As we noted in our 5 New Design Exhibitions for August 2015 post "Everyone, but everyone, it would appear is on holiday." We weren't, even if the relatively meagre number of posts tends to imply otherwise. A meagre number of posts which elegantly prove that reduction can lead to higher quality... Eliel Saarinen's entry for the 1922 Chicago Tribune Tower competition Havina by Samuli Helavuo, as seen at Garden Unique Youngstars Cologne 2015 The Shrine by Sigurd
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The older we get the more important July becomes as it allows us to return to college to view design schools end of term exhibitions - a genuine highlight of our year. In addition July 2015 saw us celebrate two of the most important representatives of concrete construction, two completely contrasting representatives of concrete construction: Ulrich Muther und Le Corbusier. Rescue station on Binz Beach, Rügen, Germany by Ulrich Müther (completed 1968) Garderobe7 by Juliane Huhn as seen at
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June 2015 saw the DMY Berlin festival re-launch after the original organiser ran into financial difficulties; a re-launch which we took as a chance to study Berlin design in a little more detail..... Turtleneck Christof Flötotto & Sven Funcke, as seen at Pet Market, Galerie erstererster, Berlin during Berlin Design Week 2015 The Shrinking Office Project by Roy Yin, as seen at DMY Berlin 2015 Structural Skin New material by Jorge Penades, as seen at DMY Berlin 2015 Summus Aqua by Song
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May is traditionally the month in which the furniture design industry starts winding down towards summer.... fortunately, because after Milan all are flat broke. We took the opportunity to speak to Annemoon Geurts from Kazerne Eindhoven,view the Floris Wubben showcase Low Tech Crafts at DAD Galerie Berlin and wish English designer Robin Day a Happy 100th! The Poly side chair by Robin Day for Hille (bottom right), here with its contemporaries from Charles & Ray Eames and Eero Saarinen in the
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Just as January means Cologne, April is Milan. And normally only Milan. In 2015 however we managed to spice things up with an interview with Michael Geldmacher from Neuland Industriedesign on the method by which designers are paid and organising a survey of designers attitudes on how they are paid. Didn't change the world. Made us feel a little better however..... USM Haller Privacy Panels, as seen at Milan Furniture Fair 2015 Michael Geldmacher and Eva Paster a.k.a Neuland Industriedesign
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Browsing in our Pictorial Review archive it appears March 2013 was “a month of travelling: Stuttgart, Chemnitz, Weimar, Dessau….. its amazing we found time to actually write anything…….” And March was 2014 was "....the same. Just replace “Stuttgart, Chemnitz, Weimar, Dessau” with “Frankfurt, Münsingen, Berlin, Weil am Rhein” March 2015 was mainly spent in the office. Did however mean we managed to pen a little more than in previous Marches, including a birthday tribute to Harry Bertoia and
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February 2015 saw us break new ground and make our first visits to Munich Creative Business Week, the magnificently monikered 's-Hertogenbosch in Holland and Ekumfi-Ekrawfo, Ghana. The latter albeit only virtually. Sadly. And Nils Holger Moormann used our pages to call for a revolution......... How We Work, new Dutch Design at the Stedelijk Museum 's-Hertogenbosch Dry-lacquer vessels by Chung Hae Cho, as seen at Tools for A Break - Korean Crafts and Design, Galerie Rieder Munich during
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January being what it is we spent most of the month in Cologne attending the 2015 IMM Cologne Furniture Fair and the parallel Passagen Design Festival. The undisputed highlight of Passagen 2015 for us was the show case MAD ABOUT LIVING – 24 Designers from Brussels, which introduced us to numerous interesting Belgian creatives, and Ateliers J&J, who we feel certain will crop up a couple of times in the course of our review of 2015. In addition we were very impressed by the Objects in Between
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When is a terminus not an end station? When it is the exhibition Endstation Ubierring 40 - Terminus Ubierring 40 - at the Kölnisches Stadtmuseum, Cologne. Endstation Ubierring 40 at the Kölnisches Stadtmuseum, Cologne On March 31st 1993 the Art Department at Cologne Fachhochschule, the city's university of applied sciences and arts, closed, the final act in a process which, effectively, began in 1971 with the merging of the Kölner Werkschulen art and craft college with the Fachhochschule.
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Following on from the exploration of Ferdinand Kramer's design work in the exhibition The Kramer Principle: Design for Variable Use at the Frankfurt Museum Angewandte Kunst, the Frankfurt based Deutsches Architekturmuseum is presenting Line Form Function. The Buildings of Ferdinand Kramer, an exhibition dedicated to the German functionalist's architectural output. In many ways the logical follow up. And an excellent extension and completion of The Kramer Principle. So much so it makes you
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Horribly denigrating as the term "Swedish Grace" unquestionably sounds, it is a well meant phrase coined to refer to the classicist art and design movement that developed in Sweden in the 1920s and 30s: a movement which served as a bridge between the Art Nouveau-esque national romanticism of the early 20th century and the approaching functionalism, and which thus in many respects paved the way for the Scandinavian interpretation of international modernism as so magnificently presented at the
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For the 13th century Dominican friar Thomas Aquinas beauty required a perfect combination of integritas, consonantia & claritas - integrity, harmony, clarity. In a similar vein the 15th century Italian playwright and philosopher Leon Battista Alberti defined beauty as the harmony of all parts in relation to one another, a character in one of his plays extending this idea to proclaim, in answer to a question concerning a woman's' beauty, "She is so beautiful that nothing could be added to her,
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In our 5 New Design Exhibitions for October 2015 post we recommended, amongst other exhibitions, the Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec showcase 17 Screens at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, noting, "There is something very agreeable about the way Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec pop up in the most unexpected places with the most unexpected projects. Not least because, and as a general rule, the more unexpected the location and the more unexpected the project the greater the chance of experiencing something that
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Obviously defining a "Best of" Dutch Design Week, or indeed any design week, is impossible, one can only hope to attempt to collate your personal highlights and thus provide an impression of how you experienced the event: which is exactly what DAD Galerie Berlin are currently doing with a presentation of some their highlights. Our highlight of their highlights is without question the new hanging lamp by Floris Wubben. When we spoke to Floris at his solo Low Tech Crafts exhibition at DAD
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December can be a trying month: always having to think of others; always having to patronise bars and restaurants you've spent the rest of the year wishing would return to the parallel hell from whence they came; eating, eating and eating as if trapped in some culinary Groundhog Day. Do yourself a favour, gift yourself a few hours and visit one of the following new design and architecture exhibitions opening in December 2015. We can't guarantee they'll be good, but can guarantee they'll be
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In our post from the Barbican Art Gallery exhibition "The World of Charles and Ray Eames" we noted the disappointing sparsity with which the otherwise excellent exhibition deals with the private world of Charles and Ray Eames. Arguing that understanding the designer is necessary to fully understanding their work. Charles and Ray are sadly no longer with us to directly answer our many questions; however, in the person of Charles's grandson Eames Demetrios we have an excellent alternative.
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The inclusion of a sheet steel bookend amongst our photos from the Grassi Museum for Applied Arts exhibition “Art Déco: Smart, Precious, Sensual” resulted in one or the other queried look in our direction, enquiries after our health and even questions as to if all our other photos were so unusable that, in our desperation, we had been reduced to using a shot of a piece of understatedly painted bent sheet steel. No, no we replied, all was good. As were the rest of our photos. That bookend
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As we noted in our post celebrating Burg Giebichenstein Kunsthochschule Halle's 100th birthday, one of Paul Thiersch's first initiatives upon taking charge of the Handwerkerschule Halle, the future Burg Giebichenstein, was to establish workshops to connect art and trade and thus properly prepare his students for the demands of the emerging industries. It is therefore only fitting that to round off the institution's centenary celebrations an exhibition should be being staged celebrating the
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As older and more loyal readers will be aware if there is one thing we really, really dislike, more so than even "street food" or swans, it is black and white portrait photography. Which of course explains why we are so fascinated by the black and white portraits by Dutch photographer Anton Corbijn........ Anton Corbijn - Hollands Deep & 1-2-3-4 @ C/O Berlin Born in Strijen, Holland as the son of a clergyman and nurse Anton Corbijn taught himself photography in his teenage years and cut his
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All with an interest in and/or a desire to understand how historicism in architecture, art and design ceded to modernism could do worse than visit Germany this coming winter. Following on from the opening of the exhibitions "Art Nouveau. The Great Utopian Vision" at the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg and "The Bauhaus #itsalldesign" at the Vitra Design Museum, the Grassi Museum for Applied Arts Leipzig have now closed the gap with their new exhibition Art Déco: Smart, Precious, Sensual
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By way of an addendum to our 5 New Design Exhibitions for November 2015 post, the Kaiserslautern University of Technology's Architecture Gallery are hosting "Jean Prouvé - vom System zum Haus" - "Jean Prouvé - from system to house" - in which the results of a semester project exploring the construction systems of Jean Prouvé are being presented. Although arguably best known for his furniture designs, a large part of Jean Prouvé's career and energy was spent developing, and indeed
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Since 2000 the International Marianne Brandt Contest has been searching for the Poetry of the Functional in art and design. That the triennial competition is still running doesn't mean they have yet to find it, rather underscores both the variety of interpretations inherent in the phrase and also the evolving nature of poetry, functionality and the relationship between the two: there is no definitive answer just an irregular array of contemporary, potentially fleeting, best fits. And over the
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On Thursday October 29th the winners of the Kölner DESIGN Preis 2015 were announced in a ceremony at the Museum für Angewandte Kunst Köln, MAKK. Open to students from Cologne's seven creative colleges and their international partner institutions the 8th edition of Germany's highest endowed prize for student diploma projects carried a total prize money of €15,000 and saw 29 projects nominated, projects ranging from products, to concepts and onto more fundamental research. For us the use of
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In the complete interview with Matylda Krzykowski ahead of the Depot Basel exhibition Forum for an Attitude, there is a statement from Matylda which try as we might we simply could not crowbar into our published text: "most people have never visited a design show, art shows yes, but not design shows" It hadn't occurred to us before. But it's true. You don't go to design museums do you? And presumably also not architecture museums! Or certainly not architecture musems if you don't go to
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