On Monday January 13th the European design circus rolls into the new year with the opening of IMM Cologne 2014 and Passagen 2014, and against our natural inclinations we'll be there, or as Ride so nearly put it; "If we've seen it all before, Why's this train taking us back again? If we don't need anymore, Why's this train taking us back again?" Yes, the rent has to be paid. But there are easier ways to earn a living than spending a week in January on the banks of the Rhein questioning your
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IMM Cologne kept us busy into February, but the month also saw the opening of an Eileen Gray retrospective in Paris, a visit to the Louis Kahn exhibition at the Vitra Design Museum and the sad passing of James Irvine....
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January 2013 was, as every January, dominated by IMM Cologne, and all that that entails. In particular IMM Cologne 2013 brought us Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec's investiture as A&W Designers of the year and a delightful Alvar Aalto Stool 60 exhibition at Ungers Archiv für Architekturwissenschaft. January 2013 was in addition the opening of the exhibition "Extraordinary Stories About Ordinary Things" at the Design Museum London.....
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"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
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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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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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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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It being January, IMM Cologne once again provided the backdrop for the presentation of the A&W Designer of the Year Award. Following on from Tokujin Yoshioka in 2011 and Patrica Urquiola in 2012 the 2013 accolade went to everyone's favourite Bretons Ronan And Erwan Bouroullec In addition to the undoubted kudos of winning, as part of the award the Brothers Bouroullec are also being honoured in an exhibition at the Kölnischer Kunstverein. Featuring an overview of their more recent works the
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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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The Museum für Angewandte Kunst Köln (MAKK) opened in 1888, and so it is somehow fitting that it should start the celebrations of its 125th anniversary with an exhibition exploring Romanticism in contemporary design. Not just because a museal discussion of Romanticism refers neatly back to the prevailing atmosphere when the museum was being established; but because it also opens a window on our contemporary society and so potentially provides some pointers as to where the next 125 years will
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Back in the day the gentle flapping and choral honking of a snow goose skein heading south provided a comforting, aural background to the approaching winter. It meant our year was coming to an end and we could slowly wind down and enter a state of semi-hibernation. These days we dread the approaching Hitchcock cliche. The unrelenting, tuneless screeching reminding us it is time to decide: Should we travel to IMM Cologne in January? Really? And much like the migrating goose always follows the
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Without wanting to sound too much like Dieter Rams, good design really, really doesn't have to be complicated or otherwise outrageous. One of the best examples of this is without question the coat hook system Knax from LoCa. Created by Thomas Harrit and Nicolai Sørensen the idea couldn't be any simpler nor the effect any more liberating. Through the integration of a series of self-retracting metal hooks in a piece of wood one creates a hanging system that takes up virtually no space, even
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We received advance warning of what awaited us at IMM 2012 on the Friday afternoon before the official opening. Ambling through Cologne town centre we came across a large plastic hemisphere - the IMM Snow Globe. Dispatched on a tour through the city to entice the good folk of Cologne to visit the fair, the IMM Snow Globe was filled with some of the delights that would be on show, and, at the touch of a button, feather-lite snow blustered over the scene. Beautiful! However, as Julia
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For a decade and a half the unofficial start to Cologne Furniture Week has been the honouring of the "A&W Designer of the Year" Awarded by the German magazine "A&W Architektur & Wohnen", the prize was inaugurated in 1997 to honour a designer whose work has particular defined the home furnishing style of our time. Previous winners including Philippe Starck, Antonio Citterio or Tom Dixon. To name just three from 15. The A&W Designer of the Year 2012 is the Spanish designer Patricia Urquiola.
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Following on from last years "Kids Only" collection, Richard Lampert was/were back at Cologne 2012 with a collection of new outdoor furniture And just as "Kids Only" clearly wasn't. So too can "Living Outdoor" clearly also be used for "Living Indoor" Which is important if you live north of Alicante and can't guarantee your summer will be in any way summary. Featuring four new products from three of the company's roster of young design talents, the new collection can be seen as an extension
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A drawer. Honestly that is all it takes and you’ve got us. A desk with a drawer. Or even better multiple drawers. As if Müller Möbelfabrikation could read our minds, we were met on their stand in Cologne by the most fantastic sheet steel desk. With soooo many drawers. If that's not a guaranteed to way to get our attention! If we did have one slight criticism it would be the decision to display a version in orange. If there is one colour that is real hard to photograph under exhibition
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As tradition demands the Museum für Angewandte Kunst Köln (MAKK) have organised a furniture themed, special exhibition to coincide with the Cologne Furniture Fair. Under the title "Von Aalto bis Zumthor: Architektenmöbel" ("From Aalto to Zumthor: Furniture by Architects") the MAKK is presenting over 120 examples of furniture designed by professional architects. As older readers will have long since accepted, the "Furniture Architect" is a pet subject of ours. Not just because the architects
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On Monday January 16th IMM Cologne, Germany's largest furniture trade fair, opens it doors. In the coming days we'll bring you a series of interviews, reports and reviews from the Rhein, but ahead of the show we thought we'd look back at what Cologne 1962 had to offer. On the one hand, because we think it's interesting to look back on what the furniture industry had to offer 50 years ago; but also to help place IMM 2012 in context of its heritage. The International Möbel Messe Köln started
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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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It's fair to say that for us the real shock of IMM Cologne 2011 was the number of senseless sofa combinations and truly, truly, hideous leather cantilever dining chairs on show. And that despite that fact we were expecting such. It of course wasn't all cheap pointless tat, there were also some wonderful young designers on show and one or two brave producers with genuinely interesting, innovative and aesthetically coherent product ranges. They were sadly in the minority - and we fear that in
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The first thing to say about Designers Fair 2011 is that it was smaller than last year. The second point to say is that the location was a lot poorer than last. The first point is in itself no bad thing - the second is. Now you know us. For us one of the genuine joys of a design week is the chance it offers to explore a city and to visit those areas that one otherwise wouldn't see. And the 2011 Designers Fair location in Ehrenfeld was in that sense good as it provided a focal point for our
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Just as Hannibal always loved it when a plan came together - so for us it is always a moment of extreme satisfaction when a product really is as good as we thought it probably would be. We first saw SuperSputnik by Stuttgart based designer Ahmet Sismanoglu a.k.a Sisman at DMY Berlin 2010 However owing to an, as ever, over-filled schedule never got round to more than admiring it from afar. And so at Designers Fair in Cologne we briefly ignored our schedule to grab a few words with Ahmet and
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At IMM Cologne Finnish producer Artek continued their 75th Anniversary celebrations with a small show at Droom/Design Your Room in Cologne's Belgian Quarter. We'll write more on the Artek story from the Stockholm Design Week; but for now a few impressions from Cologne.
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