Budapest Design Week 2024 Compact: Alfréd by Szebedy Vajk When we first approached Alfréd by University of Óbuda student Szebedy Vajk at 360 Design during Budapest Design Week 2024 we interpreted it as an abstracted giraffe. It certainly wouldn't be the first time an animal had served as the basis for a piece of furniture design. Indeed shortly after meeting Alfréd we met the giraffe-esque library ladder 3½ by vondingen at Grassimesse Leipzig. Others would at this point speak of a t****
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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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Much as with the narrator of Half Man Half Biscuit's 'I was a teenage armchair Honvéd fan' we've also long "dreamt about a love affair in far-off Budapest". Unlike said narrator however our ongoing yearning doesn't revolve around a football club in the Kispest district of the city whose black an red was once worn by the likes of Grosics Gyula, Kocsis Sándor, Bozsik József or Puskás Ferenc, but revolve around design. Nor are we hankering after a golden age of either Hungarian football or
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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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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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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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Sonic Flowers and String by George Koutsouris, as seen at Design Without Borders 2024, Budapest In 2023 a, if one so will, special edition of Design Without Borders was held at FUGA - Budapest Center of Architecture, which devoted itself to "sound objects", objects that deliberately emit sounds, can be made to emit sounds, but which aren't musical instruments, or at least not in the normally understood definitions of the term; sound objects that, in many regards, are also part of that
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Access by mischer'traxler, as seen at Design Without Borders 2024, Budapest mischer'traxler a.k.a. Vienna based creatives Katharina Mischer and Thomas Traxler have, inarguably, been one of the more interesting and instructive design studios of the past decade and half. And that without ever achieving, without ever giving the impression of wanting to achieve, a wide public profile or a popular commercial acclaim. Always seem to have been perfectly happy getting on with doing their thing.
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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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Given that 'design' is popularly associated with a limitless reality, an unrestrainable questioning, a pushing at the open doors of possibility, it does tend to get hemmed in quite a lot, we do tend to like place it within an awful lot of borders: geographic borders, category borders, practice borders, conceptual borders, historic borders, etc, etc, etc. Or at least most of us do. For the past 20 years Budapest has been home to a borderless design, to Design Without Borders, an institution
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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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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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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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Let's be honest, it wouldn't be smow if it followed the rules and did that which you'd expected it to. Thus it should have come as absolutely no surprise to anyone that the inaugural Grassimesse smow-Designpreis produced not the expected one, but two, joint, co-winners: Budapest based designer Annabella Hevesi and her studio Line and Round I O and Nürnberg based glassmaker Cornelius Réer....... smow co-founder Martina Stadler reads the laudatio for Cornelius Réer (m) Annabella Hevesi / Line
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Established in Budapest in 2004 by textile designer Szilvia Szigeti and her interior designer husband Tamás Radnóti, Design Without Borders understands itself, and summarising to the point of inaccuracy, as a platform for international design dialogue across, or perhaps more accurately indifferent to, not only national borders but borders of genre, scale, approach, position et al. By way of preparing for the platform's forthcoming 20th birthday a showcase of projects presented, hosted, by
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As noted in our (brief) introductory post from Stockholm 2023, alongside all the problematic aspects of furniture fairs, one of the advantages, one of the joys of the format, is the chance to catch up with folks, the opportunity they offer to meet with, if oft all too briefly, individuals whose paths you don't cross on a regular basis; individuals such as Budapest based András Kerékgyártó, a designer who we greatly enjoy talking to, or more accurately who we greatly enjoy listening too,
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As we've noted in the past, Hungarian architects and designers made a valuable contribution to the development of post war architecture and design. Made. For in recent years a Hungarian accent in the design discourse has been principally notable by its absence. By its stillness. Which of course doesn't mean there aren't Hungarians producing intelligent, interesting, relevant and innovative work. There are. Hungarians such as the Budapest based practice Architecture Uncomfortable Workshop
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November 2015 was a month of exhibitions, including Konstantin Grcic at the Grassi Museum Leipzig and Anton Corbijn at C/O Berlin, but we did also find time for a very long chat with Budapest designer András Kerékgyártó about life as a contemporary Hungarian designer. The Work Space, as seen at Konstantin Grcic – Panorama, Grassi Museum for Applied Arts Leipzig Biela by András Kerékgyártó Moderne in der Werkstatt - 100 Years Burg Giebichenstein Kunsthochschule Halle @ Kunstmuseum
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The history of furniture design has an unignorable, if subtle and background, Hungarian accent; Marcel Breuer was one of the driving forces at Bauhaus and through his work with steel tubing, moulded plywood and sheet steel he helped advance ideas of contemporary furniture design, and continues to inspire; Paul László was one of the genuine pioneers of American industrial design and contributed to George Nelson's first Hermann Miller collection in 1948; and while Ernő Goldfinger may be best
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