Every time we are in Milan, be it for the Design Week or simply to enjoy the city without the inconvenience of the Design Week, we invariably find ourselves strolling past the Rossignoli bicycle shop on the Corso Garibaldi. An emporium with a history stretching back to 1900, and which positively oozes such, the Rossignoli store has long fascinated us, long fired our imaginations, and yet remains an address we have somehow never managed to enter: this year the perfect excuse was delivered by
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"This is a job of work whose goal is precision, delicacy, amiability and attentiveness: being attentive to people, uses, buildings, trees, asphalt or grass surfaces, to what already exists. It's a matter of causing the least inconvenience or no inconvenience at all. It's a matter of being generous, giving more, facilitating usage and simplifying life"1 These words stand not only in the centre of the exhibition "Studio Plus. Druot, Lacaton & Vassal: Transformation as an architectural manifesto"
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December can be a trying month: always having to think of others; always having to patronise bars and restaurants you've spent the rest of the year wishing would return to the parallel hell from whence they came; eating, eating and eating as if trapped in some culinary Groundhog Day. Do yourself a favour, gift yourself a few hours and visit one of the following new design and architecture exhibitions opening in December 2015. We can't guarantee they'll be good, but can guarantee they'll be
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It only seems like five minutes since two tall, neatly coiffured, strangers strode, self-confidently, across the floor of the old smow HQ in the, then, uncontrolled wilds of Leipzig's Plagwitz Village. "Who are they?", went the distrustful whisper round the office, "Tax inspectors?" "Customs?" "Health and Safety?" All eyes followed the strangers as they disappeared into the frosted glass anonymity of the meeting room. The tension in the office rose palpably. The only visitors known before
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"The challenges of contemporary housing are rooted in the changing materials, social and intellectual structures of our time; and can only be understood in such terms. The degree of structural change determines the nature and extent of the problems. They are deprived of any arbitrariness. They cannot be solved with slogans, nor hidden and ignored behind words of good intention. The problem of rationalisation and standardisation is only one part of the problem. Rationalisation and
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On the evening of Wednesday June 24th the winners of the 2015 aed neuland young designer competition were announced in a ceremony in Stuttgart. Organised by the design/architecture/engineering association aed Stuttgart, neuland is a biennial international competition open to students or recent graduates under the age of 28 and according to the organisers the 2015 competition attracted some 330 entries across the five categories. An exhibition featuring all 23 nominated and prize winning
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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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It's now been twelve months since we decided to start recommending upcoming architecture and design exhibitions based on nothing more substantial and reliable than a press release or a PR agency text. A year in which we have recommended 60 exhibitions which sounded good, sounded worth visiting, sounded entertaining. Most of those that we subsequently visited were. A fact that has encouraged us to continue. And so to celebrate "5 New Design Exhibitions" first birthday, 5 New Design Exhibitions
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"I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers" exclaims Anne Shirley in Lucy Maud Montgomery's 1908 novel Anne of Green Gables, "it would be terrible if we just skipped from September to November, wouldn't it?" Yes Anne, it would. Yet while Ms Shirley turned her youthful attention to decorating her bedroom with the brightly coloured maple branches so prevalent on Prince Edward Island at this time of year, our joy is found in the new architecture and design exhibitions opening in the
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Erected in 1927 in context of the Deutscher Werkbund exhibition "Die Wohnung" the Weißenhofsiedlung in Stuttgart aimed to achieve "…. a reduction in house construction and running costs, in addition to a simplification of housework and a general improvement in living standards" But did it? Or is it just a collection of buildings by Max Taut, Hans Poelzig, Mies van der Rohe, Le Corbusier, Mart Stam, Peter Behrens and their ilk? A chance for a close connected group of modernists to show off?
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Since the beginning of July the Weissenhofsiedlung in Stuttgart has been one building richer with the official unveiling of the so-called B10 Active House by Stuttgart based architect Werner Sobek. Realised in collaboration with the Stuttgart Institute of Sustainability in context of the Schaufenster Elektromobilität - Electric Mobility Showcase - research project, the B10 Active House goes beyond normal passive house standards and has been designed to enable it to utilise renewable energy
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When Erich Mendelsohn's new Schocken department store opened in Chemnitz in 1930 Wasmuths Monatshefte für Baukunst, one of the leading architecture periodicals of the age, were unsparing in their praise "With his new Schocken department store in Chemnitz Erich Mendelsohn has achieved a new peak in his creativity", they announced.1 With the conversion of Mendelsohn's construction to the new Staatlichen Museum für Archäologie Chemnitz - the State Archaeology Museum in Chemnitz - the responsible
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"Potentially it is the simplest assignments, unencumbered by the complex mix of functional, technical or economic conditions, that allow an especially eloquent architecture" So mused the Sachsen branch of the German Architects Association, BDA, in awarding a "Special Recognition" in the 2013 BDA-Preis Sachsen to the project "Garage in Holzstapelbauweise" by Stuttgart based Reichel Schlaier Architekten. Created for a private client in the village of Marienberg, Sachsen, Garage in
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On Friday March 14th blickfang Stuttgart opens its doors to the public for the 22nd edition of the consumer design fair. Inaugurated in Stuttgart in 1992 by "a couple of “"fools"" - their words, not ours - blickfang has gone on to grow beyond its native city and can now be found throughout the year in locations as varied and widespread as Basel, Zürich, Copenhagen, Vienna, Hamburg and, most recently, Munich. Blickfang Stuttgart remains however a special occasion. In addition to the usual mix
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"Colours have an important, positive, psychological effect", so explained Verner Panton the polychromatic nature of his Visiona 2 showcase. But not just psychological effects. Colours can also produce physical effects, can influence the way we perceive and understand objects. The decision to paint the exterior of the VitraHaus in Weil am Rhein anthracite, for example, was not a popular one with local residents and councillors; however, according to architects Herzog & de Meuron was a decision
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The North wind doth blow and we shall have snow, And what will poor robin do then, poor thing? He'll sit in a barn and keep himself warm And hide his head under his wing, poor thing. Or, and much more sensibly, take himself off and visit one of the new design exhibitions opening during March. And so not only keep himself warm but also informed, entertained and inspired. Our selection from the new, robin friendly, openings in March features an homage to East German concrete architecture in
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In the context of his Paimio Sanatorium project Finnish architect Alvar Aalto is reported as once saying, "The main purpose of the building is to function as a medical instrument".1 Among the ways Aalto expressed this position in Paimio was, for example, through the fact that illumination, wall colours, heating systems et al were designed not only for the patients comfort, but with the patients position in mind i.e. offering different conditions depending on if the patient was expected to be
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With autum's algid wind in our faces and the promise of mince pies and Glühwein in our tails we approached November and a design tour through Brandenburg, met Napoleon in Erfurt and discovered that the Eames plastic armchairs and plastic side chairs used to be steel......
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What with the sweet afterglow of Vienna Design Week behind us we entered October 2013 full of enthusiasm - not least because it meant the opening of the new (smow) Cologne store. The month nearly nose-dived on account of a hideous plagiarism in Leipzig, but was more than rescued by Alison and Peter Smithson at the AIT ArchitekturSalon Cologne.......
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A summer silly season with 360 degree product images and handmade bottle openers explaining the difference between craft and design assumed a veneer of normality thanks to a fairytale presentation of vintage furniture in Berlin, contemporary porcelain at the Bauhaus Archiv and a little thinking about architecture in Stuttgart.........
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Visiting the HfG Karlsruhe Sommerloch exhibition was not just a memorable highlight of July 2013 - but also fitting as it marked the start of our own summer pause. Our own Sommerloch. In addition July 2013 saw us visit the Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart Rundgang, Art & Design Fit for a King @ Ampelhaus, Oranienbaum and Aus allen Richtungen. Positionen junger Architekten im BDA at Wechselraum Stuttgart......
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March 2013 was a month of travelling: Stuttgart, Chemnitz, Weimar, Dessau..... its amazing we found time to actually write anything.......
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It being that time of year when the only exhibition most of us are interested is the one displaying "presents with my name on them", there are only very few design exhibitions opening this December. Very few. But some. Here a selection of the more interesting ways to work off that extra roast potato or twelve........ "Mensch Raum Maschine. Stage Experiments at the Bauhaus" at Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau, Germany Despite the current theatre surrounding the decision not to renew Stiftung Bauhaus
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"How did the elephant get its trunk?" "How do you get concrete and mortar on to the upper floors of buildings? While you don't need to know the answer to the first question to answer the second: if the elephant didn't, the answer to the second would be a lot less convenient than the modern reality. The idea of using a trunk-esque system to transport concrete and mortar to higher floors was developed by the Stuttgart engineer Karl Schlecht in his 1957 diploma project at Stuttgart University.
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