Those Milan Design Week visitors brave enough to venture north of Garibaldi Station, yes there is civilisation up there, will be rewarded by an exhibition that demonstrates just how easily architecture, art and design can co-exist without threatening one another's integrity. Design, architecture and art combined in a borderless display of unity, tolerance and respect. Which sounds like a nice response to the current political situation in Italy. It isn't meant as such, but.... Magic Moments
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As it was our first event of Milan Design Week 2013, we're honouring Artemide with the first post from Milan Design Week 2013. And in specific Empatia by Carlotta de Bevilacqua and Paola di Arianello, for us the stand out object in the Artemide 2013 collection. It will sound like damning Carlotta and Paola with faint praise when we say that the overwhelming majority of the new Artemide products are architectural lighting - all technically very interesting, just architectural lighting - and
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Before Milan Design Week and Furniture Fair really get started we took the opportunity to relax a little and to visit Milan's contemporary art fair, MIART, and for all their new "Object" section devoted to contemporary design. Curated by Michela Pelizzari and Federica Sala "Object" presents 10 design galleries from Italy, France, Israel and the Lebanon. Ten international galleries presenting an equally cosmopolitan pallet of objects, ranging from limited edition pieces from the 1950s over the
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In little under a week the Doors of Hell will once again open to release Milan Design Week on our unsympathetic, unapologetic world. The normally pleasant, quiet and reasonably priced Lombardian metropolis will be overrun by molten rivers of corporate greed and naive student hope, transforming the canals, parks and former industrial sites into burning pits of contradiction, imitation and pure gold. Survival is a question of ignoring reality and convincing yourself that everything is brilliant
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Following on from the 2011 exhibition "Kibbutz and Bauhaus", the Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau is currently presenting a further exhibition devoted to the global reach of Bauhaus. Or perhaps better put, a further exhibition devoted to exploring the extent of the global network to which Bauhaus and its students belonged. This time the journey goes to India. And whereas "Kibbutz and Bauhaus" was largely concerned with architecture and urban planning, "Bauhaus in Calcutta" is pure art. In 1922 the
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Until June 23rd 2013 the Klassik Stiftung Weimar are presenting the exhibition "Henry van de Velde. Leidenschaft, Funktion und Schönheit" Conceived to celebrate Henry van de Velde's 150th anniversary "Leidenschaft, Funktion und Schönheit" is, according to the Klassik Stiftung Weimar, the first exhibition to fully explore van de Velde's complete creativity from his earliest artistic endeavours over his applied arts and furniture design work and onto his architecture, interior design and
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For us the biggest surprise with the announcement that Designers' Open 2013 would be staged in the Glass Hall at Leipzig Messe was the fact that it surprised us. The new organisers are after all Leipzig Messe........ However, somehow it never occurred to us that they would stage it in Schkeuditz. Yet, according to the official press release, having considered "...a multitude of locations...." in Leipzig they decided to host it themselves. A decision we can't pretend to support. For us
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In 1991 a couple of "fools" - not our words, not even their words, rather the politely paraphrased words of an institution in Baden-Württemberg who really should have more foresight - decided to launch a sales fair for contemporary designer furniture in Stuttgart. A sales fair where young designers could present their self-produced work direct to the buying public. In 1992 the first blickfang Stuttgart attracted some 42 exhibitors; no mean feat when you consider that blickfang was one of the
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Until April 9th the Wasserschloss Klaffenbach Chemnitz is presenting the exhibition Eames by Vitra. As we wrote in our initial post, Eames by Vitra presents a complete overview of the Charles and Ray Eames chair canon complemented by texts, photos and videos that explain the background to the Eames Studio. It is not an exhibition that completely explains the creative phenomenon that was Charles and Ray Eames. But then it doesn't set out to be. It's all about the chairs. Eames by Vitra in
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In a recent idle moment, we got to thinking.... if the Chinese - at least according to popular perception - just keep copying design ideas from others. Why don't we copy their designs? That'll teach them! We reasoned. A reasoning which of course brought home just how pointless the idea was. It would't teach no one nowt. The cheeky dogs at Droog Lab however have copied Chinese designs. But not out of revenge, rather as an exploration of the possibilities presented by copying. "The
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Its probably fair to say that had Porsche wanted to build their new museum in Stuttgart city centre, the planning permission process may have taken "some time" And would invariably still be "under consideration". Fortunately they decided to build the museum next to their factory in the Stuttgart suburb of Zuffenhausen, a location where they have more or less feudal sovereignty, and so we are all now able to behold what is without question the most imposing and brazen architectural project
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A couple of years ago N.W.A. frontman Ice Cube shot a short celluloid tribute to Charles and Ray Eames. Without even having to use his AK ... We didn't think anything more culturally acontextual could happen to the pair. And now ? On Thursday March 7th the exhibition "Eames by Vitra" opens at the Wasserschloß Klaffenbach in Chemnitz. A Charles and Ray Eames exhibition. In Chemnitz. The story of Charles and Ray Eames as furniture designers starts with their collaborations with Hermann
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Following quickly on the heels of the Eileen Gray retrospective at the Centre Pompidou Paris, on Friday February 22nd the Musée d'Art Moderne de Saint Etienne Métropole is opening an exhibition devoted to another Grand Dame of French Modernism, Charlotte Perriand. However, in contrast to the all-encompassing Eileen Gray exhibition, "Charlotte Perriand et le Japon" focuses on one period of Charlotte Perriand's biography. Or better put the role played by one country in her biography. Born in
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On Friday February 23rd the Vitra Design Museum open their 2013 spring/summer exhibition, Louis Kahn - The Power of Architecture. Organised in conjunction with the Netherlands Architecture Institute "The Power of Architecture" is the first major Louis Khan retrospective in over two decades and promises to present the most comprehensive study ever of one of modernism's more interesting and alluring sons. Albeit a son of modernism we suspect many of you will never have heard of. Born in
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From February 20th until May 20th 2013 the Centre Pompidou Paris is presenting a major retrospective devoted to the Irish artist, designer and architect Eileen Gray. As someone who once claimed "The future projects light, the past only clouds" we're not 100% certain the subject herself would approve; however, for us it is a welcome and long overdue Eileen Gray retrospective, and fittingly one being staged in the city that more than any other influenced and defined her life, character and
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Older readers will be aware that we have often held up the absence of some of Germany's most important designer furniture manufacturers as an unmissable indicator of an inherent weakness in the IMM Cologne brand. Those same readers will therefore understand the confusion we felt on seeing that Wilde+Spieth would, finally, be attending IMM Cologne in 2013. We were delighted they were participating. We however now have one argument less. Based in Esslingen near Stuttgart, Wilde+Spieth were
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In our Orgatec interview with Vitra CDO Eckart Maise we talked about the office system as the central component of the Vitra office furniture philosophy. One designer who has done more than most to establish Vitra's reputation in the office furniture sector is without question Antonio Citterio. Since his first collaborations with the company in the late 1980s Antonio Citterio has worked with Vitra on numerous key projects including the Ad Hoc system, the AC and ID office chair systems and most
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There are few things more pleasing in the world of furniture design than seeing a designer successfully replicating a winning form in a new object from another product genus. Seamlessly translating an idea developed for one project into a new context. A particularly good example of such a translation can be seen in the PS 07 bureau by Berlin based Delphin Design for Müller Möbelfabrikation. If we're honest, when we saw the PS 07 on the Müller stand at IMM Cologne 2013, although we noticed a
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As already said, we sadly won't make it to Stockholm Furniture Fair and Design Week this year. However, we still wanted to bring you a bit of Scandinavian design flair. Albeit Scandinavian design flair with a very strong Breton accent. Back at Orgatec 2012 one of the more surprising new product series on show was the so-called "A-Collection" by Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec for HAY. A truly delightful family of simple wooden objects, the collection principally surprised us because we had never
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In 2015 the London Design Museum will move to its new home in West Kensington. Ahead of the move the museum have taken the opportunity to re-design their permanent collection exhibition, and from Wednesday January 30th 2013 are presenting it in the context of a series of explorations of design themes under the motto “Extraordinary Stories About Ordinary Things” Extraordinary Stories About Ordinary Things is organised in 6 themed installations: Taste, Why We Collect, Icons, Identity & Design,
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Technically after IMM Cologne we should pack our kit bags and head of to Sweden for Stockholm Furniture & Light Fair + Stockholm Design Week. Technically. Sometimes however other things get in the way. Life, for example...... And so we'll sadly not make it to Stockholm this year. Sadly because Stockholm in February is just the most magical place. And sadly because of the wonders that we expect we'd find there. As Scandanavia's largest furniture and lighting trade fair, Stockholm is the
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In March 2012 we wrote about the Depot Basel show "Seats" which included a section devoted to the "Take a Seat" project run by Zurich based design studio Aekae in co-operation with the Zurich cafe "Z am Park" In essence "Take a Seat" involves commissioning contemporary designers to "re-work" four Horgenglarus 1-380 chairs. The results are then used for 6 months in Z am Park before being auctioned off to the highest bidder. The interesting aspect, or one of the interesting aspects, of the
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As we've said before, and will never tire of repeating, the Thonet back catalogue harbours an unparalleled treasure trove of design classics. And certainly enough interesting and challenging designs to keep half-a-dozen contemporary furniture companies in business for the next decade or two. Fortuitously just as Iceland's fisherman don't try to maximise profit by catching as many fish as possible as quickly as possible, so to do Thonet choose not to raid the archive every couple of months in
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In our interview with Michel Charlot about his lamp U-Turn for Belux he told us that "I like it when people look at an object and find it “normal”, but that is something which is quite difficult to achieve...." Such an object is without question Stool 60 by Alvar Aalto. As so to help explain the complexity hidden in the simplicity, and celebrate the object's 80th anniversary, the Ungers Archiv für Architekturwissenschaft are staging an exhibition during IMM Cologne 2013 devoted to this
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