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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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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Back at the end of 2014 we mused as to whether or not this might be an apposite moment to quietly remove ourselves from the high octane world of design blogging and seek out pastures new and a calmer, more sedentary, life. The melancholy of those late December days still lingers, yet with the IMM Cologne furniture trade fair and Passage Cologne design festival standing afore us like some bright eyed, white toothed, flaxen haired vision of our famously promising youth, we have no option but to
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During the 2014 Passagen design festival the Cologne flagship store of Italian kitchen and bathroom manufacturer Boffi presented an exhibition of objects by six young(ish) designers. And no we're not being deliberately provocative or derogative with our (ish). We know a couple of the designers involved. And know that they would admit they're not the youngest cats in the park any more. Presented under the title "Young Perspectives" and curated by the Cologne based "Design Services Agency"
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"Wood will be driven out of living spaces; even metal and glass, although much newer in domestic situations, are losing their importance. Plastics are on the advance....."1 What had caused the German magazine Stern to pronounce in February 1970 so unequivocally on the future of home furnishings? Stern had seen Verner Panton's Visiona 2 exhibition at Cologne Furniture Fair. And knew it had seen the future. "It is certain that a new age is rolling through our homes. What is coming is not just
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Our coverage of IMM Cologne 2014 may be reaching its conclusion, but we still have a few gleaming gems to bring you, the brightest of which was to be found on the Thonet stand: the new S 1200 desk by Randolf Schott from and with the Thonet Design Team. While classic Thonet desks such as Marcel Breuer's S 285 can work very well in a contemporary home office and/or as an informal place of work in a living room, they do bring with them a certain formal heaviness owing to their abstraction from
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It may have been because at IMM Cologne 2014 they were given a larger stand than in previous years. It may just have been that the time was ripe. The "why" is however ultimately unimportant, what is important is that at IMM Cologne 2014 Augsburg based Müller Möbelfabrikation presented a series of new products that decisively extended the company's portfolio, a series of new products that, in our opinion, make Müller Möbelfabrikation a more rounded, more complete company. And which achieved
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Curated annually by the German Design Council on behalf of Cologne Trade Fair the [D3] Contest is an international competition for young designers that reaches its conclusion every January with an exhibition and awards ceremony at IMM. The 2014 edition attracted over 600 entries, 22 of which made it onto the short list and so into the Cologne exhibition. And while we retain our well-founded distrust of design competitions, we do know that the [D3] Contest exhibition is a regular haunt of those
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In our post from the 2013 HfG Karlsruhe "Sommerloch" exhibition we wrote "Similarly the spiritedly named “Arbeitstitle” by Marlene Deken and the even more spiritedly unnamed object by Anne-Sophie Oberkrome from the K.O. Furniture class still have a lot of development work ahead of them, and may ultimately not work, but both presented in their design approach interesting solutions for quick and easy tool-less shelf construction." The K.O. Furniture project was run by Stefan Diez and asked the
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Revolutions in design and architecture invariably involve a new material. The oldest examples of this phenomenon being found in the context of metals: the Bronze Age and the Iron Age. And in the 6000 years since man first learnt to mix tin and copper the fascination for and desire to work with metal remains as primordial as ever. To celebrate the variety and durability of metal in design Frankfurt based Trademark Publishing recently released "Objects: Alle Metalle" an homage to classic and
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Every two years designers from the Dutch town of Groningen chum together to present a joint showcase during Cologne Design Week. The fourth "Gronicles" edition is being staged in the former Wohn-bar in Cologne Ehrenfeld and features works by Lotte Douwes, Jack Brandsma, Esther Jongsma, Lambert Kamps and Arend Groosman. Among a mix of product, conceptual and graphic design projects two works particularly caught our attention: Spatial Vase by Lotte Douwes and Bedcrate by Jack Brandsma. Created
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When we spoke with Nik Back and Alexander Stamminger aka maigrau back in 2010 they told us that in the context of developing the, then, fledgling companies collection "...on the one hand as designers we naturally want to continue designing products ourselves, but on the other we can also imagine developing products for maigrau in cooperation with other designers." The new maigrau products being launched at IMM Cologne 2014 perfectly demonstrate this binary approach: two new products from
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In 2012 the Berlin based publishers/curators/editors Ilka & Andreas Ruby established BKULT as an online platform for discussing issues in contemporary architecture. Every two weeks a new question is posed and prominent guests are invited to answer "yes", "no" or "jein", and more importantly to justify their position and elucidate their argument. The platform is then opened to all and thus develops a discussion over topics such as "Does architecture need a quota for women?", "Do we need more
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What would IMM Cologne week be without the official enthronement of the A&W Designer of the Year? One day shorter and one exhibition poorer say we. Following on from Patricia Urquiola in 2012 and Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec in 2013 the 2014 A&W Designer of the Year is Werner Aisslinger. And as tradition demands his work is currently being celebrated in an exhibition in the Kölner Kunstverein. In summer 2013 the Berlin gallery Haus am Waldsee presented a Werner Aisslinger solo exhibition under
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That furniture often has a cultural background can probably be best observed in chairs: the cultural background often defining, for example, the height, number and position of legs. That wall hooks can also have a cultural basis is new to us. But in the case of the North American Shaker community they would appear to. Traditionally Shaker homes have a wooden bar that runs round a room onto which at regular intervals hooks are attached. Meaning you're never more than a couple of metres from a
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In 1949 the Swedish publishing house Bonniers folkbibliotek organised a competition asking for designs for a bookcase system that was easy to ship, easy to assemble and easily affordable. The background is fairly obvious: the more book storage space your average Swede has, the more books they can buy. In the late 1940s the Swedish Industrial Designer Nils Strinning had enjoyed notable success with plastic coated steel wire designs - first as crockery drying racks and subsequently as storage
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For their now traditional IMM Cologne exhibition Ungers Archiv für Architekturwissenschaft is presenting an exhibition devoted to one of the more interesting characters in the story of German furniture design, Stefan Wewerka. Born in Magdeburg on October 27th 1928 Stefan Wewerka studied architecture at the Hochschule für Bildende Kunst Berlin under, amongst others, Max Taut and Georg Leowald, left however without formally graduating. Something which in those days was no hindrance to a
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In numerous mythologies heroes are whisked through space and time on a magic carpet. The carpet project that took Alexander Seifried to Afghanistan may or may not have been magic, but it has treated us to one of the most unique, and hardest to ignore, moments at IMM Cologne. The full story is a little long for a compact blog post; however, in brief, researching carpets Alexander Seifried came across North Afghani yurt designs and was suitably inspired to develop his own yurt, the Kargah Tent.
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Given that Cologne is geographically closer to Brussels than Berlin, there probably should be more Belgian designers exhibiting at Cologne Design Week than there actually/normally are. Also because a Belgian Frites seller can be found on near every street corner, thus ensuring no Belgian - or indeed Dutchman, Scot or Australian - need go hungry. Among the Belgians who are here this year are old (smow) blog favourites Tim Baute and Stefaan De Croock aka Atelier Bonk who are presenting their
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On Monday January 13th the European design circus rolls into the new year with the opening of IMM Cologne 2014 and Passagen 2014, and against our natural inclinations we'll be there, or as Ride so nearly put it; "If we've seen it all before, Why's this train taking us back again? If we don't need anymore, Why's this train taking us back again?" Yes, the rent has to be paid. But there are easier ways to earn a living than spending a week in January on the banks of the Rhein questioning your
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Older readers will be aware that we have often held up the absence of some of Germany's most important designer furniture manufacturers as an unmissable indicator of an inherent weakness in the IMM Cologne brand. Those same readers will therefore understand the confusion we felt on seeing that Wilde+Spieth would, finally, be attending IMM Cologne in 2013. We were delighted they were participating. We however now have one argument less. Based in Esslingen near Stuttgart, Wilde+Spieth were
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In March 2012 we wrote about the Depot Basel show "Seats" which included a section devoted to the "Take a Seat" project run by Zurich based design studio Aekae in co-operation with the Zurich cafe "Z am Park" In essence "Take a Seat" involves commissioning contemporary designers to "re-work" four Horgenglarus 1-380 chairs. The results are then used for 6 months in Z am Park before being auctioned off to the highest bidder. The interesting aspect, or one of the interesting aspects, of the
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As we've said before, and will never tire of repeating, the Thonet back catalogue harbours an unparalleled treasure trove of design classics. And certainly enough interesting and challenging designs to keep half-a-dozen contemporary furniture companies in business for the next decade or two. Fortuitously just as Iceland's fisherman don't try to maximise profit by catching as many fish as possible as quickly as possible, so to do Thonet choose not to raid the archive every couple of months in
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In our interview with Michel Charlot about his lamp U-Turn for Belux he told us that "I like it when people look at an object and find it “normal”, but that is something which is quite difficult to achieve...." Such an object is without question Stool 60 by Alvar Aalto. As so to help explain the complexity hidden in the simplicity, and celebrate the object's 80th anniversary, the Ungers Archiv für Architekturwissenschaft are staging an exhibition during IMM Cologne 2013 devoted to this
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