With our trademark "almost too late, but just sneaking in on time" we bring you Prima by Zaha Hadid. Conceived and realised in cooperation with the Austrian crystal concern Swarowski, Prima is a five piece installation based on Zaha Hadid's sketches for her 1993 Vitra Fire Station project. At the moment Prima is a very expensive, and very, very heavy installation on show in front of said Fire Station; however, if we know Vitra we can well imagine what the next step is... We have no formal, or
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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
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If you thought you'd seen the epitome of kitsch, we give you..... An olive bowl in the shape of Celine Dion's swimming pool. Just writing that sentence makes us want one. And of course the accompanying bowl for sun-dried tomatoes in the shape of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's swimming pool. Created by Zurich based designer Damian Fopp the Celeb Bowls collection is a series of porcelain bowls based on celebrity swimming pools, or to be more precise the swimming pools of Frank Sinatra, John
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"You can't lose ideas in a small space" with this simple piece of almost Confucian wisdom Italian architect Renzo Piano explains part the deeper philosophy behind Diogene, his collaboration with Vitra. And the latest object on the Vitra Campus. Following quickly on from the public presentation of the SANAA Factory Building - unquestionably the biggest building on the Vitra Campus - Diogene is equally unquestionably the smallest. In fact, if our maths are correct you could fit around 2,600
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With DMY Berlin standing in front of the door like some excited child waiting to be taken to its chums birthday party, all eyes are slowly turning to to the German capital. The first Berlin design events are already running and until June 9th the gallery "Haus am Waldsee" is presenting the exhibition "Home of the Future" by and featuring Werner Aisslinger. We already posted a few photos in a (smow) facebook gallery. Delightful as the exhibition unquestionably is, for us one of the more
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We quote: "It’s probably fair to say the biggest surprise at Salone Satellite 2012 was seeing Rui Alves aka My Own Super Studio. Because we thought 2011 had been the last year he was allowed to exhibit." Fast forward 12 months later. And guess what the the biggest surprise at Salone Satellite 2013 was.... ? He has however promised us that this is his final, final, final year at Salone Satellite. A thought which to be honest doesn't disappoint or otherwise upset us because 2013 was also the
read moreAs older readers will know a large proportion of the menial labour at (smow) is carried out by a team of highly qualified Vitra Eames Elephants. In the past we've praised them, for example, for their help moving USM Haller units around our warehouse. (smow) recently moved into a new base in the Leipzig Baumwollspinnerei complex, a former yarn works largely inhabited by artists, sculptors and their ilk. Being naturally curious beasts our elephants didn't take long to start exploring the
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On Tuesday April 30th 2013 Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands steps down as head as the House of Orange. And Posterous closes down. One going voluntarily to ensure an smooth transition of power. The other being closed by its new owners as part of a brutal and unjust conflict for supremacy in the social media market. We discovered Posterous in 2010 by pure change, were instantly hooked by the effortless simplicity with which one could post and so Posterous became our platform of choice for all
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In December 2012 Vitrashop, the shop fitting arm of the Vitra Group, and of course the original rock on which the Vitra seed germinated and grew, took formal occupation of their new distribution centre. Conceived by Tokyo based architects Kazuyo Sejima & Ryue Nishizawa aka SANAA, the imaginatively titled "SANAA Factory Building" is the latest addition to the Vitra Campus and was officially presented to the public on April 19th 2013. Vitra CEO Rolf Fehlbaum first approached Kazuyo Sejima &
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A few weeks ago in our post on the opening of the Droog Lab exhibition The New Original in Guangzhou, China we noted, "....knowing Droog we’re fairly certain that “The New Original” will be presented in Europe before too long. " Droog didn't disappoint and the objects were displayed in Milan as part of the show "Droog 20+, Up to a beautiful future", 20 years of Droog celebrated by looking forwards rather than the more conventional backwards. The background idea to The New Original is
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It is indicative of the image of designer furniture in contemporary society that media outlets across Europe have picked up on the fact that in connection with the recently published "Wealth Decelerations" by the French Cabinet, Industry Renewal Minister Arnaud Montebourg has revealed he owns an Eames Lounge Chair. Indeed the online platform from German magazine Der Spiegel illustrated the publication of the Declarations with an image of an Eames Lounge Chair in one its first reports! While
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During Milan Design Week 2013 Knoll formally launched the "Tools for Life" collection from Dutch architecture practice OMA, a collection overseen by OMA co-founder Rem Koolhaas. The collection had previously been previewed as part of the stage decoration for the Prada Fall Men's show in January, and was formally unveiled in the same location.... the Prada Milan HQ A location that theoretically the likes of us should never be allowed to enter. But Design Week is Design Week. The first thing
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Back in October at Orgatec 2012 Vitra unveiled Workbay, the new concept from Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec. The latest stage in the brother's career-long "room within a room" research Workbay is a flexible system based around fleece walls and aluminium supports that resembles a cross between the Alcove Sofa and the Bouroullec's Communal Cells from Orgatec 2010. When we saw Workbay in Cologne we thought, nice idea, nice extension of the Bouroullec programme... and went back to concentrating on
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Ahead of Milan Design Week we received an email from a Belgian designer of our acquaintance letting us know where we could view their work. The email ended with a euphoric "This is finally Belgium's year!" A thought that really appealed to us, because as we wrote last year Belgium has the potential to be every bit as successful as Holland. And indeed should be. And so with an optimistic heart we set off to the Triennale di Milano to view the exhibition "Belgium is Design" And experienced our
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As we believe we've said before it is always especially pleasing when a designer you first got to know as an unkempt, idealist student, finally signs their first serious contract with a major manufacturer and so sets of a, hopefully, long and successful career. Similarly it is always very pleasing to watch a newly established business grow and develop; especially when it's one established with the goal of advancing contemporary design and the designer's lot rather than simply generating a fab
read moreBack at Saloni Milano 2010 Ronan Bouroullec told us about his feeling that the internet and new technology could, perhaps even should, eventually, replace the resources and time invested - and ultimately wasted - every year in an event such as Milan Furniture Fair. In 2013 everyone's favourite German conceptual contemporary furniture manufacturer Moormann, have made the start. And in doing so proved that even from the pastoral calm of Aschau im Chiemgau, one can still be part of the Milan
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For us one of the highlights of Saloni Milano 2013 was/is Italian manufacturer Mattiazzi. And not just because they have managed to eke a chair out of Jasper Morrison that, in our opinion, is one of his better, and certainly more interesting, of recent years. Established in 1978 Mattiazzi is, if we correctly understand, essentially a network of woodworking facilities in Udine. For three decades the company served as a supplier of wooden parts for other furniture manufacturers before
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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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Back in March 2011 we bemoaned the position of the fence surrounding the Vitra production facility in Weil am Rhein, and for all the disruption to the view across the Vitra Campus. Before the construction of the VitraHaus the fence offended no one, but since.... "Mr Fehlbaum, tear down this wall! Or at least move it a little bit. Please.", we cried. Paraphrasing the lonesome cowboy. And much like Mikhail Gorbachev needed two and half years to respond to Ronald Reagan, so too will it take
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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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As with so much of Ron Arad's commercially available, serially produced, furniture designs the story of Tom Vac starts a long, long way away from the domestic conformity one has become accustomed to seeing them in. In this case the story begins on a street corner in Milan. In 1997 the Italian architecture and design magazine Domus launched a PR campaign which involved asking contemporary designers to create an installation which embodied the fundamentals of the magazine. The first commission
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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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As many of you know we officially gave up reporting on private design awards a couple of years ago - for us the emphasis in such awards is more often than not too heavily biased towards generating income for the organisers rather than helping or otherwise furthering the designers and their works. And as such don't merit our support. While some awards are obviously more honourable than others; we decided ignoring all would be fairest. However as Angela Merkel continues to teach us: what is
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