Cologne isn't a city which creativity only visits every January in the form of the IMM Cologne furniture trade fair and the Passagen interior design week, but is a city in which creativity can be experienced all year round: and no we don't mean Carnival! We definitely don't mean Carnival! Rather genuine creativity of the sort that enriches, advances, challenges and entertains. In addition to being home to seven creative colleges, including the Köln International School of Design, KISD, the
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December is famously a half month - no one does anything useful in the second half of the month, unless eating, drinking and stressing can be considered useful! We however managed to more than fill the first half of December 2015 with Berlin based Bora Hong's cosmetic surgery of the Eames LCW, the architecture of Ferdinand Kramer in Frankfurt and a very long chat with Köln International School of Design director, and neuen Deutschen Design protagonist, Wolfgang Laubersheimer. Cosmetic Surgery
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We know. We know. It's January. Everyone just wants to sit at home feeling poor, fat and unloved....... Much more productive, and rewarding, would be a visit to an architecture and design exhibition, here five new exhibitions opening in January 2016 which particularly caught our attention. "The Inhuman Factor" at Falkenberg Museum, Falkenberg, Sweden If we're completely honest we have no idea where Falkenberg is. Or at least didn't. We've checked. It's a little bit south of Gothenburg. On
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As we noted in our 5 New Design Exhibitions for August 2015 post "Everyone, but everyone, it would appear is on holiday." We weren't, even if the relatively meagre number of posts tends to imply otherwise. A meagre number of posts which elegantly prove that reduction can lead to higher quality... Eliel Saarinen's entry for the 1922 Chicago Tribune Tower competition Havina by Samuli Helavuo, as seen at Garden Unique Youngstars Cologne 2015 The Shrine by Sigurd
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January being what it is we spent most of the month in Cologne attending the 2015 IMM Cologne Furniture Fair and the parallel Passagen Design Festival. The undisputed highlight of Passagen 2015 for us was the show case MAD ABOUT LIVING – 24 Designers from Brussels, which introduced us to numerous interesting Belgian creatives, and Ateliers J&J, who we feel certain will crop up a couple of times in the course of our review of 2015. In addition we were very impressed by the Objects in Between
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When is a terminus not an end station? When it is the exhibition Endstation Ubierring 40 - Terminus Ubierring 40 - at the Kölnisches Stadtmuseum, Cologne. Endstation Ubierring 40 at the Kölnisches Stadtmuseum, Cologne On March 31st 1993 the Art Department at Cologne Fachhochschule, the city's university of applied sciences and arts, closed, the final act in a process which, effectively, began in 1971 with the merging of the Kölner Werkschulen art and craft college with the Fachhochschule.
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In our post from the exhibition Schrill Bizarr Brachial. Das Neue Deutsche Design der 80er Jahre at the Bröhan Museum Berlin we noted that, for us at least, the greatest legacy of the 1980s post-modern neuen deutschen Design movement is and was the number of protagonists who have subsequently found teaching positions in Germany's leading design schools; protagonists such as Wolfgang Laubersheimer who since 1991 has been Professor of Production Technology at, and since 2013 Director of, the Köln
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On Thursday October 29th the winners of the Kölner DESIGN Preis 2015 were announced in a ceremony at the Museum für Angewandte Kunst Köln, MAKK. Open to students from Cologne's seven creative colleges and their international partner institutions the 8th edition of Germany's highest endowed prize for student diploma projects carried a total prize money of €15,000 and saw 29 projects nominated, projects ranging from products, to concepts and onto more fundamental research. For us the use of
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As we noted in our post on the 2015 Garden Unique Youngstars competition winner "snak" by Gunnar Søren Petersen, the contemporary outdoor furniture market is largely a forgotten world as far as quality design is concerned. But, and as we also noted, it needn't be. The 2015 edition of the Garden Unique Youngstars competition staged as part of the spoga+gafa garden fair in Cologne presented 15 projects by young designers which showed that "design for outdoors" is no contradiction. We're not
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In our 5 New Design Exhibitions for January 2015 post we noted with dismay, and an unmistakable hint of accusation, that System USM Haller appeared not to be included in the exhibition SYSTEM DESIGN. Über 100 Jahre Chaos im Alltag at the Museum für Angewandte Kunst Köln. We were wrong. Of course System USM Haller was included in the exhibition. Anything else would have been absurd. And while the actual object on show is and was a less than ideal example of the genius of the system, the essay
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Established in 1993 with a primary focus on producing the designs of Egon Eiermann, including most famously the re-edition of Eiermann's 1953 table frame, Stuttgart based furniture manufacturer Richard Lampert have quietly developed over the intervening twenty plus years into one of Germany's most distinctive and idiosyncratic furniture producers, and a manufacturer with a portfolio that effortlessly mixes contemporary design with older, established, pieces. Often in the same object. Whereas
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In our post on Plug Lamp by Form Us With Love for Ateljé Lyktan, we posed the question "where in Hades if not while at your desk are you likely to need both a light and a plug?" And where, if not in your kitchen are you likely to need both a light and herbs? Presented as part of the Hochschule für Technik Stuttgart Interior Design department's IMM Cologne showcase "Wir bitten zu Tisch", the Erleuchtung Kräutergarten - Enlightening Herb Garden - by Elisabeth Kocher and Anna-Lena Bast provides
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In our post on Rui Alves's Bridge Chair prototype from IMM Cologne we noted that, although generally approving of the piece, it wasn't as instantly accessible as much of Rui's work. It took us a little bit of time to find our way into it. One possible reason is and was what we referred to as the "deliberately overproportioned upholstered seat and back rest", and the associated unfamiliar but not unappealing form language with its vague reminiscence of Finn Juhl or Hans J Wegner, yet clearly
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Contrary to popular legend, a change is not as good as a rest. It's better. For whereas after a rest one just carries on ploughing the same furrow, change means new experiences and the gorgeous, invigorating, uncertainty of not knowing where the new path will take you. After neigh on 18 years of producing refreshingly individual objects from sheet steel, and sheet steel alone, in 2014 Augsburg based Müller Möbelfabrikation began a flirtation with wood in context of their Stack sideboard/room
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If you're of a certain age, and of a certain background, you'll be familiar with the Roland TR-808 drum machine. If not, introduced in 1980 the Roland TR-808 was one of the first programmable drum machines, was, as such, a major influence on the development of electronic music in the 1980s..... and is infamous for sounding absolutely nothing like real drums, far less real percussion. Consequently, on account of its universally acknowledged auditory failings, the TR-808 was only produced for
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While the old adage "you are what you eat" can't be true, if it were we'd be a slovenly pile of beer and crisps, it is very true that you are how you cook. Cooking has largely developed with cultures, the way similar foodstuffs are prepared and cooked, for example, varying from region to region, and regardless of how technologically advanced society inevitably becomes, cooking will, we suspect, remain largely resistant to change. Cooking systems will evolve and adapt, but cooking processes
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We remember very clearly the first time we saw the work of Berlin design studio llot llov: it was at Designers Fair Cologne 2010, back in the day when the exhibition was held in the fading glory of the so-called Rheintriadem. Walking down a corridor, invariably trying to decide what we wanted for lunch, we glanced, more or less unconsciously, into one of the rooms and there hanging in the corner, radiating an unmistakable self-confident grandeur, was the macramé "flower cocoon" Lucille.
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In our post on the Drawers Table by 45 Kilo for My Kilos we noted "any product that can appear as fresh, contemporary and universally deployable six years after its release as it did on day one is, as a general rule, good." And what about a table which appears as fresh, contemporary and universally deployable 61 years after its release as it did on day one? Such is the case with the ess.tee.tisch t-6500 from Swiss manufacturer Horgenglarus. Originally launched by Horgenglarus in 1954 as the
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Parallel to the exhibition MAD ABOUT LIVING – 24 Designers from Brussels, Cologne is hosting an exhibition which nicely highlights one of the major differences between Belgian designers and their Dutch colleagues in terms of designing furniture and other domestic products Whereas Belgian designers simply produce furniture, Dutch designers produce concepts. OK we're generalising, and to be fair we do know a lot, a few, some, Dutch designers who produce perfectly "normal" furniture. But for the
read moreIf we're correctly informed, and let's be honest we're not always, 2014 saw the Belgian General Consulate in Cologne host their first Passagen Design Week exhibition with an excellent showcase of new and less new works by Atelier Bonk and Cas Moor. Buoyed by the success of that experience for Passagen 2015 the Consulate is hosting the exhibition MAD ABOUT LIVING - 24 Designers from Brussels. Organised by the Brussels regional creative promotion agency, MAD Brussels, and staged in the fire
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As regular readers will be aware, for us there are two characteristics which define a proper desk: drawers and an endlessly large surface area on which to spread out and indulge in your work/life balance. Characteristics perfectly embodied by Drawers Table by design studio 45 Kilo for Berlin based brand My Kilos. What however is particularly pleasing and endearing about Drawers Table is that despite its wonderfully spacious dimensions, the well thought through design and carefully reduced
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Much as we tend to shy away from "Designer of the Year" awards, the presentation of German architecture and design magazine A&W's Designer of the Year award is always an early highpoint of the Passagen Cologne Design Week. Principally because it invariably results in a compact yet informative exhibition from and about the selected designer. An exhibition that is perhaps never independent nor critical, but which always provides an accessible overview of the designers oeuvre. Following on from
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Our favourite Portuguese designer TM Rui Alves is making his IMM Cologne début this year, with a new prototype under his own name and an old smow blog favourite being launched by Danish manufacturer Menu. Premièred as "Tailor Sofa" at Salone Satellite 2013 and now renamed Lounge Sofa by Menu the work initially caught our attention on account of being a "deliciously effortlessly reduced down piece [which] combines a turned wooden frame with a pressed felt seat to create a sort of simplified
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Following on from system design at the MAKK and the more autonomous product design featured at Objects in Between, we bring you an exhibition in Cologne presenting a third product design category: the collection. Whereas systems require a connector, a universal node, collections can be considered a series of related products which although created in the one context need not have a connection. Other than having been created in the same context. For their Passagen Cologne 2015 exhibition
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