When we met Italian designer Alberto Meda at Orgatec 2010 he told us that he was working on his next project for Vitra. And that it would be a chair. And that was all he told us. At Orgatec 2012 the secret was revealed when Vitra released the office swivel chair Physix. Presented as a continuation of an idea began by Mies van der Rohe with his MR20 cantilever chair and continued by Charles and Ray Eames with their Aluminium Chair collection, Physix adds a new dimension to a familiar form
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In 1808 Napoleon had a problem. Or better put, in 1808 Napoleon had a whole continent of problems. Spain, Austria, Finland, England, Russia, Germany, Turkey. Noone it seemed was behaving in a manner that fitted with Napoleon's grand, global plans. How, for example, was he ever to find the time to conquer India if Europe wouldn't just quietly accept French domination? In an attempt to, at least partially, find a way out of the chaos a meeting was organised with Tsar Alexander I of Russia to
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Among the more memorable moments in our long, if troublesome, tenure at and of (smow)blog is the day we took possession of our new 1m x 2m USM Haller table. Less on account of the object and more on account of the looks of fear and trepidation that crossed the faces of those forced to share an office space with us. "Given the chaos created on their Eiermann Table", their pained expressions screamed, "what will they achieve with 2 sqm of finest Swiss fabrication?" The answer was as swift as
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Do designers always know best? No, do they....? Back in July we celebrated the 60th anniversary of Arne Jacobsen's Ant Chair for Fritz Hansen, including mention of the heavy criticism that greeted its presentation, in particular the criticism that it only had three legs. Criticism that didn't concern Arne Jacobsen one jot. For Jacobsen the Ant Chair was conceived as a three legged chair, functioned as a three legged chair and would always remain a three legged chair. Eventually however
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As we are sure you will appreciate we tend to shy away from recommending anything we haven’t seen and/or tested ourselves. That said, the following five exhibitions, all opening in November, caught our attention. And certainly seem worth checking out..... "mein reklame-fegefeuer. herbert bayer. werbegrafik 1928 - 1938" at Bauhaus Archiv Berlin, Germany Appointed in 1925 as the first director of the printing and advertising workshop at Bauhaus Dessau the Austrian artist and typographer
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Expansion. It's not always good. Waistlines. Overdrafts. Weeks since you last phoned your mother. For example wouldn't be good. Business expansion is however good. And the best news is that (smow) continues to expand. Following on from the "original" (smow)rooms in Leipzig and Chemnitz, the (smow) online designer furniture store opened its virtual doors in 2008 before in 2012 (smow) Stuttgart joined the family. 2013 has already seen the launch of (smow) Erfurt, and since early October
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There are only very few furniture manufacturers who can claim to have been major players in two fundamental furniture design revolutions. Thonet is one of them. And if we're honest, the only one we can currently name. Although the Thonet story begins in 1819, the story only really begins to "pick up steam" in 1859 when Michael Thonet perfected his warm wood bending process. The result of over twenty years development, heartbreak, experimentation, bankruptcy, fleeting success and brutal
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Back in October one of the joys of Orgatec 2012 in Cologne was watching visitors reactions to Hella Jongerius' Sphere Table for Vitra. Most were highly amused and assumed it was a new kids product. An opinion that quickly changes when you learn the background to the object. Developed for Hella Jongerius' recently completed redevelopment of the North Delegate's Lounge at the United Nations in New York, the Sphere Table is a response to a brief that said the lounge could contain no internal
read moreAs we noted in our designer barbecue post "... summer is bidding its final farewells" And with autumn's impudent chill invading ever more our pastoral calm the time for our hibernation approaches. And so we're currently exploring accommodation options. Fortunately it's been a bit of a "small house year" in these pages with, for example, Renzo Piano Building Workshop and Vitra's Diogene or Jean Prouve's Maison des Jours Meilleurs occupying our thoughts. Our first contact with reduced room
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We're not going to pretend everyone is enamoured with our constant pops at Chemnitz. Truth is for the majority our behaviour lies somewhere between adolescent immaturity and the senseless ravings of an embittered pensioner. And indeed all did in fact begin when we were immature teenagers. And we've long since reach the enviable status of rancorous elder citizens. But despite being unenamoured with our demur, most have accepted and understood that it is nothing personal, that it is just an
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On Saturday September 7th the winners of the International Marianne Brandt Contest 2013 were unveiled at an awards ceremony in the Industry Museum Chemnitz. We'll have more on the winners, the 2013 contest and of course the accompanying exhibition real soon, but for now the winners. Congratulations to all! Product Design Award Product & Special Award Alessi: Susanne Schwarz, "Papier tragen" Appreciation Product, Special Award (smow) & Public Award: Anna Albertine Baronius, "2tables"
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In our interview with the Stuttgart based designers Markus Jehs and Jürgen Laub one of the more interesting quotes is the pair's assertion that "...in Stuttgart people don’t talk so much about their success: an awful lot of creativity originates in Stuttgart but you don’t necessarily know that because no one talks about it." A quote which to be honest hasn't left us in peace since.... One organisation who do talk about creativity in Stuttgart, 20 times a year to be precise, is the Verein zur
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As any fool know contemporary product design arose from traditional crafts. The birth however wasn’t the smoothest, and the conflict between the form loving traditionalists who believed in a future of craft based industrial production and the machine fixated modernists with their focus on functionality dominated the inter-war years. Post World War II the modernists had largely succeeded in establishing their position and in his review of the 1951 exhibition “Design for Use USA” Wilhelm
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Although we rarely have reason to blow our own trumpets, we do regularly have cause to sound our colleagues veritable flourish of bugles, clarions, cornets, horns. And trumpets. Such is an occasion. With immediate effect many products in the (smow) online shop can be perused, compared and enjoyed as 360 degree photos. And they are photos. And not computer generated renderings. From established design classics including the Vitra Panton Chair or the Eames DSR over modern classics such as 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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The above is all the paper we brought back from Milan Design Week 2013. Three visiting cards. An Interni programme. A ten journey carnet. A couple of receipts. A page ripped out from our in-flight magazine. We are so proud of ourselves. Normally we return from Milan with enough paper to create a lifesize papier maché copy of Rodin's The Thinker. This year we were determined not to. And had one large motivation and one important theoretical guide to help us. The motivation was the two
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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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After long, sober, consideration we have decided to end the "Christmas is coming.... " project. Simply put, in the wake of last years "Christmas is coming the goose is getting fat… if Verner Panton had ever visited us, that is where he would have sat" we couldn't see where to take the concept. We had reached a creative zenith. Mount Olympus was behind us, a distant speck on a snowy, cloudy horizon and ahead a sorry, meaningless, desert of repetition, emotional contortion and former East
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On Friday last week we were at a discussion in Potsdam where Nils Holger Moormann spoke as eloquently and convincingly as ever about the advantages of long lifecyles for furniture and the continual development that is possible when one understands furniture as an evolving entity and not as a quick, profit generating, commodity. Referring, for example, to the FNP shelving system he commented, something along the lines of: even after 25 years one always finds new ways of extending and developing
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As more loyal readers will be aware we like nothing more than attempting to undermine Italy's claim to be the cradle of contemporary European architecture and design. It's all show and deliberate misinformation being our war cry. And so the exhibition L'Italia di Le Corbusier currently showing at the MAXXI in Rome is not the sort of show we really want to see presented. Because it seems to imply that Italy played a significant role in both the development of the young Le Corbusier's
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On July 23rd 2012 the Weißenhofsiedlung Stuttgart celebrates its 85th "birthday". An anniversary which provides a near-perfect excuse to relive one of the most important moments in the development of European Modernism. As if we really need an excuse. Initiated by the Deutscher Werkbund in cooperation with Stuttgart City Council the Weißenhofsiedlung comprised some 63 flats in 33 buildings designed by a truly stellar collection of international architects and was just one part of a larger
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As we admitted, "time management challenges" saw us visiting Design braucht Täter 2012 in Cologne before it officially opened. And before all exhibitors had arrived. We know it's not good. And we're still not sleeping properly. And so it was especially nice to receive an e-mail from Julia Pfizenmayer from jp designs - one of those exhibitors we never got the chance to see - introducing us to her modular storage system Outsider. Because it means that the exhibitors don't hold it against
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A couple of years ago we were sat, late one Friday evening, in the kitchen in the Moormann Berge in Aschau, when Nils Holger Moormann came in. Beaming. He'd just returned from collecting a "German Design Prize" in Gold for Berge and enthused how, in comparison to other design prizes, winning the Designpreis der Bundesrepublik Deutschland was like winning Olympic gold. He may not have compared it to the Olympics, our memories may be fuzzy on that point. But it was certainly high praise. And
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On January 27th the Design Museum Helsinki opens "DesignWorld", its first major exhibition for 2012. A not unimportant fact given the Finnish Capital's tenure as World Design Capital 2012. And very much in keeping with the Helsinki 2012 Manifesto - if we can use such phrase, apologies if that's going to far - DesignWorld asks how design can help, influence and improve man, society and the ways we interact with the world around us. Featuring market products, prototypes and "concepts in
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