Ask the person next to you to quickly sketch a "Bauhaus Chair" And? What have they drawn? We're guessing the result is relatively quadratic, reduced and, assuming the person next to you is au fait with the works of Mart Stam, Marcel Breuer et al, it will have at least one semi-circular bracket, either on the back or under the seat. And it almost certainly closely resembles the Spaghetti Chair by Giandomenico Belotti for Alias. A chair that, ironically, is born of a tradition at contrast to
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Imagine you spent your entire career researching and developing modular building systems. Imagine you gave the world radical new approaches to construction design and helped introduce the use of computer technology in architecture. And then imagine that most people only know your name in connection with one office furniture system. An office furniture system that you developed once as part of one contract for one company based in one small village in Switzerland. A system that despite its
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Back in April 2010 we reported that Dutch design anarchos Droog were planning a hotel in Amsterdam. On September 16th 2012 Hôtel Droog will finally open for business. And because it's from Droog, Hôtel Droog has only one bedroom. Which is really an apartment. The majority of the complex is taken up with all those things that in a "normal" hotel would be of secondary importance to the accomodation: eating, drinking, shopping, being pampered or relaxing in a garden. Situated in a 17th century
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Irritating as they are, forgers are rarely daft. You only very occasionally find one purveying, for example, fake Billy Ray Cyrus albums. Or fake Greek State Bonds. They prefer to stick to things they are certain they can sell with ease. Which is why Bauhaus furniture is so highly regarded by professional forging gangs. Not only is everyone familiar with the important pieces, but it all looks so simple. Who can tell the difference? However, aside from the potential safety issues, a copy
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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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Back in January Benjamin Hubert was awarded the A&W Audi Mentorpreis 2012. Presented in conjunction with the A&W Designer of the Year Award the Mentorpreis can in many ways be considered as being the "Young Designer" category. The interesting aspect of the A&W Audi Mentorpreis is that the winner is nominated by that year's A&W Designer of the Year. So in 2012 Patricia Urquiola. After the award ceremony we caught up with Benjamin for a quick chat; however, we very cleverly managed to lose the
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Back in January we published a post looking at IMM Cologne 1962 and setting that year's exhibition in the context of what we could all expect at IMM Cologne 2012. Amongst the material we read and reviewed in preparing the post the page that made the biggest impression on us was an advert for Sesam-Bar by Oeseder Möbel-Industrie: a small corner unit containing a rotating interior compartment with bookshelves on the front and a mini-bar on the back. The name coming of course from "Open Sesame":
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"The exhibition will principally present simple, functional and comfortable chairs for the home, office and garden"1 With this clear note of intent opens the catalogue to the exhibition "Der Stuhl" that took place in Stuttgart from September 15th until October 15th 1928. Organised by the Württembergische Gewerbeamt - the trade office responsible for the greater Stuttgart region at that time - "Der Stuhl" featured some 400 objects from over 50 international producers and was conceived with
read moreIf there is a chair on the market at the moment that better symbolises how complex simplicity in design is than Pressed Chair by Harry Thaler for Moormann. We want to see it. At Milan 2011 Nils Holger Moormann told us of the literal and figurative mountain pass that had to be negotiated before Harry's idea could be transformed into a market ready, mass producible product. Then ahead of Milan 2012 Harry Thaler then told us about the long way from the original experiments with wood until he had
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Our views on Chemnitz are well known. Travel south of Chemnitz however and you'll come to an area of Germany that time didn't so much forget - it never even knew it existed. A bit like Bhutan, the Erzgebirge is an autonomous, inaccessible mountain region where the dearth of contact with the outside world means that popular knowledge about the area is largely dominated by myth, legend and the yellowing, travel logbooks of gentleman explorers of centuries gone. It is therefore all the more
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Remaining in celebratory mood..... Twenty five years after the young guns of European modernism gathered in Stuttgart to open the Weissenhof Siedlung, a "somewhat ageing" Danish architect, who as a student had been greatly influenced by the works of European modernism, was about to make his global breakthrough with a chair design which as much as any represents the post-War break with modernism and the fearless march into the new, uncertain, world. Happy 60th Birthday the Ant Chair by Arne
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One of the objects that has been following us around the international designer furniture circus this past year or so has been Flatmate by Michael Hilgers. The idea is very simple. Much like the chair project "The Half" by Studio Sailing to Mars, Flatmate takes the standard storage sideboard we all know - and reduces its dimensions. And in doing so creates a very familiar object in an equally unfamiliar scale. Unlike "The Half" the reduction is not geared towards ergonomic efficiency but
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The history of furniture design is strewn with works that briefly graced the public stage before vanishing without the honour of a curtain call. Crawl through the cellar of any major furniture producer and you'll find them; the perfectly mummified remains of genuine design classics that failed to transform their creative majesty into hard cash. Such as the so-called "Girard Group" by Alexander Girard. Although best known for his textile and wallpaper designs Alexander Girard wasn't averse to
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144th birthdays aren't occasions all celebrate; however, because Charles Rennie Mackintosh ties in so nicely with so many of the themes we've covered in the past weeks it seems like an occasion we can't ignore. Born in Glasgow on June 7th 1868 Charles Rennie Mackintosh trained as an architect with John Hutchinson before moving to the larger company Honeyman & Keppie following his qualification in 1889. In 1890 Mackintosh was given his first solo project, designing an extension for the back
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Much as Gerrit Rietveld's career is publicly reduced down to the Rood-blauwe stoel, so too is it all to easy to imagine Marcel Breuer spent his days doing nothing more than creating chairs and tables from bent steel tubing. Indeed start typing the name "Marcel Breuer" into google and the all-knowing, all-seeing algorithm will only offer you "Marcel Breuer Chair", "Marcel Breuer Wassily Chair" and "Marcel Breuer Biography" as searches. That the public impression of Marcel Breuer should be so
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Talk to anyone about design and the furniture industry in the UK and you'll quickly come to realise that while the British Isles may be home to an enviable wealth of design talent. It ain't home to that many producers of quality, contemporary furniture. Or at least anymore. Whereas, for example, the early years of "British Design 1948-2012. Innovation in the Modern Age" at the V&A feature regular examples of British produced furniture, the later years are all but bereft of such. Britain
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If your going to organise an exhibition called "The Revolution of Space", there is probably no more fitting location than Frank Gehry's "revolutionary spaced" Vitra Design Museum building in Weil am Rhein. Unless that it is your exhibition happens to be dedicated to Gerrit Rietveld a man whose canon is principally defined by linear, regular, sober forms. Then you might think twice. The Vitra Design Museum have risked the contrast and consequently visitors to "The Revolution of Space" are not
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We're almost at the end of our Milan 2012 coverage. Not because we've run out of themes; but have run out of time. In the coming weeks we've got the opening of the Gerrit Rietveld exhibition at the Vitra Design Museum, the opening of the Marcel Breuer Exhibition at Bauhaus Dessau, Belgrade Design Week, DMY Berlin, Design Miami Basel, and all in addition to a couple of further interviews in connection with "British Design" at the V&A London and "Bauhaus: Art as Life" at the Barbican Art
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Back in October one of our highlights at Vienna Design Week 2011 was the exhibition kidsroomZOOM! Essentially a mid-town Vienna apartment kitted out entirely in furniture for children, we were not only impressed by the objects on display, but by the concept. Forget adults! We're doin' it for the kids! Being the message we got. And one we wholeheartedly approved of. kidsroomZOOM! originated in Milan, and so this year we not only visited the new 2012 show, but also spoke to curator Paola Noè to
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At Milan 2011 Moormann presented the prototype of Pressed Chair by Harry Thaler. At Milan 2012 the market ready version was/is being officially unveiled. Last year Nils Holger Moormann enthused at great length about Pressed Chair. And so to complete the story, ahead of Milan 2012 we caught up with Harry Thaler in his London studio to learn more about both him and the background to Pressed Chair. (smow)blog: To begin with maybe a little to your background. If we're correctly informed you
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As anyone involved in the designer furniture industry will confirm; it's a secretive old world. Probably only matched in its inherent furtiveness by the Freemasons, Papal Conclaves or the committee responsible for setting petrol prices. Simply saying that you might have heard that designer X may be considering a possible future cooperation with producer Y is to risk a long interrogation by a Product Manager wanting to know who told you what. The situation is even more clandestine when it
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We suspect the reason we write so much about designer furniture in an airport context is simply because of the amount of time we spend in airports. And consequently the amount of time we spend thinking about and analysing what we are being offered. If you're going to be delayed at Frankfurt for five hours. You want to make sure that your seat is comfy. If you're going to have to spend the night at Copenhagen Airport. You want to make sure your seat is comfy. If you're... you get the idea.
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Ostensibly established as a location for presenting and archiving Vitra CEO Rolf Fehlbaum's private collection of designer furniture, the Vitra Design Museum has developed into one of Europe's most important centres for design, design history but for all, for explaining design and making design accessible. A large part of the museum's success can be credited to founding Director Alexander von Vegesack who led the institution from its opening in 1989 until the end of 2010. In January 2011 Marc
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A common misconception is that the term "designer" in "designer furniture" means "exclusive". It doesn't. It just means that a designer has invested time in creating a product that does something new or which represents a further development of existing concepts. Designer furniture is however meant to be used everywhere, everyday, by everyone. Such as the Tom Vac by Ron Arad for Vitra. You could just use it in your dinning room or on your balcony. Or.....
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