The nature of product design, and for all furniture design, being what it is, we all have a predisposition to categorise products and objects. Chair. Table. Lamp. Tea pot. For example. Yet, quite aside from the fact that we all invariably use products for purposes other than than that intended, the chair as the makeshift step ladder, the wine glass and makeshift candle holder or the Biro as makeshift knife, why should a product only have one function? Can it not have two or more without
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Following on from the success of smow Cologne's Passagen Design Week début in 2014 with the USM Haller exhibition Facetten, 2015 sees a presentation of tables from the German manufacturer ASCO. Established in 1998 with the aim of developing tables which radiate a timeless elegance, the ASCO collection combines table tops in a range of hardwoods with bases constructed from wood, metal or concrete to produce objects that are as domesticated as they are rustic and individual as they are
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The history of civilisation is in many respects a history of man understanding natural systems, for example, the inner workings of the human body, the principles of evolution or the nature of the solar system. Each understanding bringing us further forward and opening new possibilities. Similarly the history of industry and economics is the history of man developing systems. Back in 1895 William Painter, head of the Crown Cork & Seal company gave King Camp Gillette the advice that if he
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As we noted in our post from the exhibition Der entfesselte Blick – Die Brüder Rasch und ihre Impulse für die moderne Architektur at the Marta Herford, the (hi)story of architecture and design is often more about the protagonists you don't know than the ones you do. Such as the pioneering Dutch architect and designer Piet Klaarhamer: an early teacher of and influence on Gerrit T. Rietveld, one of the intellectual forefather's of Dutch modernism, and a man largely forgotten by history. In an
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As many of you will be aware, back in November we struggled to find five design exhibitions opening in December for our monthly 5 New Design Exhibitions feature. We've now, somewhat spectacularly, found a sixth. In the highly unlikely setting of Gorinchem, a town of some 35,000 inhabitants in central Holland. Under the title Van stoelen bezeten - Obsessed by Chairs - the Gorcums Museum in Gorinchem is currently presenting an exhibition of some 90 objects which according to the organisers
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Such was the quality of the new products we saw during our autumn tour they kept us going well into November; indeed it wasn't until a cold dank Friday in Chemnitz ahead of the opening of the exhibition Andy Warhol – Death and Disaster at the Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz, that we even realised it was November.
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......and continued over Budapest and on to Berlin - where amongst other delights we partook of the exhibitions Sensing the Future: László Moholy-Nagy, die Medien und die Künste at the Bauhaus Archiv Berlin and Schrill Bizarr Brachial. Das Neue Deutsche Design der 80er Jahre at the Bröhan Museum - and onto Cologne for the Orgatec office furniture trade fair.
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Following on from the relative inactivity of August September saw us wind back up towards the 2014 autumn design festival season. But before everything kicked of in Vienna, we enjoyed the exhibitions Okolo Offline Two – Collecting at the Kunstgewerbemuseum Dresden, Useful Exhibition by Sanghyeok Lee at the DMY Design Gallery Berlin, Alvar Aalto – Second Nature at the Vitra Design Museum and enjoyed a lovely chat with architect Eberhard Lange on the restoration of Egon Eiermann's Wohnhaus
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August being holiday month our principle focus was board sports: Woody Skateboards for the summer and silbærg snowboards for the coming winter. And when not trying to dislocate our virtual collarbones we found time to bring you an interview with Daphna Laurens and a warning from the colleagues at smow Australia.
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... had things not continued apace in June. A month which saw us trawl trough Berlin with Niek Wagemans looking for material with which to build a bar for the Dutch Embassy, rub shoulders with some very glamorous individuals at Design Miami Basel and, most importantly, test the new Vitra Slide Tower in Weil am Rhein.
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May may have been slow in the past. May. For aside from DMY Berlin, Fritz Haller in Basel, Niek van der Heijden in Berlin, and Wilhelm Wagenfeld in Bremen we also got to visit Nürnberg and the new archaeology museum in Chemnitz. And so all things considered May 2014 may go down as one of our busiest months ever.....
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As many of you will be aware, for us no post about 20th century American design is complete with the addition of alcohol and George Nelson. And so by way of a reprise to our recent post celebrating Isamu Noguchi's birthday, we present, with thanks to Stanley Abercrombie's ever excellent and easily recommendable George Nelson biography, George Nelson's recollections on Isamu Noguchi and his role in the creation of the famous Ball Clock. An anecdote that in addition beautifully highlights the
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While it is widely understood that Leipzig is currently the most important European centre in terms of on-line designer furniture retailing, less well understood is that the town has always been an important European centre for innovative approaches to the sale and distribution of contemporary furniture. The exhibition F.G. Hoffmann - Court Carpenter and Entrepreneur at the Grassi Museum for Applied Arts Leipzig aims to rectify that. Born in 1741 on the estate of Puschwitz Manor, Sachsen,
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For an institution associated with so many interesting and important figures in the UK furniture industry, there is a remarkable dearth of information on the London College of Furniture. Most of what there is relating to the, obviously fabled, music instrument making department. And so it is perhaps more appropriate than fitting that to mark the 50th anniversary of the London College of Furniture an exhibition celebrating the institution is being staged by its successor Sir John Cass Faculty
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Explaining the background to their contribution to Stylepark's Being Home 4+4 installation programme at Orgatec Cologne 2014 Marcel Besau and Eva Marguerre a.k.a. Besau Marguerre stated their belief that the best ideas rarely strike at the desk and that, and in particular in a home office context, any space is a potential work space. The garden, for example. On the balcony. In the dining room. Or in the kitchen. And so why not take the kitchen into the office. So, or similar, is possible
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Whereas the vast majority of successful and popular furniture designers have an architecture or handcraft background, there are naturally exceptions. One of the best known and most fascinating being without question the sculptor and artist Isamu Noguchi. Born on November 17th 1904 in Los Angeles as the first and only child of the American writer Leonie Gilmour and the Japanese poet Yone Noguchi, the young Isamu was raised in Japan until 1918 when he was sent to the Interlaken boarding school
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Despite the transient nature of the definition of "design", an important role of the designer is unquestionably solving problems. And an important role of the industrial designer is solving problems in context of industrial production. One of the earliest, and most elegant, examples of this dates back to the very beginnings of industrial production: the disposable safety razor blade. The patent for which was granted to King Camp Gillette on November 15th 1904. According to popular legend the
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On seeing a lamp grace a Jean Prouvé desk on the Vitra stand at Orgatec 2014 we termed it "a genuine reminder that good design is often the simplest solution" On seeing a lamp grace a Jean Prouvé desk in the VitraHaus, we concurred. Quietly noting that it was, in addition, "a genuine reminder that a good name is often the simplest solution" Plug Lamp by Form Us With Love for Ateljé Lyktan is both those things. Packaged in the most delightful and engaging object. A desk lamp with an
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It's now been twelve months since we decided to start recommending upcoming architecture and design exhibitions based on nothing more substantial and reliable than a press release or a PR agency text. A year in which we have recommended 60 exhibitions which sounded good, sounded worth visiting, sounded entertaining. Most of those that we subsequently visited were. A fact that has encouraged us to continue. And so to celebrate "5 New Design Exhibitions" first birthday, 5 New Design Exhibitions
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Established in 1998 by the artist couple Anna and István Regős as a gallery/shop in the cellar of their house in the Hungarian town of Szentendre, since 2013 Palmetta Design have operated a second gallery in Budapest where, in addition to offering a selection of international design items for sale, they present a regularly changing programme of art and design exhibitions. For Budapest Design Week 2014 that of course meant a design exhibition and specifically "Entrance Hall" a showcase of works
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On Friday October 24th the winners of the Saxony Design Award 2014 - the Sächsischer Staatspreis für Design 2014 - were announced at a, no doubt, suitably grand ceremony in Leipzig. Ran under the motto "Mehr Wert durch Design" - "More value through design" - the 2014 edition of the biennial contest looked for projects which help illustrate the potential of design in our modern post-industrial industrial economy. And which we suspect, although it wasn't explicitly stated, was intended to
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For just about as long as Thonet have been producing furniture one of the company's most important designers has been "Thonet Design Team", a description we've always considered to be a rather disparagingly sterile and unnecessarily nebulous description for Thonet's team of in-house designers. Every serious contemporary furniture manufacturer has an in-house design team who are responsible for both helping adapt external designers works to the company's production patterns and also creating
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In 2010 the spectacularly sinister sounding Hungarian Ministry of Human Capacities launched a programme to help promote products made in workshops employing persons with disabilities; and since 2013 the Segítő Vásárlás label - Design that Helps - has been coordinated by the Salva Vita Foundation. In June 2014 the Salva Vita Foundation organised a "Design Date" event which brought participating workshops and Hungarian design studios together with the aim of fostering new co-operations and
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One of the highlights for us of Dutch Design Week 2014 is and was the showcase of works by Eindhoven based studio Ontwerpduo a.k.a. Tineke Beunders and Nathan Wierink. For although in the past we have seen various Ontwerpduo projects individually, there is no real alternative to seeing a studio's collection together in order to build a more complete picture of the designers and their work. In addition to reunions with those Ontwerpduo products with which we were already familiar, including the
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