Nadja Schulze once opined that "Licht ist die tollste aller Sprachen", 'light is the greatest of all languages', and the light her lamps LiLa and Bow spoke at Grassimesse 2024 so enamoured the Grassimesse Jury they awarded Nadja the 2024 Grassimesse smow-Designpreis....... Grassimesse smow-Designpreis 2024 winner Nadja Schulze (photo courtesy Nadja Schulze) Born and raised in Leipzig, Nadja Schulze completed her Bachelor in Innenarchitektur at Burg Giebichenstein Kunsthochschule Halle in the
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Grassimesse Leipzig 2024 Compact: vondingen As discussed with Grassimesse Project Manager Sabine Epple, in order to stage Grassimesse during Covid it was necessary to place exhibitors in the permanent exhibtion spaces by way of guaranteeing the legally required distancing. A concept that exhibitors and visitors very much took to and which thus has continued post social distancing reality, and that very much not only to the agreement of exhibitors and visitors but to the benefit of the
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Grassimesse Leipzig 2024: smow-Designpreis Winner - Nadja Schulze Following on from the co-winners of the inaugural Grassimesse smow-Designpreis Hevesi Annabella/Line and Round and Cornelius Réer the winner of the 2nd edition is Burg Giebichenstein Kunsthochschule, Halle, Interior Architecture Masters student, Nadja Schulze for her lighting projects LiLa, Bow and 360°. The latter a wall mounted lamp, family of lamps, that can be rotated through, well... 360°. A rotation that not only results
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Budapest Design Week 2024 Compact: Konyky by Natalia Filonenko for Donna According to our dictionary 'Konyky' is Ukrainian for 'Grasshoppers'. It might not be, our dictionary could be wrong. We suspect it is. But if it is correct, it's a curious name for Natalia Filonenko's stool/table/pouffe for Kyiv based manufacturer Donna. Surely Lobzyk, jigsaw, or Holovolomka, jigsaw puzzle, make more sense. For that is essentially what Natalia has done, transformed a random piece of a jigsaw puzzle
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Budapest Design Week 2024 Compact: Uniqueness in Mass Production by Fehérvári Panna Nóra Before we go any further.... Uniqueness in Mass Production isn't the name of Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design, MOME, Budapest graduate Fehérvári Panna Nóra's lamps. Panna calls them MushLume, for understandable, and highly enjoyable, reasons, but sadly MushLume is the name of a Brooklyn, New York, based manufacturer of lighting crafted from mushroom mycelia, and so it's unlikely to remain their
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Budapest Design Week 2024 Compact: Pulse by Hevesi Annabella for Self and Scope The publicity for 360 Design, the central showcase of Budapest Design Week 2024, that Hungarian Fashion and Design Agency, HFDA, showcase that was a component of Budapest Design Week before the HFDA took over the organisation of Budapest Design Week and it exponentially increased in stature, involved numerous objects by Budapest based designer Hevesi Annabella1, not least the sofa Dedas, a work we're most partial
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Aalto by Jasna Faginović, as seen at Zagreb Design Week 2024 Back in the day sofas, as with all other furniture objects, were solid, immutable, unresponsive objects. Were what they were and remained that for infinity, regardless of how everything else around them changed. Then the human species discovered modularity. A moment as important, and as fundamental, for the human species as the discovery of fire, the wheel, or the potato chip. And since when sofas have been modular. Except they
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Kućni Bench by Lana Veble, as seen at Zagreb Design Week 2024 One of the (great many) consequences of our contemporary European society is the physical toll all the sitting takes on our bodies; a cost for our contemporary conveniences that means for ever more of us regular physical exercise is important, necessary, be that organised sport or simply a few exercises, stretches and bends at home. But much as nobody wants a home-office desk in their home that screams OFFICE at you, so to does
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In the exhibtion A Chair and You at the Grassi Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Leipzig, there is more than A Chair and You can look at them, study them, explore them, converse with them. But not sit on them. In the presentation Stühle zum (Be)Sitzen on the first floor landing of the Grassi Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Leipzig, there is more than A Chair and You can look at them, study them, explore them, converse with them. And sit on them. Thirteen chairs which unite more than just thirteen
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Pouls by Daniel Melente, as seen at Design Without Borders 2024, Budapest As discussed and explored in the exhibition Deep-seated. The Secret Art of Upholstery at the Grassi Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Leipzig, the cushioning that is so central, so defining, in contemporary seating, and in contemporary interiors, has a long (hi)story, a long (hi)story related to technical and cultural changes, a long (hi)story which has both been informed by and has contributed to changes in society. And a
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Celebrating its 20th anniversary edition in 2024 we charted, and discussed, the (hi)story of Design Without Borders in our conversation with the institutions initiators, organisers and curators Szilvia Szigeti and Tamás Radnóti, and so refer you there dear readers for the background. And also refer you to our post from the 2014 edition, the last time we visited Design Without Borders in its native Budapest; a last visit in Budapest not for lack on interest, far from it, but simply on account of
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Earth Centered Design. An Exhibition, Hochschule München, Munich Creative Business Week 2024 In context of Tsuyoshi Tane's Garden House project on the Vitra Campus, long-year Vitra CEO Rolf Fehlbaum opined that in the immediate post 1939-45 War decades "the industrial idea of taking over nature without caring was very typical". And arguably not just then. As discussed in context of, for example, At the coalface! Design in a post-carbon age at the Centre for Innovation and Design at
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Rowac at Berlin Design Week 2024 By the time the Peter-Behrens-Bau was inaugurated in 1917 Robert Wagner’s Rowac Schemel, one of the earliest seating objects crafted from lightweight sheet steel, had been on the market for almost a decade. If it was used in the workshops and offices of the Nationale Automobil-Gesellschaft, NAG, who, at that time, called the Peter-Behrens-Bau home, or by the wider AEG family to whom NAG was a member, and who so defined the industrialisation of the early 20th
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Dedas by Annabella Hevesi, as seen at Berlin Design Week 2024 Admittedly the Dedas sofa by Budapest based designer Annabella Hevesi isn't part of Berlin Design Week 2024. But it is on show at Berlin Design Week 2024. Is part of the installation of the Sphere wallpaper collection for Italian manufacturer Tecnografica by Berlin based, Hungarian born, media artist Dávid Szauder in cooperation with Budapest based interior design studio Freeform a.k.a. Eszter Bolgár and Tímea Csitári. Albeit
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Badekarren in Katwijk by Wilhelm Gutmann, 1908 (Image Public Domain, courtesy of Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main) ... ... Wilhelm Gutmann used the occasion of Grassimesse Leipzig 1920 to present...... .......we no know. Or more accurately, in terms of Wilhelm Gutmann generally we no know hardly nothing. Certainly we no know an awful lot more than the we no know about the other Grassimesse 1920 designers featured thus far in these dispatches. Despite the fact that, arguably, there should
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Occasional table by Rita Koralevics from the Paper-up Collection, as seen Magyar Design, Otthon Design Budapest 2024 The first thing that drew us to Paper-Up a.k.a Rita Koralevics' occasional table was the construction: the small wooden batons on the side implying it was possibly worth taking a closer look. So we did. And it very much was. Didn't disappoint. Revealing as it did a deliciously simple, efficient, unhurried, construction principle that actively contributes to not only the
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Components of the Bold collection by András Kerékgyártó for Brave Home, as seen at Magyar Design, Otthon Design Budapest 2024 András Kerékgyártó wasn't the first Hungarian designer whose work we saw, that would have been Marcel Breuer, but András is, arguably, that active Hungarian designer who has featured most often in these dispatches. A position achieved not on account of any formal legal agreement, just to clarify, but simply because he invariably produces good, interesting work worthy
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Polc íróasztallal by Woodoo, as seen at Magyar Design, Otthon Design Budapest 2024 Budapest, indeed Hungary as a whole, was an important centre of that which today is known as Art Nouveau, or Szecesszió to be more precise, if an expression of Art Nouveau, Szecesszió, that all too often tends to get overlooked by the expression of if its near neighbour Vienna. But a Szecesszió which one can't overlook walking through and around Budapest. Nor can one overlook Szecesszió standing in the
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The Budapest born photographer Robert Capa is quoted as once opining that, in context of photography, "it is not enough to have talent, you also have to be Hungarian"1, and in terms of furniture design there was, arguably, a period when that was also true; for all during that, all too, brief period between the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian empire in 1918 and the outbreak of the 1939 - 1945 war, an inter-War period that, amongst other episodes, saw the Magyar trio Marcel Breuer, Kálmán
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Beetlechair by Alexander von Dombois, as seen at Passagen Interior Design Week Cologne 2024 There is an argument to be made, indeed one we will make here without offering any evidence, we'll save that for another day, there is an argument to be made that some of the earliest forbearers, if not the earliest forbearers, of our contemporary side chairs were three legged: the three-legged stool is an object known across time and geography and class, and there is a particularly satisfying,
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USM Haller A Fritz; A Ball; A System Within the diaries of Heidi, those central documents in the re-telling of the earliest (hi)story of the contemporary Switzerland, it is recorded that one of the oldest examples of vernacular Swiss furniture is the modular metal storage system of the Usm. As Heidi explains, over a great many generations the Usm were primarily developers and builders of windows, specifically metal windows for which they employed the abundant brass to be found in the
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Line and Round, I O, was established in Budapest in 2017 by Annabella Hevesi, a Masters graduate from the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design and Gábor Bella, a Masters graduate from the "School of Life", with a background in carpentry and numerous years experience in a variety of construction/interior/design fields, including the creation, development and realisation of escape room games, a concept that enjoys a particular popularity in Hungary, and in which context Annabella and Gábor
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3D printed ceramics by Babette Wiezorek, as seen at Grassimesse 2023, Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Leipzig For all that a Wilhelm Wagenfeld is popularly known as one of the more craft orientated designers of the early 20th century, he was no adherent to 'tradition' as understood as doing that which has always been done, and was no adherent of, no fan of, craft as an unchanging practice, railing against those who practised craft as such as participants in a "Maskentanz", a Masked Ball, a
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The H2L lounge chair by Studio Machwerk, as seen at Grassimesse 2023, Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Leipzig One of the joys of Grassimesse is that it has never been about big names and star turns, anyone and everyone can apply. All you have to do is convince the jury you deserve to be there. As newbies Studio Machwerk did. And did. Established in 2022 (possibly 2023, yes, we've forgotten, but certainly not before 2022) by Christopher (Ebert) and Josef (Ehnert), both graduates of the Faculty
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