As all familiar with the peculiar and idiosyncratic method by which these dispatches are produced will appreciate, come March 30th 2019 there will be a few fundamental changes, as the smow blog team are forced to abandon our familiar home on the internet and create a new one for ourselves in the analogue wastelands of the (dis)United Kingdoms. And as Brexit's unregulated shadow casts itself ever deeper, indelibly, suffocatingly, over the smow blog office, our thoughts turn, somewhat
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For the fifth year in succession ArkDes, Sweden’s national centre for architecture and design, is hosting the Ung Svensk Form/Young Swedish Design award/platform exhibition: a showcase of 25 projects providing for 25 understandings of contemporary design in/from Sweden. Ung Svensk Form/Young Swedish Design 2019 Exhibition, ArkDes Stockholm As noted in our post from Ung Svensk Form/Young Swedish Design 2018, inaugurated in 1998 by Svensk Form (the Swedish Society of Crafts and Design) and
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As regular readers will be aware, in these dispatches we, very, very occasionally, quietly bemoan a certain monotony at furniture trade fairs, protest that, if you will, we regularly find ourselves wading through an homogenous mass. On this occasion we will however let someone else make that observation on our behalf. In his 2015 book Swedish Design: An Ethnography the American anthropologist Keith M. Murphy notes of a visit to the 2006 Stockholm Furniture Fair, "[T]he only problem was, so
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It's been 8 years since we last visited an exhibition by Stockholm based studio Färg & Blanche. Then 2011, back in the days when we still had our own teeth, our own hair, dreams and aspirations which were in our control, it was the exhibition 20 designers at BIOLOGISKA, one of the most memorable locations we've ever viewed an exhibition in. And despite having been in many an impressive venues since, a multi-storey 360 degree diorama populated by stuffed animals in a range of habitats, remains
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"...a new generation, a new age, must develop forms and tenors for their interior and exterior worlds which correspond to its desire for well-being and its ideals" wrote Frankfurt city mayor Ludwig Landmann in 1926.1 With the exhibition Moderne am Main 1919-1933 the Museum Angewandte Kunst Frankfurt explore how such developments were approached and realised in Frankfurt and environs, and by extrapolation explore the contribution made by the region to the evolution of inter-War understandings
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According to the posters to be found liberally distributed throughout the city, IMM Cologne 2019 promised to present "1000 furnishings ideas for your home" And it may very well have done. We didn't count. Not least because.... What interest the number, if the ideas themselves ain't meaningful? What interest the number, if the ideas themselves ain't logical? What interest the number, if the ideas themselves ain't justifiable? Or reducing the thought to its essence, what interest the idea if
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Slowly but surely the temperatures across Europe begin to fall, along with the leaves and the hours of daylight. Hibernation approaches. And by way of an accompaniment to the imminent long sleep, a Radio smow beds playlist. ...and so to bed! Back at the 2018 KABK Den Haag graduation festival the project Windows Without a View by Rudi van Delden investigated how you can "reclaim the missing third of your life”, i.e. when your in bed, and for all explored "the bedroom as the new office
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French designer Ionna Vautrin first reached a broad international public with her Binic lamp for Italian manufacturer Foscarini, a design which, it's fair to say, is/was one of those genuinely, gloriously, joyous moments in the (hi)story of lighting design, a work full of character yet devoid of vanity, universally applicable yet always individual. Ionna Vautrin is however more than Binic: before Binic Ionna had enjoyed a varied, international career working with a diverse roster of studios
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At Orgatec Cologne 2016 Vitra staged, in effect, their own trade fair, renting an entire hall and inviting family and friends along to share the space and their ideas on the future of work. And obviously had a lot of fun and/or success with the concept. For at Orgatec Cologne 2018 they once again staged the Vitra Fair....... Work Vitra - Work, Orgatec Cologne 2018 Back in our post from the Vitra Design Museum Schaudepot's exhibition Ron Arad: Yes to the Uncommon! we hinted that if Vitra
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History is not only written by the winners, and re-written by those who can't accept the facts of their defeat, but history is also the story of the visible, those who are invisible having nothing to contribute. With the exhibition Against Invisibility – Women Designers at the Deutsche Werkstätten Hellerau 1898 to 1938 the Kunstgewerbemuseum Dresden not only re-introduce nineteen, largely, forgotten female creatives, and therefore allow their contributions' to history to be recorded, but in
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As previously, and repeatedly, noted, one of the defining aspects about an office furniture fair such as Orgatec Cologne is that wherever one looks one sees a similar vista. Whereas in terms of domestic furnishings there are enough genres of furniture and interpretations of those genres to allow for a, at least relatively when not necessarily satisfyingly, varied landscape, office furniture is much more limited, not only doesn't have the variety of genres, but has a few that are essentials;
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Whereas today the term "design" is regularly understood as an adjective or a noun, its origin is as a verb. It is something one does. The interesting and relevant being that everyone does it differently. With the exhibition Process the centre d'innovation et de design au Grand-Hornu explore Belgian designer Benoît Deneufbourg's definition of that verb. Benoît Deneufbourg. Process, CID - centre d'innovation et de design au Grand-Hornu Born in La Louvière, Benoît Deneufbourg initially
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With his two faces the Roman God Janus was able to look in two different directions at once, a skill he traditionally employed as a gatekeeper, as a guardian of transitions, observing the past while always having his view firmly on the future; but a skill which is also helpful in understanding design processes, allowing as it does one to see simultaneously both the finished article, and the research, experimentation and design philosophy that lead to it. Presenting works by eight Liège based
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Staged in context of Intersections, ADAM Brussels Design Museum's biennale programme, Design Generations explores not only the work of designers of differing generations, but for all design that remains relevant across generations...... Intersections #5. Design Generations, ADAM Brussels Design Museum The ADAM Brussels Design Museum's Intersections biennale predates the ADAM Brussels Design Museum: the first three being staged in the city's Atomium, that enduring symbol of the blind faith
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The metal wire chair is such a well established seating genre it is hard to imagine it is possible to do anything new with it. Far less anything exciting. However...... ArNO by Bright Potato, as seen at Meet My Project, Paris Design Week 2018 ArNO by Bright Potato Presented in context of the exhibition Meet My Project at the VIA gallery, the joy, nay, the deep satisfaction, of ArNO by London based studio Bright Potato a.k.a Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology graduates David Beirne & Diego
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It is a universal rule of life that some of the most pleasing things occur unplanned, and that is certainly the case when visiting a design week, events where the disappointment that invariably arises visiting shows you intended to, is quickly offset by something you stumble across per chance. So too was it as we turned into the Rue des Coutures-Saint-Gervais, our thoughts less concerned with where we were or where we were going as with where we had been and for all why we'd been where we'd
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The advantage the autumn edition of Maison et Objet has over the spring edition is Paris Design Week, a chance to not only explore French creativity in a wider context than can be found in the trade fair halls, but also to explore the French capital without the distraction of the city's history. A central component of Paris Design Week is Le Off, a platform for young designers and which for its 2018 edition was based in the Ground Control event and creative centre, tucked away behind Gare du
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On the train to Cologne the signs were unmissable, the sun may have been gloriously, victoriously, shinning, as it has done since Easter, from a clear azure sky: but autumn is definitely approaching. And while it may be a bit premature to start planning for next summer, at the annual spoga+gafa garden, freetime and equestrianism trade fair in Cologne, manufacturers presented what they expect us to sit on next summer in our gardens, on our balconies, while camping, the accessories they expect us
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"Monsieur, with these Rocher you are really spoiling us!" Ever since Ferrero brought a touch of self-congratulatory kitsch to the savoir-faire of international diplomacy, we've felt a great empathy for the concept of the Embassy. And while the years since we first heard those words may not have seen us follow an illustrious, freely debonair, diplomatic career, we do have as a substitute the embassy design exhibition. 3daysofdesign Copenhagen 2018 offered such a wealth and variety of embassy
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For the German architect, designer, artist Peter Behrens it was important that the exterior reflected a building's intended function, that the exterior provided information about the nature of the building and its occupants. We suspect therefore he would greatly approve of the title of the Museum für Angewandte Kunst Cologne's exhibition in honour of his 150th birthday, neatly encapsulating as it does the nature of its protagonist. #all-rounder Peter Behrens himself greets visitors to
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By way of celebrating designer Achille Castiglioni's centenary Italian lighting manufacturer Flos used Milan Design Week 2018 to launch re-editions of two Castiglioni designs: Ventosa and Nasa. Objects which in their own, small, ways allow for an insight into Achille Castiglioni's approach to, and understanding of, design. Flos present Achille Castiglioni - If you are not curious forget it, Milan Design Week 2018 Born in Milan on February 16th 1918 Achille Castiglioni studied architecture
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Milan Furniture Fair 2018, at least amongst those more design led manufacturers, is/was largely about consolidation, largely about new materials, new colours, slight changes to existing objects, with one or the other family proudly presenting their latest members. Which is no complaint, far from it, Milan's speciality traditionally being the new for the sake of the new, that misguided belief that one has to present something new every year. You don't. Present something new when you've got
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Whereas exhibitions in which designers show prototypes and discontinued projects by way of explaining who they are, where they come from and how they work, are a, relatively, regular occurrence, exhibitions in which manufacturers do such are much, much rarer: with the exhibition Typecasting Vitra make a very rare and very welcome exception And in doing so don't just present an image not only of Vitra past, but also take a look into the future..... Vitra -Typecasting, as seen at Milan Design
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While it is generally the case that the development, evolution, of product design is dependent on the development, evolution, of technology, such is particularly the case in context of lighting design: ever since a burning stick was first employed to create a relaxing evening atmosphere in a neolithic cave, technological developments have been the driving force behind the development of lighting design, be that formally, functionally or technically. The nature of Light + Building Frankfurt,
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