Back in November the winners of the 2013 German Federal Ecodesign Award - the Bundespreis Ecodesign - were announced at a slightly less than glittering ceremony in Berlin. In February 2014 an exhibition featuring the 12 winners and further 19 nominated projects opened in Ludwigsburg. Following a brief stop at the designforum in Vienna the Bundespreis Ecodesign 2013 exhibition is currently being presented at the headquarters of the Umweltbundesamt - the German Federal Environment Agency - in
read more
By way of a final addendum to our "5 New Design Exhibitions for July 2014" post, the Design museum Gent are currently hosting an exhibition devoted to one of the true masters of 20th century design, Finn Juhl. A designer who, as regular readers will be aware, we yield ground to no man to in our admiration for. Born in Frederiksberg, Denmark in 1912 Finn Juhl studied architecture at The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen. Following his graduation in 1934 Finn Juhl took up a
read more
As if to help underscore the assertion in our "5 New Design Exhibitions for July 2014" Post that July and August tend to be quiet months in terms of design and architecture exhibitions because near everyone is on holiday, Berlin's Direktorenhaus Gallery have titled their 2014 summer exhibition "Summer Break VA". The VA being shorthand for "various artists". "We're not here" they seem to be saying, "but if we were here, these are the sort of delights you could enjoy" Established in 2010
read more
When we met up with Katharina Mischer and Thomas Traxler aka mischer’traxler ahead of the exhibition Castling. Designers meet the collection at the Kunstgewerbemuseum Dresden, we also briefly discussed their "It takes more than one" project which was presented at Design Miami Basel 2014 by Victor Hunt Designart Dealer. Created in context of the studio's tenure as the 2011 "W-Hotels Designer of the future", It takes more than one is a mirror that requires two people for it to function. And as
read more
"Weltstadt – Who creates the city?", we wrote in our review of the eponymous exhibition at the Deutsches Architektur Zentrum, DAZ Berlin, "is about promoting a dialogue, of encouraging discussion and for all about motivating each and every one of us to think about our own communities and our own cities and to consider what could be improved. And for all how." Practical examples of just how projects to achieve such could be organised and what they could, potentially, achieve can currently be
read more
Popular opinion is that old buildings deserve be preserved, restored, used and loved. Popular opinion however has a very singular and narrow definition of "old." A definition normally based on a simplified, generic, understanding of visual beauty rather than age or historical relevance. Something that means a lot of 1950s buildings are all too often classed as meaningless post-war quick-fixes. And so ignored. Allowed to fall in disrepair. Demolished. Munich based photographer Hans Engels
read more
Tradition being the predictable beast that it is, July and August tend to be quiet months in the design universe – most everyone taking themselves off to their Gîtes, Dachas, Ferienwohnungen, Vakantiehuis and lakeside bungalows for a few weeks of quiet reflection ahead of the autumn trade fair and design week season. Most. But not all. A few hardy souls remain, stocking the furnaces of creative culture with architecture and design based exhibitions intended to inspire, excite and entertain.
read more
Back in the day all ten projects nominated for the DMY Award were presented in a post-festival exhibition in the Bauhaus Archiv Berlin. An exhibition that for us always made perfect sense, mixing as it did experimental, conceptual works by contemporary designers with the conceptual, experimental spirit of Bauhaus. That however was then. And the cooperation sadly ended a couple of years ago. If we're honest we find it a real shame that that is no longer the case, not least for the designers.
read more
Since June 14th 2014 the Basel metropolitan region has been one contemporary design institution richer: the Pulpo Galerie in Lörrach. Run by the contemporary lighting and accessory manufacturer Pulpo in the Pulpo HQ, the Pulpo Galerie is part Pulpo Galerie, part Pulpo showroom, part Pulpo office, part Pulpo newsagent, part informal Pulpo Café. But principally Pulpo Galerie. The inaugural exhibition, Space, presents recent works by painter Daniel Richter, sculptor Tobias Rehberger and the
read more
Amid all the hype surrounding "Bauhaus Style", "Bauhaus Classic" and "Bauhaus Design" it is often forgotten that Bauhaus was a college. And whereas many, if not most, people can name half-a-dozen or so Bauhaus graduates; hundreads of students passed through Bauhaus. And it wasn't all just partying and theatre. They did also learn. But what did they learn? How did they learn? And what can we learn from how and what they learnt? In an attempt to answers such questions the Bauhaus Archiv
read more
While the art world is awash with anecdotes of cleaners disposing of installations having confused them for rubbish, we're not aware of any works of designer furniture having suffered a similar fate. At Design Miami Basel 2014 however Milan based Erastudio Apartment-Gallery made a very good effort to initiate just such a première with their presentation of a 1950s bedroom ensemble by Ettore Sottsass: piled ungraciously, almost out of hand, in the corner of their stand the bed, chest of
read more
Strolling through the corridors of the Dresden Museum of Decorative Arts, the Kunstgewerbemuseum, one comes across a presentation called "Thronfolge" - Throne Succession - featuring three 18th century thrones which belonged to successive Sachsen Kings. And a Well Tempered Chair by Ron Arad. A delightful piece of juxtaposition made all the more enjoyable on account of the relative ease with which Arad's uncouth bent steel scoundrel fits in with the gilded and velvet noble decadence of yore. In
read more
As part of the build up to this year's Kortrijk Design Biennale the winners of the Interieur Awards 2014 were announced in Brussels at the end of May. Organised since 1974 the Interieur Award is an inter-disciplinary, international design award open to young designers. Past winners include Jurgen Bey (1990), Maarten Van Severen (1992) and Florian Kallus (2010) For the 2014 edition the Interieur Award was run in two categories "Spaces" and "Objects" The Spaces category called for submissions
read more
Should the 2014 football World Cup final see Italy meet Brazil that would, arguably, be a more than fitting celebration of the 100th anniversary of Italo-Brazilian architect, artist, designer and author Lina Bo Bardi. However, because football's fickle fate cannot be relied upon the Deutsches Architektur Zentrum, DAZ Berlin are currently staging the exhibition "Lina Bo Bardi - Together", an equally fitting tribute to Lina Bo Bardi and her work. Born in Rome on December 5th 1914 Achillina Bo
read more
"Do the expressions ‘art or design?’ and ‘art and design?’ still have a meaning? Has the question of an object’s status become obsolete?" asks Paris based designer Robert Stadler in the introduction to the exhibition QUIZ at Galerie poirel in Nancy. Rather than answer the question himself Robert Stadler has teamed up with Alexis Vaillant, Chief Curator at the CAPC Contemporary Art Museum in Bordeaux, to organise an exhibition in which objects from an enviable roster of international designers
read more
On the evening of Tuesday June 3rd the winners of the 2014 Designpreis Halle were announced at a ceremony in the town's historic Stadtbad public bath. Premièred in 2007 the Designpreis Halle is an international tri-annual design competition which in every edition asks designers to submit entries related to a particular theme. Following on from "Electricity" in 2007 and "Travel" in 2010 the 2014 theme was.... Water. A subject that in the juries opinion was best handled by Cologne based
read more
For us there is very little that epitomises fakeness better than Bling - bold, flash, arrogant jewellery distracting from the soullessness of the wearer. Or the object if we're talking about hideous bejewelled bottles and the like. For their summer 2014 exhibition Depot Basel invited 12 jewellery designers to present their own interpretation of "Fake" Organised in conjunction with the contemporary jewellery magazine Current Obsession Craft & Bling Bling - Fake presents a collection of
read more
We can't rule out that our interest in the project zTuA by Hochschule Rosenheim students Marko Steininger, Martin Winkler and Fabian Steiner is a direct consequence of the current situation in the (smow) blog HQ. That our professional opinions are being influenced by personal circumstances. We hope they aren't. But can't rule it out. zTuA is an acronym of "zwischen Tür und Angel" - "between door and hinge" - a nice German idiom that refers either to a necessary urgency, to being in the
read more
As our more loyal readers will be aware, for us the future is analogue. As ever more aspects of our daily routine are taken over by digital technology, the more time we have to concentrate on the things that matter. And they are all analogue. All. Parallel, open design and open processes will become more important as we all lose the need to be part of a stylised mass and finally comprehend that contemporary industrial production and distribution networks are no longer ecologically or
read more
What you see used to be what you got. However our modern world offers a plethora of viewing possibilities, and so now what you get is influenced by how you see what you see. To this plethora Berlin based collective Fischer Weidenmüller Unterberg have now added one further option. Without going into too much detail, through a manipulation of LCD projection technology the Clair Obscur project generates an image which is invisible to the human eye. Only the use of a special filter renders the
read more
Those of you who followed our sadly demised Posterous account - Why Twitter? Why? - will recall our joy at seeing the Bravais Desk by Canadian born, Rotterdam based designer Dana Cannam at the "Thoughts of Home" showcase during Dutch Design Week 2011. A wonderfully charismatic product Bravais impressed/impresses with its obvious functionality and effortlessly reduced form. Equally as effortlessly reduced is the modular tableware system "All of a Piece" developed by Dana Cannam in cooperation
read more
We recently attended a very interesting talk from Munich based designer Stefan Diez at the Vitra Design Museum in which, amongst other subjects, he briefly queried why design journalists are happy to write about furniture and accessories, but no one writes about, for example, safety helmets....... Ranger by Joe Engelhard and Michael Schuler for German manufacturer ENHA is, according to the designers, the first ever safety helmet to incorporate a double wall construction principle; thus
read more
If etymologists are to be believed the name "June" is derived from the Latin word iuniores - younger, so junior - a word that has also given us Juniperus. And Juniperus communis gives us the juniper berries that give gin its magic. And what is an exhibition opening without gin? And so what better month to visit an exhibition opening than June? Our five picks from the new June 2014 offerings features Swiss garden design, Spanish food design, Italian abstract design, Finnish modernist design
read more
At DMY Berlin 2014 fifteen students from the Fachhochschule Potsdam are presenting the results of the seminar "formHOLZ" Run under the supervision of Professor Hermann Weizenegger formHOLZ explored new possibilities with moulded, formed and otherwise shaped wood and the exhibition at DMY Berlin presents a series of prototypes which demonstrate new possibilities with one of the oldest, and most researched, materials/processes in industrial product design. And ably demonstrates that regardless
read more
