Two Hundred Tons, as seen at Designblok Prague 2024 It's more or less a century since the first steel tube furniture was developed, and looking around you it's relatively easy to believe that since then everything has been done, that steel tube furniture has reached its full potential. Or perhaps more accurately; because the contemporary popular understanding of steel tube furniture is the steel tube furniture from the earliest days of steel tube furniture, and because the steel tube
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Last time we were at Designblok Prague the roof blew of the venue. Not our fault (this time); but the consequence of an enormous, monstrous in every sense of the word, hurricane that blew across central Europe, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake that meant it took us, if we recall correctly, about 15 weeks to get home. And that via one of the more adventurous and improbable routes we've ever travelled. On the plus side we spent so long in Prague Central Station listening to
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Excito by Tea Gluvačević, as seen at Zagreb Design Week 2024 We're not sure how things are today in pre-school and primary education institutes, but when we were young every child regularly made a lantern by cutting some slits in a piece of paper, rolling it to a tube, and then squashing it a little. Which is a very simple, and slightly derogatory, certainly unfair, manner via which to describe the lamp, lantern, Excito by Sarajevo Academy of Fine Arts' student Tea Gluvačević. For not only
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Despite what you may have have been led to believe, Oktoberfest isn't in October. Or is barely in October. It's primarily in September, ends on the first Sunday in October. Meaning in 2024 it's all over on the 6th of October. Leaving you the rest of the month to over-consume in reasonably-priced architecture and design museums rather than over-consuming in over-priced beer tents. Our five locations for a party of the spirit, intellect, soul and for improving your understanding of the world
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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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The European design calendar is dominated by a few mega events, colossi whose shadows not only define the calendar but tend to hog the media and therefore the popular perception of contemporary design, not least since that media became primarily the unreflective echo chamber of Instagram; yet colossi whose (invariably stupidly high) costs mean that only those with the deepest of pockets can hope to find success at such events, only those with the deepest of pockets can hope to register on the
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"Das Unbehagen an unseren Städten ist ziemlich allgemein"1 opined the German architecture and design theoretician Hans Eckstein in 1972, 'discontent with our cities is fairly universal', continuing 'it is growing day by day. Accusations and indignation are heard everywhere. It is almost impossible to ignore the amount of literature about the miserable condition of our cities.' Yet despite the apparent, certainly for Eckstein, urgency and ubiquity of the discontent, he laments that 'there are
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In 1991 the German, designer, theoretician, educator and co-initiator of the Hochschule für Gestaltung Ulm, Otl Aicher, opined that "die Relation von Form und Material lässt sich nirgendwo so gut nachweisen wie bei Nahrungsmitteln, also etwa bei Teigwaren"1, 'the relationship between form and material is nowhere better demonstrated than in foodstuffs, such as pasta'. With the exhibition al dente: Pasta & Design the HfG-Archiv, Ulm, explore not only the relationships between form and material
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The word on the wind was that Tsuyoshi Tane’s Garden House was to be the last addition to the Vitra Campus, Weil am Rhein. The wind appears to have been ill-informed, thankfully, for with the project Khudi Bari by Marina Tabassum the Vitra Campus has a new addition that expands and extends it more than just physically....... Khudi Bari by Marina Tabassum, Vitra Campus, Weil am Rhein Developed in 2020 by Dhaka, Bangladesh, born and based architect Marina Tabassum as a project for "the
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Across the northern hemisphere September generally marks the start of the academic year, be that in primary, secondary, tertiary or quaternary education contexts, as students at all levels return to their studies after the long summer break. And while quinary education may not need an official start, or indeed a structured year, there is not only something appropriate in opening a new chapter in your studies alongside that of your fellow students, but for all the number and variety of new
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Timon and Melchior Grau with their Fire lamp (photo courtesy GRAU) There is an argument to be made, one indeed we've often have made in these dispatches, that the (hi)story of human society, essentially, begins with the harnessing of fire, a harnessing that conceptually someone had to arrive at and which poses important questions as to how 'primitive' 'primitive' societies actually were: could you conceive harnessing fire, and then work out how to? We couldn't. A harnessing of fire that was
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In 1998 the then, German President, and native of Bavaria, Roman Herzog opined, "In München sind Lederhose und Laptop eine Symbiose eingegangen", 'In Munich, lederhose and laptops have entered into a symbiosis'. One of innumerable partisan puffs for the Freistaat over the decades by Bavarian politicians; but also a very neat political statement implying that the popular image of Bavaria as being all about mountains, forests, lakes, rivers and rugged herders on livestock dense alms, was no
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"A bútortörténet az általános művészettörténet és a művelődéstörténet egyik speciális ága" opined the Hungarian interior designer, furniture designer, editor and educator Kaesz Gyula in 1962, 'furniture history is a special branch of general art history and cultural history', continuing that 'its task is to acquaint you with the part of human creative work that creates the human environment and means of use. Through the individual objects, we get to know the age, the production and social
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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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Human society's fascination with leaving behind the limitations and fragilities and vagaries of the human being, and of the planet we all call home, is almost as old as human society, and is inextricably linked with developments in technology, science, engineering and human society's understandings of itself and its environments; amongst the earliest descriptions, for example, of flying to the moon being Francis Godwin’s 1638 book The Man in the Moone, an account of a journey, and of the beings
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August 2024 is Olympics, or at least the first half is. And while, yes, you could stay home and watch events in Paris unfold from the comfort of your sofa and fridge, you could also undertake a little cerebral, contemplative, conceptual, fencing, judo, weightlifting, skateboarding, and/or gymnastics of your own. Go for that inner gold!!! Seek to become a new personal best!!! Our five recommended cultural sporting venues for August 2024 can be found, not in Paris, or at least not directly,
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"The word 'document' which in the last few generations stood, and in many regards still stands for, papers relating to legal matters, such as deeds, contracts, affidavits and certificates, has in present-day professional usage reverted to its original meaning as derived from its Latin origin", opined Lucia Moholy in 1948, "and now applies to spoken, written, printed and other materials, produced and distributed for the purpose of imparting knowledge".1 With Lucia Moholy: Exposures Kunsthalle
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While the rest of the international design museum community retreat from the warmth of the summer sun, taking shelter in the cool of their depots and archives, Leipzig's Grassi Museum für Angewandte Kunst are busy preparing for one of its annual highlights: Grassimesse. A craft, applied art and design fair instigated in 1920 which has witnessed, and survived, the highs and lows of the past century in Leipzig and environs. And which since 1920 has been by invitation only: anyone and everyone can
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As an (apparent) unending forest criss-crossed by visual axes and dotted with meadows, Park Sanssouci in Potsdam stands proxy for the garden design, the garden architecture, of 18th and 19th century Europe. As an (apparent) unending forest criss-crossed by visual axes and dotted with meadows, Park Sanssouci in Potsdam stands proxy for the power and wealth and pomp and glory of 18th and 19th century Prussia. According to the Stiftung Preußische Schlösser und Gärten Berlin-Brandenburg, who
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Wegneritis An Itch; A Compulsion; A Just One Good Chair Formally catalogued in the WHO International Classification of Diseases as MB23.W1, Wegneritis is a condition exclusive to furniture designers first recorded in Denmark where Jørgensen Wegner, a Hans by birth, and a leading carpenter of his age whose chairs were celebrated and acclaimed throughout all the known lands of that period, was beset by a compulsion, a creative itch, to design ever new chairs, "If only you could design just one
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As Sara Coleridge so very, very, nearly phrased it: "Hot July brings cooling showers, Apricots, and inspiring days in architecture and design museums"1 Our five apricots recommendations for inspiring new exhibitions opening in the, invariably, far, far, too hot July of 2024 take us all to Luxembourg, Remagen, Warsaw, Utrecht and Susch....... "Xanti Schawinsky: Play, Life, Illusion — a Retrospective" at Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Mudam, Luxembourg Xanti Schawinsky is not only a
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Ciao Salone! Servus Salone!! Amongst the European designer furniture publishers Nils Holger Moormann has long stood out from the crowd, and that primarily because Nils Holger Moormann has never sought the crowd, has always done Nils Holger Moormann's thing, not the crowd's thing, and who in doing such has very much, and very justifiably, attracted a crowd lot of individuals. Thus while other furniture publishers dance to the tune of the international trade fair crowd, Nils Holger Moormann
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Moa by Roberta Wende, as seen at Design Without Borders 2024, Budapest As the chair Moa by Roberta Wende appeared in our field of view at Design Without Borders 2024 in the Kiscell Museum, Budapest, our first thought was "felt". Or more accurately our first thought was "FELT!!!", a reflection of our current obsession with all things wool and the promise (we firmly believe to be) inherent in an increase in small-scale, local, sheep-holding in Europe. And we were right it is felt. But not
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