Category: Weil am Rhein

Tsuyoshi Tane: The Garden House in the Vitra Design Museum Gallery and on the Vitra Campus, Weil am Rhein

“When architecture is born, a place is born” opined Japanese architect Tsuyoshi Tane in 2018, continuing, “humans began to understand that by building architecture, a meaning is given to a place, and then that place has a story that can be passed on to others”.

But for Tane architecture doesn’t just bequeath a place meaning and a story, it also “gives memories to a place”, memories of the past and memories of the future, collective memories that help create bonds. But memories that are increasingly being lost in our complex, high-tempo, contemporary society, with all the inevitable consequences that has for an architecture that must grow organically from itself in unison with society; architecture and society which both need the memories of the past and the memories of future.

Thus, argues Tane, “to create the architecture of a more meaningful further future, perhaps we must … dive in to the past to think of the future, rather than only looking forward”.¹

The exhibition Tsuyoshi Tane: The Garden House in the Vitra Design Museum Gallery, and the eponymous Garden House by Tsuyoshi Tane, the latest addition to the Vitra Campus in Weil am Rhein, allow one to approach not only a better appreciation of Tane’s positions but also to experience how they influence and inform his approach, his works, his architecture…….

Colour Rush! An Installation by Sabine Marcelis at the Vitra Design Museum Schaudepot, Weil am Rhein

Amongst the many developments that have influenced and informed the path of furniture and interior design in the past 120ish years one must, without question, count developments in context of colour.

Whereas in previous centuries colours were limited in their availability, range and durability, recent decades have seen not only progress in that availability, range and durability, and as such ever more possibilities in our use of colour, but also seen increasing study of psychology and colour and of developments in understandings of human perception of colour, ever increasing appreciations of how colours exist beyond the physical and chemical. And an ever increasing use of colour in marketing, a creeping commercialisation of colour.

With the installation Colour Rush! Rotterdam based designer Sabine Marcelis transforms the Vitra Design Museum Schaudepot into a space for differentiated considerations on colour and our furniture and interiors, on the colours of our furniture and interiors. And in doing so also allows for some fresh insights not only into the Vitra Design Museum collection, but what that collection can teach us all about furniture and interior design over the past 120ish years…….

Plastic: Remaking Our World at the Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein

In 1997 Euro-popsters Aqua declared that “life in plastic, it’s fantastic”.

And in 1997 a greater part of humanity would have readily, and unquestioningly, concurred with Aqua that plastic was indeed fantastic. And that plastics offered us an endlessly fantastic, undimmably bright, future.¹

But that was 1997.

Last century.

An eternity ago.

And, as so oft, the passage of time has shaken once firmly held convictions and forced fundamental re-appraisals of all that which once seemed so eternal, so certain, so bright. So fantastic.

With the exhibition Plastic: Remaking Our World the Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein, explore the (hi)story of plastics of all ilks and in doing so not only chart the transformations in popular perceptions of plastics over the past 150 years, but also pose questions of our future use of, and our future relationships with, plastics…….

Spot On: Women Designers in the Collection at the Vitra Design Museum Schaudepot, Weil am Rhein

The popular (hi)story of furniture design is, no-one could argue, a very male (hi)story.¹

Which doesn’t mean that furniture design is a profession at which males excel more than females, a profession for which males have a natural affinity above and beyond that of females, that females’ natural domains are textiles and colours; much more is because that popular (hi)story of furniture design contains flaws, biases, inaccuracies and under-illuminated corners.

A great many of which can be traced back to those institutions charged with recording, documenting and mediating the (hi)story of furniture design, who are responsible for nurturing and validating the popular narrative of the (hi)story of furniture design.

With the project Spot On: Women Designers in the Collection the Vitra Design Museum Schaudepot shine a critical spotlight into some of the under-illuminated corners of their own collection…….

Here We Are! Women in Design 1900 – Today at the Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein

In her 1929 essay A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf, as a component of her reflections on the myriad subjects of ‘women and fiction’, reads her way, chronologically, through a bookcase of works written by women from across the centuries.

Here We Are! Women in Design 1900 – Today at the Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein, has the feeling of Virginia Woolf’s bookcase, allowing as it does for reflections on, and a critical questioning of, the myriad subjects of ‘women and design’…….

Memphis: 40 Years of Kitsch and Elegance at the Vitra Design Museum Gallery, Weil am Rhein

Much as with “Bauhaus”, “Memphis” is all too often popularly reduced to a “style”, something one can “recreate”.

As with “Bauhaus” that it is not only disingenuous, and erroneous, but hinders development of understandings of the (hi)story of design, understandings of the path taken to our contemporary design that are important for considerations on where we are and how best to progress.

With the showcase Memphis: 40 Years of Kitsch and Elegance the Vitra Design Museum Gallery issue an invitation for us all to delve a little deeper, to look below the plastic laminated surface.

German Design 1949–1989. Two Countries, One History at the Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein

In the final decades of the 19th century the lands of the, then, German Empire, established themselves amongst the leading protagonists in the developments of contemporary applied arts as they moved towards that which we today term design. A leading position which, in certain regards, became a European dominance in the course of the 1900s, 1910s and 1920s through the contributions made to the evolving practices, processes, expressions and understandings of the period by institutions such as, and amongst many others, the Deutsche Werkstätten Hellerau, the Deutsche Werkbund, the Frankfurt city building authorities and, and perhaps most famously, the Bauhauses.

Then, as so oft in 1920s Europe, came the 1930s, the War and subsequently the establishment within (part of) the lands of the, former, German Empire two new nations: West Germany and East Germany.

And what became of the design understandings and approaches that had developed and evolved in that region over the previous half century?

That, to misquote Hamlet, is one of the questions the Vitra Design Museum pursue in German Design 1949–1989. Two Countries, One History.

5 New Architecture & Design Exhibitions for March 2021

Following the declaration of the French Republic in 1792 a new calendar was introduced in the realms of France: the Revolution had washed away France past and the Republic marked the start of a new reality for mankind, one of universal Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité, and therefore demanded a resetting of the collective clock, a new measuring of time, and thus out went the Gregorian calendar and its historic associations with church and state, and in came le calendrier républicain, the French Republican Calendar.

And while, yes, one can consider the belief amongst the new republicans in the eternal gloriousness of the coming future as somewhat naive, one must remember that we can reflect on their optimism with the benefit of over 200 years hindsight and experience.

The argument for a new calendar appears however as compelling and self-evident as it must have done at its adoption on October 24th 1793. Or 3 Brumaire II, as we believe le calendrier républicain would date the day of its adoption.

Aside from its ten day week, an early attempt at bringing decimalisation to our time keeping, and the bequeathing of every day its own unique name, the principle difference between the Gregorian and Republican calendars is the move from the 12 months of varying lengths inherited from the Romans to twelve months each comprising thirty days, three ten day weeks, and the renaming of the months to give them a connection to nature rather than to Romans: the period between 19/20th February and 19/20th March, that period in which we find ourselves at the time of writing, being known as Ventôse, from venteux, windy, and was preceded by Pluviôse, rainy, and followed by Germinal, germination

Which all strikes us as particularly apposite as we move towards the next phase of our post-pandemic society; as a fresh wind blows the global rain clouds away and ushers in a period of re-birth and springing forth. Yes, such optimism may be as naive as that of the French revolutionaries, but we have a much better understanding of history today, and for all a much better understanding of the sense and logic in, utter necessity of, making use of the myriad lessons of history in order to avoid the pitfalls and follies of the past, and to allow us to chart an untroubled course forward……oh…..hang on……

Although, now is as good a time as any to start. The theory is known, we just need to move into the practice. And so given that all nations and all peoples have had their Corona tribulations should we not think about re-setting our global clocks, starting afresh at a new global year zero for a new global society?

We’ll leave others more qualified than us to work out the practicalities and technicalities, and decide on the basis of the nomenclature, and instead recommend here four new exhibitions scheduled to open in Germinal CCXX, and thus, one hopes, once the winds of Ventôse have begun to do their job, and also recommend a radio station that’s been online since the rains of Pluviôse….

5 (New) Architecture & Design Exhibitions for February 2021

Alongside the Chinese and Korean New Year celebrations one of the most popular observances in any given February is, arguably, the Feast Day of Saint Valentine on February 14th; St Valentine famously being the patron saint of greetings card manufacturers, lovers, but less famously, if just as importantly, also offering protection from the plague.

Now while the misanthropes amongst you will query whether love and plague aren’t synonyms, and a pox upon you for that; this February 14th we could all do with not only a little love, but a goodly dose of plague protection. And so rather than the traditional veneration of St Valentine through the distribution of hurriedly purchased and poorly considered flowers and chocolates, how about we all agree to celebrate the life of St Valentine through taking a little more care of one another, spreading a little more communal love and a little less plague, taking the weight of his shoulders for a few hours………….?

Beyond offering protection to lovers and from the plague, and protecting beekeepers, St Valentine also offers protection to travellers, which sadly no-one is these days. But those days will come again.

Until they do we continue with our hybrid exhibitions recommendations lists: that for February 2021 featuring a trio of offline exhibitions in Weil am Rhein, Hamburg und Falkenberg, and while they in all probability wont open as planned, will open, and before they do offer impetus for a little self study, and also two online highlights to explore, research and, for all, enjoy at your leisure.

Perhaps on February 14th, for as we all know, the couple that develop and deepen their design understandings together, stay together……

Gae Aulenti: A Creative Universe at the Vitra Design Museum Schaudepot, Weil am Rhein

“It’s not possible to define a style in my work”¹, opined once the Italian architect and designer Gae Aulenti.

With the exhibition Gae Aulenti: A Creative Universe, the Vitra Design Museum Schaudepot don’t contradict that opinion, but do provide for a framework for considerations on its validity……

Home Stories: 100 Years, 20 Visionary Interiors at the Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein

“What is the goal?” asked Elsie de Wolfe in 1913 in context of domestic interior design.

“A house”, she answered, “that is like the life that goes on within it, a house that gives us beauty as we understand it and beauty of a nobler kind that we may grow to understand, a house that looks amenity.”¹

How Elsie de Wolfe understood such, and how over the intervening century and a bit understandings of life, beauty, nobler beauty, amenity, the goal(s) of domestic interior design have developed and expanded are explored and discussed in the Vitra Design Museum’s exhibition Home Stories: 100 Years, 20 Visionary Interiors.

5 New Architecture & Design Exhibitions for December 2019

“…when we shall hear
The rain and wind beat dark December, how,
In this our pinching cave, shall we discourse
The freezing hours away?”

asks Arvirargus of his brother Guiderius in Shakespeare’s play Cymbeline, before lamenting,

“We have seen nothing”

Easily solved old boy, a visit to an architecture or design exhibition should not only provide for new, stimulating, impressions but plenty of discourse throughout not only December but for many, many months to come.

For all a visit in December 2019 to the following new exhibitions opening in Vienna, Holon, Bloomfield Hills, Weil am Rhein & San Francisco……..

After the Wall. Design since 1989 @ the Vitra Design Museum Schaudepot, Weil am Rhein

Birthday’s are not only an occasion for celebration, but also for reflection on the year past, and on those milestone birthdays, for all the decadal birthdays, to reflect wider on the lives you’ve lived and the experiences you’ve enjoyed/endured, reflect on what you’ve gained, what you’ve lost, in those decades past.

So, or similar, the Vitra Design Museum, who celebrate their 30th birthday in November 2019 and are marking the occasion with reflections, when not necessarily on their own three decades, but the past three decades in design…….

Objects of Desire. Surrealism and Design 1924 – Today @ The Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein

“After you have settled yourself in a place as favorable as possible to the concentration of your mind upon itself, have writing materials brought to you”, so begins Secrets of the Magical Surrealist Art – Written surrealist composition, part of André Breton’s 1924 Surrealist Manifesto, “Put yourself in as passive, or receptive, a state of mind as you can. Forget about your genius, your talents, and the talents of everyone else. Keep reminding yourself that literature is one of the saddest roads that leads to everything. Write quickly, without any preconceived subject, fast enough so that you will not remember what you’re writing and be tempted to reread what you have written. The first sentence will come spontaneously, so compelling is the truth that with every passing second there is a sentence unknown to our consciousness which is only crying out to be heard.”¹

Ready? Here goes, a Surrealist, automatic, blog post……………….

….no, not really.

Although we did consider it, as in genuinely, seriously, hired staff to bring us our writing materials and everything; but we did and do have a preconceived subject: the exhibition Objects of Desire. Surrealism and Design 1924 – Today at the Vitra Design Museum.

And so with apologies to André Breton and his Surrealist cohorts, we’ll consider their work and their influence on/interaction with design at our accustomed tempo, and with regular re-readings, re-formulations and very conscious re-framings……

Living in a Box. Design and Comics @ the Vitra Design Museum Schaudepot, Weil am Rhein

In these dispatches we once doubted the prevalence of designer furniture in comics, noting and acknowledging the regular appearance of popular furniture designs in other visual media, we, off-handedly, opined, “… Designer furniture in a comic?”

Elegantly proving us very, very wrong the Vitra Design Museum’s exhibition Living in a Box. Design and Comics not only explores the use and depiction of designer furniture and lighting in comics, but also considers how comics have contributed to and influenced furniture and lighting design.

Anton Lorenz: From Avant-Garde to Industry @ Vitra Design Museum Schaudepot, Weil am Rhein

“I first saw resilient tubular steel furniture designed by Professor Mies van der Rohe in September 1927 at the exhibition “Samt und Seide” in Berlin, objects which made a very deep impression on me, because I felt and saw that here, for the first time, was a meaningful way to utilise the forces inherent in tubular steel.” Anton Lorenz, 27th March 1939¹

Because discussions on the steel tube furniture that, in many regards, characterises the inter-War period tend to focus on the designers and architects, it can be all too easily forgotten that without those who identified the potential, those who not only understood the significance of the new developments of the period, but had the requisite skills to bring the ideas of a, relatively, small group of creatives to the market, steel tube furniture may not today enjoy the fascination and following that it does.

Certainly wouldn’t stand as characteristic of the inter-War period.

Amongst those who played a leading a role in such developments was the Hungarian born designer and entrepreneur Anton Lorenz. With the exhibition From Avant-Garde to Industry the Vitra Design Museum Schaudepot not only explain Anton Lorenz’s role in the development of inter-War furniture, but also his post-War contributions to an, apparently, contradictory furniture genre……

Balkrishna Doshi. Architecture for the People @ Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein

“Form should not be finite but should be amorphous, so that the experience within is loose, meandering and multiple” – Balkrishna Doshi¹

With the exhibition Architecture for the People the Vitra Design Museum explore Indian architect Balkrishna Doshi’s understanding of, belief in and approach to realising the amorphous, the social, the humane, in architecture.

Victor Papanek: The Politics of Design @ the Vitra Design Museum

Victor Papanek’s contention that “There are professions more harmful than industrial design, but only a very few of them”, remains one of the most pertinent considerations on the design profession, because it succinctly underscores that in what they do designers directly and indirectly impact not only the user/consumer of that which they design, but also on all those involved in the production, distribution and disposal of that which they design. And thereby, directly and indirectly, on our environment.

A pertinence that remains relevant despite the opinion being voiced in 1971.

With the exhibition Victor Papanek: The Politics of Design the Vitra Design Museum not only present the first major retrospective of Victor Papanek, his life and work but also investigate his wider contemporary relevance.

And indicate how designers could be less harmful, more useful…..

5 New Architecture & Design Exhibitions for September 2018

According to Germanic lore, “ein guter Septemberregen kommt nie ungelegen“, a good rain in September is never inopportune.

This year arguably more so than ever.

Similarly a good architecture and design exhibition in September is never inopportune.

And, and keeping with rain metaphors, while we can all remember what rain is, September 2018, sees a proper downpour of new architecture and design exhibitions. A downpour that is particularly opportune. Following July’s drought and its meagre 4 recommendations we have a ongoing deficit of one in our annual quota, the current deluge however means that for September 2018 we can present 6.

And so grab your umbrellas and take yourselves to an architecture and/or design exhibition this September. Our recommendations can be found in Kolding, Munich, London, Herford, Moscow and Weil am Rhein……..

Ron Arad: Yes to the Uncommon! @ The Vitra Design Museum Schaudepot, Weil am Rhein

In his Ron Arad monograph Restless Furniture Deyan Sudjic notes that the Sticks & Stones furniture crusher Arad developed for the exhibition Nouvelles Tendances staged by the Centre de Creation Industriel Paris in 1987 was itself only saved from the crusher through the post-exhibition “intervention of a friendly Swiss furniture manufacturer.”¹

While all Swiss furniture manufacturers are friendly, one particularly friendly Swiss furniture manufacturer springs to mind whenever the discussion turns to furniture design as being more than the shape of a chair, furniture design as a cultural imperative or the preservation of furniture design heritage.

As if confirmation were needed, the Sticks & Stones crusher greets visitors to the Vitra Design Museum Schaudepot exhibition Ron Arad: Yes to the Uncommon!

Freiheit 2.0 Stuttgart: Big Data, You & I

If swarm intelligence describes natural systems where individuals pool their resources for the benefit of the community, then Big Data can be considered a form of swarm intelligence appropriated by commerce: where commerce pools individuals’ resources, their data, for the benefit of commerce. In both swarm intelligence and Big Data the individuals involved are, largely, unaware of the extent of the interaction and resource pooling. Whereas however birds, bees, fish and ants needn’t be aware of such, we all really should be, that we generally aren’t making Big Data much more a demonstration of swarm unintelligence. If not swarm negligence.

With his participatory art installation Freiheit 2.0 Florian Mehnert visualises the permanent interaction between our analogue and digital lives, the ensuing tensions, and thereby aims to allow us a new, differentiated, view of where we are at and where we could end up.

Throughout June 2018 Freiheit 2.0 can be experienced in Stuttgart, and ahead of the opening we spoke with Florian Mehnert.

Hans J. Wegner: Designing Danish Modern @ Vitra Design Museum Schaudepot

With the exhibition Hans J. Wegner: Designing Danish Modern the Vitra Design Museum Schaudepot explores the oeuvre of one of the Grand Doyens, and arguably one of the most widely misconstrued protagonists, of 20th century Danish design.

An Eames Celebration @ The Vitra Design Museum

With their 1997 exhibition The Work of Charles and Ray Eames the Vitra Design Museum staged one of the first major Charles and Ray Eames retrospectives

Twenty years later they return to two of the 20th century’s most important creatives with An Eames Celebration: less of Charles and Ray, and more of the diversity, depth and continuing relevance of their work.

Vitra Design Museum presents Hello, Robot. Design between Human and Machine

“Have you ever met a robot?” asks the Vitra Design Museum.

The answer is yes.

The answers to the other 13 questions posed by the exhibition Hello, Robot. Design between Human and Machine are not necessarily so easily answered: but are important for defining our relationship with digital technology.

Vitra Design Museum present Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec – Rêveries Urbaines

In 2016 the Breton capital Rennes hosted four exhibitions of, by and from Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec; one of them