Within any regular pentagon one can locate, in numerous, manifold, relationships, the Golden Ratio, that centuries old guarantor of harmony, balance, beauty.... And within an irregular Pentagon? With the exhibition Design Gruppe Pentagon the Museum für Angewandte Kunst Cologne search for an answer in context of the 1980s Rheinland design quintet....... Design Gruppe Pentagon, Museum für Angewandte Kunst Cologne Established, more or less, formally in Cologne in 1985 by Gerd Arens, Wolfgang
read moreDecember is famously a half month - no one does anything useful in the second half of the month, unless eating, drinking and stressing can be considered useful! We however managed to more than fill the first half of December 2015 with Berlin based Bora Hong's cosmetic surgery of the Eames LCW, the architecture of Ferdinand Kramer in Frankfurt and a very long chat with Köln International School of Design director, and neuen Deutschen Design protagonist, Wolfgang Laubersheimer. Cosmetic Surgery
read moreIn our post from the exhibition Schrill Bizarr Brachial. Das Neue Deutsche Design der 80er Jahre at the Bröhan Museum Berlin we noted that, for us at least, the greatest legacy of the 1980s post-modern neuen deutschen Design movement is and was the number of protagonists who have subsequently found teaching positions in Germany's leading design schools; protagonists such as Wolfgang Laubersheimer who since 1991 has been Professor of Production Technology at, and since 2013 Director of, the Köln
read moreIn our post from the exhibition Schrill Bizarr Brachial. Das Neue Deutsche Design der 80er Jahre at the Bröhan Museum Berlin we noted that, for us, the two most important legacies of the Neues deutsches Design movement and 1980s German Postmodernism are and were the number of protagonists from then currently teaching at German design schools, and those manufacturers who arose from the heady, damp haze of the period. Manufacturers such as Nils Holger Moormann. Established in the early 1980s
read moreWhile the old adage "you are what you eat" can't be true, if it were we'd be a slovenly pile of beer and crisps, it is very true that you are how you cook. Cooking has largely developed with cultures, the way similar foodstuffs are prepared and cooked, for example, varying from region to region, and regardless of how technologically advanced society inevitably becomes, cooking will, we suspect, remain largely resistant to change. Cooking systems will evolve and adapt, but cooking processes
read more"Marcel Breuer seeing a pair of bicycle handle-bars decided to make chairs using the same industrial process. The new world constructor seeing a pair of bicycle handle-bars decides to use them as they are and save himself the trouble and expense of bending the tube."1 So articulated Jasper Morrison in his 1984 text "The Poet will not Polish" not only the theoretical background to his Handlebar Table, but much more the frustration and alienation being felt at that time by a young generation of
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