Design weeks are part of the daily grind of our profession. For those outwith the industry it all just looks like jaunting off to another exotic sounding location and going to a lot of cocktail parties with unfeasibly gorgeous and entertaining people. For others it may be. For us it's early mornings, heavy rucksacks, lots of polite small talk, little food, lots of walking, lots of avoiding polite small talk, late nights. And we generally have to buy our own beer. Which we typically drink
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On his 2009 album "Waxing Gibbous" Falkirk balladeer Malcolm Middleton included the song "Red Travellin' Socks" a jaunty - if for us touch too obvious - ode to his love/hate relationship with, well his Red Travellin' Socks. Wearing his socks he's reminded of the freedom of the open road that is currently helping him fulfilling his primitive desires - until such time as the romantic myth of the endless highways explodes and he begins to long for home. The red socks symbolising his frustration
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Following on from our interview with Nikolas Kerl - a designer/producer at the very start of his career, we continue our exploration into the current state of the Swiss designer furniture industry with a producer who have "a little more" experience. Born out of a family carpentry and shop fitting business, Röthlsberger Kollektion effectively began producing their own collections in the late 1970s through collaborations with Swiss designers such Trix and Robert Haussmann, Susi and Ueli Berger
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Part of our motivation for visiting Neue Räume Zurich 2011 was to try to gauge and get a feel for the current state of the designer furniture industry in Switzerland. Hidden as it is behind its Alpine shroud, it's all to easy to assume everything is always rosy in Confoederatio Helvetica, and that it's furniture designers and producers have little to do all day but count their cash and try to avoid losing their fillings to chewy, pointy, chocolate. However as the Swiss Franc rose skyward like
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As reported last week we sadly couldn't make it to the opening of Cirkel by Daphna Laurens at Galerie Gosserez in Paris. Because we were at the opening of Kibbutz and Bauhaus in Dessau. However Daphna and Laurens were kind enough to send us a few photos of the works. As older readers will know we are always very wary about judging articles on the strength of photos alone; that said, the Cirkel collection does look very promising. For us the highlight is probably "Leaning Lamp". Resembling
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"...I will never forget how shocked I was the first time I arrived in Degania A, one of the old kwuzoth. It was almost a textbook example of bad planning. The wind hit the dung heaps first, bringing flies and the stench initially to the stables and then to the kitchen, picking up the odours there and then carrying the whole mix to the dining halls and living quarters."1 In his all to vivid description of the conditions at Degania A, Israeli architect Richard Kaufmann beautifully alludes to the
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Very occasionally we see something that makes us stop in our tracks. At Neue Räume Zurich that something was the Milanese producer Plinio il Giovane. We know we moan a lot about Italy's over-rated position at the top of Mount Design. But just as they seem to have an unending reserve of corrupt politicians, so do they also seem able to produce quality designer furniture producers out of thin air. Handmade from oak the Plinio il Giovane collection not only looks fantastic; but many of the
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One of our favourite projects during Vienna Design Week was the Passionswege project "The Swing" by Warsaw based Beza Projekt at Atelier Telliez. Philippe Telliez is a "tapessier" - a profession that can only be truly described in paragraphs, but essentially is an upholsterer who primarily works with wall hangings, tapestries and the like. Anna Łoskiewicz and Zofia Strumiłło-Sukiennik from Beza Projekt combined this "hanging" aspect with the materials Atelier Telliez's use on a daily basis
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Sometimes the simplest ideas are the best. Commissioned to undertake a Vienna Design Week Passionswege project with Viennese hat maker Mühlbauer Hutmanufaktur, Slovakian designer Tomas Kral focused on the visual - and in many languages linguistic - closeness of a lamp shade and cap visor to create a delightful series of hat themed table lamps. All the lamps have a ceramic base; and the shades are created from "normal" hat making materials using "normal" hat making processes A real fun
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Every year at Dutch Design Week we always take time out to escape the design circus and visit Area 51 Skate Park. Because even if it does make us feel really old; Area 51 probably has more to do with design than a lot of what we see at most designer furniture trade fairs throughout the year. Established in 2002 - so one year after Dutch Design Week - Area 51 is 3000 sqm metres of landscaped wood inside an old industrial building on the former Philips estate where youngsters can skate and
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We must start this post with a small admission. We lied to Illuminartis managing director Thomas Germann. It was however a very necessary lie. In short, Thomas asked us what we thought of their lamps; and we said we weren't really lamp people. The truth is that after two weeks of non-stop design shows our collective cache was full and we were simply unable to process new information at any sort of useful rate. Our brains were full. But we didn't want to bore the poor man with our lives.
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Obviously in his old age our colleague with the camera is getting a little slower. He'd only just recovered from the shock of getting photographed by Christoffer Martins at the Nils Holger Moormann "Hölle von Aschau" race day: when in drops another snap of him pushing the limits of design photography. And his own physical capabilities. Snapped with an iPhone by Eindhoven photographer Kasper van‘t Hoff while documenting the "Great Taste for Waste" exhibition in Kasper's Klokgebouw atelier, the
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We seem to remember getting really annoyed once by the number of platform seats on display at European design events. However two projects have renewed our faith in the possibilities offered by raised seating. Tur-Tur by Eric Degenhardt from the Richard Lampert Kids Only Collection. And Konstantin Schmölzer @ Verdarium The project sadly doesn't seem to have a name; however, in essence it involved creating a space that offered stability, security and a place from which to quietly observe and
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The final stage of our 2011 autumn tour took us to Neue Räume Zurich, Switzerland's largest designer furniture trade fair. And quite possibly Switzerland's most bemuddled designer furniture trade fair. We do appreciate that the organisers are trying to make Neue Räume all things to all men, and offer a wide range of products, producers and design directions. And we really liked what the organisers were trying to do. But somehow squeezing so much into such a relatively small space just
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"Wooden spoon for pickled vegetables by John F. Kennedy" ? ? ? John F. Kennedy. Green Mountain Woodcrafters, Vermont. And no relation of Teddy or Robert. Still cheered us up. From March 20th until April 25th 1951 Stuttgart hosted the first post-war exhibition of modern American home furnishings and appliances in Europe. Organised by the New York Museum of Modern Art under the title "Design for Use, USA", the exhibition featured a cross section of American domestic design. And a Who's
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We imagine most of our readers don't understand that much about drums. We certainly don't. Or at least didn't. At Designers' Open we learnt a lot more. And it's a lot more fascinating than you might imagine. Specifically we learnt about the Zoom Bass Drum System from Leipzig based Rockstroh Drums. In essence, in order to change the sound of a bass drum, you have to adjust the tension of the skins. Which involves a lot of work. And takes a lot of time. Rockstroh Drums, working in
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One of our highlights at Dutch Design Week 2010 was Made Out Portugal #1, and so logically we were keen to see how the project had developed over the past 12 months. At the most obvious level, in comparison to their first show the project has expanded and now includes Portuguese designers who aren't based in Holland. Which was of course one of the aims of the project, to create a network of exiled Portuguese designers. And so in that sense the project certainly appears to be moving in the
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Although it has been quiet around Erik Wester of late, it's fair to say he remains our favourite Norwegian designer. However he now officially has competition. At Designers' Open 2011 a group of 10 Norwegian design students presented examples of their work on a joint stand under the title "Look to Norway" Quite possibly, the first ever Norwegian design to be seen at Designers' Open. For us the most interesting pieces were Le Korpusiør by Jørgen Platou Willumsen - a very simple yet endearing
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Back in the 80s there was nothing Hannibal Smith liked more than when a plan came together. Obviously we don't know such a feeling, but nothing gets us reaching for a hand-rolled Havana and grinning somewhat malevolently as much as when Lady Luck binds the various strands of our Blog together to give the impression of a coherent plan. Back at Norm=Form, Timo de Rijk argued that all modern design is simply a recreation of older standards - because the public expect a product to have a specific
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Inspiration for a design exhibition can come from the most unlikely of places. Even the rubbish your dog picks up and brings home. Kasper van ‘t Hoff's black lab Gus likes to pick up rubbish and bring it home. Rather than throw it away, Kaspar keeps the rubbish and photographs it. Kasper van ‘t Hoff is a photographer. So it's not weird. If he wasn't it would be. One day Kasper told ceramic artist Marina Relou about Gus and both agreed that he should be honoured for his contribution to
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Its a real Milan feeling in the (smow)blog team at the moment; as we face an impossible number of parallel exhibitions and events. With Eindhoven and Qubique already running Designers' Open Leipzig 2011 opened it's doors to the public this morning. Although to be fair, it is very nice to be able to get back to the office to type. The top story is that the move to the Baumwollspinnerei is, at least from a visitors perspective, a full success. Halle 14 has just a wonderful ambiance that
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Pretty much half-way between Piet Hein Eek's design wonderland and Sectie C, with among other tenants Nacho Carbonell, is Atelierdorp. Based in an old office block near the middle of town, Atelierdorp is both a workspace for designers and platform for contemporary design and research. With a wonderful view over, but sadly not into, the PSV Eindhoven stadium Under the title "In Between" Atelierdorp's exhibition during Dutch Design Week 2011 explored the relationship between the fluid state of
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During Dutch Design Week the Eindhoven based design platform Onomatopee is hosting an exhibition looking at ways of adding cultural value to raw materials. In a time when raw materials are becoming rarer and our economic prosperity ever more dependent on the fluctuating prices of such, how can we disengage from this cycle and give these economic materials a cultural value? Or, put another way, how can we use raw materials in an alternative fashion, that removes them from the economic cycle
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During Dutch Design Week 2011 Premsela, the Netherlands Institute for Design and Fashion, opened an exhibition in the Designhuis Eindhoven that both celebrates Dutch Design Week's 10th anniversary and honours 15 Dutch designers who got their break and/or made their name in Eindhoven. Rather than simply present the 15 in isolation, curator Miriam van der Lubbe presents them in the context of a young designer they admire and of someone who inspired them. And so, for example, Richard Hutton is
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