not necessarily on their own three
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As this Bauhaus Weimar centenary year is making ever clearer, whereas Bauhaus may have been physically sited in Weimar, Dessau and (nominally) Berlin, approaching a better understanding of "Bauhaus" involves leaving those sites and following the many paths that either led to, or from, those sites. Paths that not only allow one to approach a better understanding of "Bauhaus", but for all to approach a better understanding of the wider developments of the inter-War years, of inter-War Modernism,
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On November 1st 1512 Pope Julius II celebrated the All Saint's Day Mass in the Sistine Chapel. The first public presentation of Michelangelo's frescos, and thereby the opening of a permanent exhibition still on show today. And still attracting a public. And while permanent exhibitions are good and important, for all in allowing an overview and an introduction to a subject, it is those ever changing temporary exhibitions that, should, ideally, allow for new insights and deepening of
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Whereas the 1920s may have been Roaring, Golden, Années folles, a decade which could be certain that The Great War, that war to end all wars, had brought lasting peace to Europe, and where the utopian visions of the International Modernists, coupled to political and social emancipation and technological progress, made everything possible, and meant we could all gaily Charleston away our nights and days; the 1920s was also the decade that ushered Europe into one of the darkest periods in its
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Having started this Bauhaus Weimar centenary year by exploring the path from Arts and Crafts to Bauhaus, the Bröhan Museum Berlin end this Bauhaus Weimar centenary year by exploring the path from Bauhaus to Arts and Crafts Scandinavia. Or more accurately put, by exploring Nordic Design. The Response to the Bauhaus. Nordic Design. The Response to the Bauhaus at the Bröhan Museum, Berlin As this Bauhaus Weimar centenary year winds down and Bauhaus mania fades, or at least until 2026 when
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László Moholy-Nagy may have given Marianne Brandt "mettle for metal", and metal may be the material with which she is most readily and popularly associated; however, as she wrote in 1922, "Ich bin ganz von Glas"..... I am entirely glass. Fragile? Transparent? Opaque? Metamorphic? Refractive? Sparkling? For its 7th edition the triennial International Marianne Brandt Contest sought projects exploring glass in all its interpretations, properties and essences; the 60 nominated projects being
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