As we noted in our designer barbecue post "... summer is bidding its final farewells" And with autumn's impudent chill invading ever more our pastoral calm the time for our hibernation approaches. And so we're currently exploring accommodation options. Fortunately it's been a bit of a "small house year" in these pages with, for example, Renzo Piano Building Workshop and Vitra's Diogene or Jean Prouve's Maison des Jours Meilleurs occupying our thoughts. Our first contact with reduced room
read more
Industrial design as any fool know is a prime example of the North's cultural superiority. Nurtured by science and encouraged by wealth traditional crafts moved ever more towards industrial production to meet the ever more complex wishes of society until the creation of goods for mass production became an industry in its own right. That this is absolute tosh was made perfectly clear by Charles & Ray Eames in their 1958 "India Report" in which they describe a burgeoning industrial production
read more
In 2019 the Staatlichen Bauhaus Weimar celebrates the 100th anniversary of its founding. And so, in effect, we can all celebrate 100 years of European Modernism as an important, tangible, unignorable and ever challenging movement. As part of the build-up to the anniversary the three Bauhaus locations - Berlin, Dessau, Weimar - have combined forces to instigate the Triennale der Moderne A Triennale with a triangular concept: Every three years each of the three locations will host three days
read more
On Saturday September 14th London Design Festival 2013 opens to the public. We'll sadly not be there. Sadly because London in early Autumn is always a delightful thought, and also because the 2013 programme would appear to contain a few real gems. As many of you know we don't like recommending shows/exhibitions/products/anything really we haven't seen ourselves. And while at such events the genuine personal highlights are often found where and when one least expects them, there are a few
read more
We're not going to pretend everyone is enamoured with our constant pops at Chemnitz. Truth is for the majority our behaviour lies somewhere between adolescent immaturity and the senseless ravings of an embittered pensioner. And indeed all did in fact begin when we were immature teenagers. And we've long since reach the enviable status of rancorous elder citizens. But despite being unenamoured with our demur, most have accepted and understood that it is nothing personal, that it is just an
read more
"Do the books that writers don't write matter?", asks Julian Barnes in his 1984 novel Flaubert's Parrot. In a similar vein, do the posts that bloggers don't write matter? Among Julian Barnes' arguments for not disregarding the unwritten novel is that, "Besides, an idea isn't always abandoned because it fails some quality control test. The imagination doesn't crop annually like a reliable fruit tree. The writer has to gather whatever's there: sometimes too much, sometimes too little, sometimes
read more
We know what you're thinking, lost furniture designs from Eero Saarinen and Charles Eames. ??? Yup. Two of the most important, influential and best known protagonists of mid-century modern design have a product series that has vanished without trace. And in our opinion it vanished exactly because Saarinen and Eames are two of the best known protagonists of mid-century modern design. But let's start at the beginning.... In 1940 the Museum of Modern Art New York staged their "Organic Design
read more
Much as we bemoan our annual trip to Milan, we do generally return enriched in some form or another. And, secretly, glad that we went. 2011's epiphany came when we were introduced to the Milanese producer Azucena. The introduction coming via Konstantin Grcic and his Entre-Deux "screen/divider/barricade", an object that was/is the start of a longer term cooperation between Grcic and Azucena. A continuation of which we are patiently awaiting. Until then we are whetting our Azucena appetite
read more
In our post "Wilhelm Wagenfeld Reviews Design for Use, USA" we quoted Wagenfeld's assertion that "In the current age machines and handicraft are intimately interwoven with one another." The Bauhaus Archiv Berlin is currently presenting an exhibition which ably demonstrates that some 80 years later such harmonious constellations cannot only still be found, but are still producing results every bit as refined and timeless as those realised by Wilhelm Wagenfeld. Poesie & Industrie - Poetry and
read more
Having already been to Chemnitz once this year we really are loathed to go a second time. It somehow feels unfair. Unjust. Twice. In one year. Why us! However on Saturday September 7th the winners of the International Marianne Brandt Contest 2013 contest will be announced and the awards exhibition formally opened. In the Industriemuseum Chemnitz. And we will be there. In the middle of June the nomination shortlist was unveiled, and even though it contains just the names of the nominated
read more
Until September 29th the Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein is presenting the exhibition Learning from Vernacular. Curated by Prof. Dr. Pierre Frey from the School of Architecture, Civil and Environmental Engineering at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Learning from Vernacular presents forty architectural models in 1:20 scale: forty architectural models which either present examples of local, traditional construction materials and principles or, and this is for us the most
read more
Until August 16th the architecture gallery Wechselraum in Stuttgart is presenting the exhibition "Aus allen Richtungen. Positionen junger Architekten im BDA" Organised by the Working Group for Young Architects within the German Architects Association "Aus allen Richtungen" presents not only the views of 30 young German architects on the role of architecture in contemporary society but also reflections on their own experiences. For the exhibition each architect was given a circa A3 sized box
read more
As many of you will be more than aware, it is very rare that a genuine expert reviews an exhibition for these pages; however, in the case of the 1951 exhibition "Design for Use, USA" we have one. The German silversmith, product designer and Bauhaus alumni Wilhelm Wagenfeld. At least indirectly. On January 5th 1951 "Twenty-five thousand pounds of American home furnishings exhibition material"1 departed the Museum of Modern Art in New York to begin a two year tour of Europe. Curated by Edgar
read more
The most ingenious aspect of the Hochschule für Gestaltung Karlsruhe is probably its location - sandwiched as it is between the Karlsruhe Centre for Art and Media with its research institutes, museums, galleries et al and Karlsruhe Job Centre..... Could there be a better metaphor for the precarious position of today's professional designer? Probably. But we're sticking to ours. Opened in 1992 the HfG Karlsruhe was established with the aim of creating an arts and design school for the modern
read more
One of the oldest and most rigorously applied global corporate identities is without question the use of the colour orange by the Dutch. The "Orange" in "The House of Orange" may have arrived by accident of marriage, but the Dutch instantly recognised its value and since the 16th century have ensured that everything, but everything, with even the vaguest relation to Nation and/or royal family is identified by a uniform colour. Even going so far as renaming the towns where they built their
read more
As any fool know, we traditionally begin our round-up of the summer semester student shows at the Bauhaus University Weimar. This year however Thüringen is having to yield to Stuttgart, and specifically the Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart. In relation to institutions such as the Bauhaus Uni Weimar or Burg Giebichenstein Halle, the Industrial Design department at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart is relatively small, but no less interesting. For the 2013 Rundgang there were
read more
Having recently publicly announced that the International Marianne Brandt Contest is "....without question one of our favourite international design competitions...." we're not really sure how to start a Post about the Designpreis Halle. At least not without sounding like complete tarts. Initiated in 2007 the Designpreis Halle is, much like the Marianne Brandt Contest, a tri-annual design competition. Or at least was. The third edition really should have taken place in 2013, didn't or at
read more
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
read more
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
read more
Established in 2010 by the architects Pascale Wakim and Nicolas Bellavance-Lecompte, Beirut based Carwan Gallery is and was the first contemporary design galley in the Middle East. After neigh-on three years as a Pop-Up Gallery, at the end of June Pascale and Nicolas will formally open their first permanent space in Beirut. Which sounds like confirmation that all is going well. We first came across Carwan Gallery in Milan at MiArt 2013, and were greatly taken with not only the objects
read more
As we noted in an earlier post, the team behind Depot Basel were recently awarded a highly coveted Swiss Design Award in the category Design Mediation. A very well deserved and very welcome recognition for all the work invested. And parallel to Design Miami Basel 2013 Depot Basel opened their latest exhibition, Craft & Drawing. We're a bit late with this post, Craft & Drawing only runs until June 29th 2013; however, as the largest part of our readership are and were unlikely to be in Basel
read more
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
read more
In our post about Diogene by Renzo Piano Building Workshop and Vitra we noted that a Jean Prouvé house could currently be marvelled at Design Miami Basel 2013. And we obviously don't want to deny all who weren't there the chance to do just that. Presented by Galerie Patrick Seguin the "Maison des Jours Meilleurs" was conceived in 1956 as a response to the campaigning French priest Abbé Pierre's call for low cost emergency housing for the Paris homeless. While the rich Italians and super
read more
Since establishing their own design studio in Stuttgart in 1994 Markus Jehs and Jürgen Laub have quietly gone on to become two of the busiest and most successful German product designers of their generation. With a client portfolio that includes the likes of Thonet, Wilkhahn, Fritz Hansen, Authentics or Belux Jehs+Laub are just at home with designing office furniture as with domestic furniture, lighting and accessories. And in a career splattered with international awards the highlight
read more
