Access by mischer'traxler, as seen at Design Without Borders 2024, Budapest mischer'traxler a.k.a. Vienna based creatives Katharina Mischer and Thomas Traxler have, inarguably, been one of the more interesting and instructive design studios of the past decade and half. And that without ever achieving, without ever giving the impression of wanting to achieve, a wide public profile or a popular commercial acclaim. Always seem to have been perfectly happy getting on with doing their thing.
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An (early) interior (and possibly early furniture) by Dr Josef Frank, undated, but before 1915 "Living rooms intended to serve more than purely representational purposes are not works of art or well-coordinated harmonies in colour and form, whose individual components (wallpaper, carpets, furniture, pictures) comprise a finished whole in which they are inextricably linked", opined Dr Josef Frank in 1919, and that not least because, "any new item added would be perceived as awkward,
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In Shakespeare's A Winter's Tale Perdita bewails that she has no "flowers o’ th’ spring" to make garlands for, and to strew over, her beloved Florizel; "flowers o’ th’ spring" including violets, primroses, oxlips or "daffodils, That come before the swallow dares, and take the winds of March with beauty". Whereby in her infatuation with, and fearless youthful love for, Florizel, Perdita fails to appreciate that it wasn't fear of the winds of March that kept the swallows away, swallows love a
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"So revolutionary his ideas", opined the Austrian state broadcaster ORF in 1969 of architect Hans Hollein, "when he enunciates them they sound like the cosy, cordial habitiere of ages past. His 'schauen se' and 'eeeeeh' conjure up Fiaker, the chatter and gossip on Graben, the Riesenrad, memories of alt-Wien".1 With Hollein Calling. Architectural Dialogues the Architekturzentrum Wien invite one to explore in more detail the vocabulary and articulation of Hans Hollein....... Hollein Calling.
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Back in the spring Haitian musician Wyclef Jean informed us all he'd be "Gone Till November". And so he should be back any day now; and given how busy he's invariably been all summer, earning as he has been enough money to buy out blocks, he's probably not had a chance to visit an architecture or design museum. And so, we assume, will be absolutely desperate to stimulate his cognitive faculties. Our five recommendations for new exhibitions opening in November 2023 for Wyclef Jean, or indeed
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Thonet A Michael; A Twist; A Portfolio of Patents According to the Felsbilder of the Nymphs of Loreley, that most important of sources of information of the earliest (hi)story of the contemporary Rheinland, the Thonet arose in the community of Boppard, a community framed on the one side by a series of swinging aqueous curves as the Rhein meanders its way slowly through the metamorphic rock of the Rhenish Massif, and on the other by a range of peaks of that Massif on whose flowing curving
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Room for Change by Design Campus/d-o-t-s, Vienna Design Week 2023 As noted from the exhibtion Plant Fever. Towards a Phyto-centred design at Schloss Pillnitz, Dresden, a component of its tenure in Dresden was its integration into the 2023 Design Campus Summer School, a platform of the Kunstgewerbemuseum Dresden, a platform under the direction in 2023 of Studio d-o-t-s a.k.a. Laura Drouet and Olivier Lacrouts, curators of Plant Fever; and in which context the Summer School participants
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Stargazer chair by Klemens Schillinger (l) and Campfire by Lino Gasparitsch, as seen at Garten, Galerie Rauminhalt, Vienna Design Week 2023 As noted in our post from Ums Eck – 1 M² by Studio Högl Borowski, Vienna Design Week has always been an event that has taken an interest in Vienna, in the fabric of Vienna, the residents of Vienna and the relationships within the city. Including the many green spaces, or potential, possible, green spaces in the city, such as the Czerninplatz that was the
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Much as the (hi)story of architecture is also a chronicle of developments and changes in the social, cultural, economic, ecological, technical, et al realities of any given region, so to is the (hi)story of a region's parks and gardens and urban green spaces. Whereby the (hi)story of the latter is much less often popularly employed in studying and interpreting and learning from the (hi)story of a region than the former. With the showcase Of Gardens and People. Designed Nature, Art and
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1 M² by Studio Högl Borowski, the Ums Eck project for Vienna Design Week 2023 One of the real joys of Vienna Design Week is that it has always actively and naturally, self-evidently, included the city in all its hues, and expressions, and realities in its programme, has always understood definitions of design to include not only social design and urban design in addition to the more commercial definitions, but also to include the exchange and interaction between all manifestations of design
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Pendulum Lamp by Matej Štefanac, as seen at Vienna Design Week 2023 In many regards the name of Ljubljana based designer Matej Štefanac's new lamp is a misnomer, because pendulums swing and the defining feature of, the argument made by, the joy of, Matej's lamp is that doesn't: It is resolutely, tenaciously, unapologetically static. Until you move it, then it follows your every whim; the technology allowing as it does the lamp to be swung through 180 degrees so that it can shine directly to
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Established in Budapest in 2004 by textile designer Szilvia Szigeti and her interior designer husband Tamás Radnóti, Design Without Borders understands itself, and summarising to the point of inaccuracy, as a platform for international design dialogue across, or perhaps more accurately indifferent to, not only national borders but borders of genre, scale, approach, position et al. By way of preparing for the platform's forthcoming 20th birthday a showcase of projects presented, hosted, by
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The MOWO - Move with VIVI and CC collections, as seen at Vienna Design Week 2023 We first met MOWO, Move with Wood, and its designer Lisa Stolz, at the 2018 Central Saint Martins, London, Degree Show where it was very obviously our stand out project from that year's show, from that year's graduation projects at Central Saint Martins, being as it was the only project we discussed in any depth. In 2021, in the midst of Corona, Lisa Stolz established, via a Kickstarter campaign, MOWO as
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There is an argument to be made that while variation and uniqueness are inherent features of craft processes, design strives for the production of endless uniformity. Or perhaps more accurately design did: while the earliest design practitioners, and those of the 1920s and 1930s who followed them, very much (largely) sought to develop products that contemporary industry could produce en mass as exact replicas of one another, since the 1960s individuals and groups of designers have sought to
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It's been a while, and we were beginning to think it would never happen again; however, after an inordinately long absence September 2023 sees us once again meet up with Vienna Design Week....... For a great many years Vienna Design Week was a key component of our year, not only because, much as the arrival of celery on menus, and plates, informed an A. A. Milne that autumn was with us, Vienna Design Week signalled that summer was well and truly over, thus providing a little, and much need,
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In the alpine regions of Europe the arrival of September marks the start of the Almabtrieb, that annual migration of the cattle, sheep and goats of the region from their high pastures to the valleys far, far below. A migration undertaken because, as the cattle, sheep and goats of the alps innately understand, September is the month when the global architecture and design museum community (slowly) end their summer siesta and begin to invite us all to peruse their autumn/winter exhibition
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According to Germanic folklore, A cold and wet June spoils the whole year. For farmers possibly, but not for the rest of us, as a cold, wet June is a perfect excuse to visit an architecture or design exhibition, an experience that can only enrich and enliven and invigorate the rest of the not only your year, but your life. Our recommendations for new showcases opening in June 2023 can be found in Värnamo, Ljubljana, East Lansing, Vienna and Ulm....... "Front: Design by Nature" at
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According to popular (hi)story the tradition of the Christmas tree originated in the lands of the contemporary Germany. And with O Tannenbaum it was in the lands of the contemporary Germany that that most popular ode to the Christmas tree was first sung. But it's not by way of celebration of Germanic contributions to the Christmas season that all five of our new exhibition recommendations for December 2022 are in Germany, Austria or Germanophone Switzerland. It's just the way the dice fell.
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We published our first monthly list of exhibition recommendations on November 1st 2013, one of those short, superficial, posts we used to compose, having as we did back then endless time on our hands; and an intervening nine years that means that with this list for November 2022 we are entering our tenth year of helping you advance your cultural education. While being very much aware that the vast majority of you have never visited a single one of the circa 450 new exhibitions we've carefully
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"One day in the midst of a burning July, When meadows were parched and the rivulets dry, A cluster of Bees in extreme....... anticipation, Flew towards...... a design exhibition"1 (With apologies to Sara Coleridge) Our five welcoming, stimulating, retreats for bees, or anyone or anything, from the parching burning of July 2022 can be found in Munich, Metz, Tulsa, Vienna and Bordeaux....... "The Olympic City of Munich. Retrospect and Outlook" at the Architekturmuseum der TU München, Germany
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In December 1969 the Austrian TV station ORF broadcast a half-hour portrait of the architect Hans Hollein, including a presentation of Hollein's Mobile Office project: essentially an inflatable plastic bubble in which one person could sit and work. "Klingt vielleicht etwas verrückt", mused the presenter, "sounds perhaps a bit crazy". And in 1969 a device, a construct, that allowed for the creation of a private domain in the midst of a public space, unquestionably did sound "etwas verrückt".
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"It was one of those March days" reflects Philip "Pip" Pirrip in Great Expectations, "when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade".1 And thus exactly the sort of dithering, indecisive, capricious, March day when rather than surreptitiously rowing down the Thames towards Gravesend, one should seek refuge in the consistent climate and warming intellectual atmosphere of an architecture or design exhibition. Our five Great exhibition
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In 1922 the Scottish novelist J.M. Barrie told the undergraduates at St. Andrews University "you remember someone said that God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December", an allusion to the summer of your life filling your darkening winter days with colour and aroma, and an analogy he neatly reinforces a little later with a, "you have June coming".1 But that was 1922. Roses were seasonal. Today roses are available all year round, which is not only symbolic of the short-sighted
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In 1956 the Dutch electronics conglomerate Phillips asked Le Corbusier if he would be interested in designing their pavilion for the 1958 World's Fair in Brussels. Le Corbusier was. Albeit, "je ne ferai pas de pavillon; je ferai un Poème électronique avec la bouteille qui contiendra", "I will not create a pavilion; I will create a Poème électronique with the bottle to contain it."1 And a pavilion/bottle/Poème électronique which offers an apposite starting point to approaching a
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