One of the defining images of DMY Berlin 2012 was without question Andrea Brena sitting cross-legged on his stand, up to his elbows in brightly coloured material and knitting with his arms. A sight that, as one can imagine, always attracted a crowd as numerous as it was curious. Although outwardly about knitting with your arms, the central theme of Knitted Army is much more about redefining the personal connection between user and object. About reclaiming furniture from the cold, dark cave
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We were famously first drawn to the work of Belgian designer Tim Baute aka Interror.be via a lamp he showed at Designers Fair Cologne 2010. And his SevenUp, a moody and reduced down chandelier, remains one of our reference products. Tim is however a metalworker by training and so it was good to see him presenting a new steel product range for his debut at DMY Berlin. And although named after the B-2 Bomber, the range doesn't have its origins in the secretive world of military aviation, but
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It's fair to say that until visiting DMY Berlin 2012 the only design object we knew from Rosenheim was Nils Holger Moormann's Volvo. However at Tempelhof Airport the students from the Interior Design department of the Hochschule Rosenheim demonstrated that the southern German town can also produce slightly more contemporary works. On an interesting and nicely varied DMY stand the two highlights for us were the table "T#9" by Rebecca Schmidhuber and the kitchen system "Stangenware" by Nina
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When all's said and done Marcel Breuer's 1927 Wassily Chair is nothing more than a couple of bits of material stretched over a metal frame. Giandomenico Belotti's 1960 Spaghetti Chair is nothing more than some PVC cord stretched over a metal frame And so on first impressions there is nothing new about "Upholstered Chair" by Jooyeon Lee. Damn those first impressions............... Created as her Diploma project at the Aalto University Helsinki, "Upholstered Chair" is a lounger created from
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Older readers will remember our fascination and admiration for Scolyt by Marco Merkel after we saw it at the UdK Berlin Rundgang 2011. Marco has now developed things a little further, reduced the scale and is presenting the project at DMY Berlin 2012. We're still lovin' it. And not just because of the beauty of the end results. But because of the thinking and process behind the project. We're fairly certain there is absolutely no useful application of the process, other than creating such
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One of the reasons we've never got on well with trends is because ultimately he who shouts loudest is perceived as being the best, most innovative or most important. DMY Berlin 2012 demonstrates that is not the case. While in Hangar 4 the main sponsor screams his marketing budget at full volume; about 40 metres away two FH Potsdam graduates are quietly presenting much more interesting and socially relevant objects. And much as we'd like to proclaim that their minimal, non-intrusive stand
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If we're honest we can't remember if the Vitra Design Museum exhibition "The Essence of Things: Design and the Art of Reduction" has a section devoted to ergonomics. If not, they may need to extend it to include "The Half" by Finnish/Korean design collective Studio Sailing to Mars. Initially developed with musicians in mind, "The Half" is... half a chair Proportionally. Not physically. Through the reduced form the sitter is more or less forced to adopt a more positive posture - one simply
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Egon Eiermann allegedly once began work on a series of coffins for a Berlin funeral company. The series was sadly never realised, but we can well imagine in which direction Eiermann would have gone.... On the Farmer's Creativity by Agri-expo Yunlin stand at DMY Berlin 2012 is an object that approaches the subject with a little more agility. Return by Sa' Bella Design / Sally Lin is an urn. An urn made of recycled paper, the walls of which are impregnated with seeds. As the paper
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One of the real joys of the first few days of DMY Berlin 2012 has been catching up with Stephan Schulz. Not just because Stephan is without question the product designer we know with the healthiest attitude to the whole circus, and as such after a few minutes in his company you no longer fear the workload that lies ahead. But also because we'd been looking forward to seeing his new Domestic Landscape collection. A collection that as the press material so promisingly begins "... transports
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As already stated, DMY Berlin 2012 is hosting not only the Designpreis der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 2012 exhibition but also the jury meeting to decide which entries should be nominated - and as such go forward to the short list from which the winners will be selected. The jury have done their work and until June 10th we all have the chance to not only view all submitted entries. But also disagree with the jury's decisions. It's why jury's make decisions! The first thing to say is that
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As part of the 2012 festival DMY Berlin will be hosting a one day symposium-cum-workgroup looking at design education. As regular readers will be aware design education is a subject we often come back to; be it in terms of business education in design schools, questioning the number of design students or looking at opportunities for networking design schools with local communities. It therefore goes without saying that we find the fact that DMY Berlin is staging such an event very
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Although we know better, sometimes we could almost believe that this blog is planned. In our "Belgium is Design" post from Milan we wrote "Tim Baute from interror was for several years one of the true highlights at Designers Fair in Cologne." And a couple of weeks later in pops the information that he will be making his debut at DMY Berlin. If his new "Stealth" product range will be a highlight remains to be seen. And certainly the competition is tough. New Zealand designer David Trubridge,
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For their 2011 project the Berlin/Milan design group Transalpino chose to explore the "design" tradition that exists between their two cities. The fruits of their research were presented at DMY Berlin 2011under the title "Made in Between". To find out a little more about the project we spoke to Transalpino member Christoffer Martens. (smow)blog: Briefly, what is the background to "Made in Between"? Christoffer Martens: Normally one would only speak of Berlin as a design city or Milan as a
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One of the genuine highlights of our year is DMY Berlin. Not just because it offers the chance to spend a week in Berlin, but because whereas all design festivals, inevitably, have a commercial aspect - at DMY Berlin it is not rammed down your throat. Conceptual, experimental design is just as welcome as market ready products, and one genuinely has the feeling that "design" is the only thing that matters. Egos, star allure and bottomless expense accounts belong elsewhere. DMY Berlin 2011 is
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For us there are many highlights to the (smow) design year, Milan, London, Brussels, Copenhagen.... and of course DMY Berlin. DMY Berlin isn't the biggest design fair, but what it lacks in quantity it more than makes up for in quality. And for 2010 the organisers have not only found a new location; but also a new jury structure. Rather than the normal "rotating heads jury" DMY Berlin now features a UN Security Council approach with 3 permanent members and 2 rotating. The three permanent
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DMY Berlin may have been a few weeks ago, but the warm memories remain. And as we were sorting through the piles of info material we gathered in Kreuzberg we came across a postcard from Wohngold. And like a remiss lover returning from a holiday fling, instantly felt a pang of guilt as we saw the card and were reminded of that wonderful time at DMY Youngsters. Why hadn't we responded since our return? Did it all mean so little? For the truth is that LADAR by Wohngold is a truly wonderful
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The Top 5 chairs from the smow design spring. In no particular order. We lie: there is a slight order. First up is our favourite chair from the smow design spring: Stuart Miller's unnamed foldable cardboard chair from the designersblock showcase in Milan. Over the course of the smow design spring we didn't see any thing that even came to close to capturing Stuart's simple, practical and comfortable chair. We've sadly lost sight of the project a little, and lack the requisite degree in
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The Top 5 Lamps from the smow design spring. In no particular order. Kete by David Turnbridge. One of the first lamps we saw in Milan, and probably that which left the greatest impression on us. And not merely on account of its size. For us the principle beauty of Kete is the atmosphere it can create in a room with it 7W LED element. And despite their overproprtionality Kete doesn't domiante the room. Honest. Kete. Anything but dull. moooi. Beach Ball Lamps by TOBYhouse. When we first
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We at (smow)blog we have often mentioned Vitras Net'n'Nest office design concept - one the one hand because we like it and on the other because as an official Vitra partner we at smow like to draw attention to new developments and products from Vitra. We have, however, never made a secret of the fact that one can - if one wants - mix and match furniture from various producers. Which was pretty much our third thought upon seeing Adenike by Heidelberg based designer Bao-Nghi Droste at DMY
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Before we start slowing down and head outdoors to enjoy the summer we want to take the opportunity over the next couple of weeks to look back on the smow design spring; namely our trips to Milan, New York, Brühl, Basel and Berlin ... as well as to start looking forward to the forthcoming smow design autumn. And no we won't just be re-visiting old ground, we have saved a few treats from USM Haller, Vitra, ICFF, DMY Berlin and Salone for those long summer evenings on the balcony with a good
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The International Design Festival Berlin is over, but the pleasing afterglow remains. In particular through joys such as that presented by Portugese designer My Own Super Studio. At designer furniture shows one sees a lot of furniture, but not much that genuinely excites on account of its genuine innovation. Fiss Family by my own super studio is one of the rarities. Fiss Family is essentially a set of 4 colour coded - Big Blue, Small Yellow, Long Green and Fat Orange - lamps. Or better put
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Berlin didn't become the pulsating metropolis its is by blithely doing what everyone else does. Oh no, Berlin became Berlin because it was Berlin. And now so that we all can bathe in wonder of what "Berlin" means, the city marketing authorities have started an education programme, "be Berlin", in which they instruct us all how we too can be like them. And in conjunction with the DMY design festival, (smow)blog can exclusively reveal a few secrets as to how you too can "be Berlin" be Berlin
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What first attracted us to the work of Jason Miller at ICFF was the fact it was dirty. Obviously not pysically grubby, but dirty. As in a get down, funky, sort of dirty. Downtown Manhattan circa 1976 dirty. And we liked that. A lot. A similar emmotion grabbed us here at DMY Berlin as we walked past the stand from Design Apparat. The furniture was filthy. Again not in a grubby, don't sit down you'll ruin your jacket sort of way; rather in a "did you find that in Warsaw Pact appartment
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Berlin didn't become the pulsating metropolis its is by blithely doing what everyone else does. Oh no, Berlin became Berlin because it was Berlin. And now so that we all can bathe in wonder of what "Berlin" means, the city marketing authorities have started an education programme, "be Berlin", in which they instruct us all how we too can be like them. And in conjunction with the DMY design festival, (smow)blog can exclusively reveal a few secrets as to how you too can "be Berlin" be Berlin
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