Our deliberations on Bauhaus and music very naturally led us to a whole raft of further deliberations on the associations between music and other forms of creative expression; and for all the question, given that so many of those Bauhäusler who had/could have had second careers as musicians were artists, are there designers who have/had second careers as musicians....... .......of course there are...... 6 D 030 Z by Charles & Ray Eames for Evans for Zenith Radio. We all know that designers
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There is one song missing from the smow blog playlist: missing for the simple, regrettable, and thoroughly avoidable, reason that it isn't on spotify. For din skyld by the Danish singer Birgit Brüel. Denmark's entry for the 1965 Eurovision Song Contest. And featuring lyrics by Poul Henningsen. Yes, that Poul Henningsen. Poul Henningsen (1894 - 1967) Although popularly remembered as a lighting designer Poul Henningsen was, as previously noted, so much more. Indeed, in many respects his
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For a man who is universally lauded as one of the most important Danish designers of the 20th century, there is an inexplicable scarcity of reliable, independent information on Poul Henningsen. At least in languages other than Danish. Even the British Library in London, the self proclaimed keeper of the "world's knowledge", can only offer a couple of non-Danish language texts. Library shelves around the globe however buckle under the weight of Danish language works by and about Poul
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"What is the Paris Exposition?", asked Roger Gilman in the September 1925 edition of The Art Bulletin, "It is a new world of the applied arts. It is a new world of reality, reality in the square mass of concrete construction, reality in the smooth surfaces of machine products, reality in wonderful new materials offered by our mastery of science and transport, reality in the severe plainness of our practical age, reality in a marvellous effort to design everything and copy nothing. And it is a
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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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"My, my, my, Delilah! Why, why, why, Delilah!" The morning of Friday September 27th 2013 was one of those misty autumn occasions that cause SANAA's immense new Vitra Factory Building in Weil am Rhein to merge, almost unseen, with the grey background. Even Herzog & de Meuron's new Basel Messe complex was reduced to nothing more grand than a continuation of the uncaring monotonous sky. The glitzing, shimmering palace of high summer just the weak shadow of a memory. And so it was perhaps fitting
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