With the Boötids, the Arietids and the Beta Taurids June is an eventful month for meteor showers; and a month of great promise for all those who hope their most earnest wishes for the future will be fulfilled through entrusting them to a shooting star.

If only their wasn’t the seemingly endless wait for nightfall, the seemingly endless sitting and streaming and snacking and stupor of waiting…….

Alternatively, use the day(s) ahead of the arrival of those celestial messengers of hope in perusing a good architecture and/or design exhibition: something that may enrich your life in ways you could never have imagined. Far less hoped for. And could lead you, could lead us all, to a future better, more promising and more fulfilling than you/we could ever have wished for. Could ever have achieved through the sitting and streaming and snacking and stupor of waiting for the future.

But you can still watch the meteors when they appear. And wish upon a star.

Our four meaningful distractions until nightfall in June 2022 can be found in Berlin, Rotterdam, Wrocław and Copenhagen……

5 New Architecture & Design Exhibitions for June 2022

“Only slowly does it dawn on people that modern furniture must be designed on the basis of practical necessities”, observed the Danish architect and designer Kaare Klint in 1930.1

How Kaare Klint understood those “practical necessities”, how he understood “modern furniture”, would not only define his career, but in many regards define the development of 20th century furniture design in Denmark.

Kaare Klint (1888 - 1954)

The 3316 Easy Chair by Arne Jacobsen a.k.a. The Egg is not only one of the most universally recognised works by Jacobsen, but also one of the most popular representatives of both the lounge chair and also of post-War furniture design. Yet, and as with the Easter egg, the Jacobsen Egg is an object whose simple, inviting charms often hide the much more complex, interesting, informative, instructive, realities of its origin and provenance.

And so in a year when many an Easter egg hunt will be extraordinarily localised, we take you an international hunt for the (hi)story of an egg-straordinary chair……

easter egg arne jacobsen fritz hansen

The museums may be closed, travel restricted and leaving your home, when possible, unadvised….. but that’s no reason to restrict your cultural uptake, far less neglect the development of your architecture and design understandings.

Or put another way, if you can’t get to the museum….. let the museum come to you.

Five online architecture and design exhibitions and museum collections to explore from your sofa, bed, garden, balcony, wherever…..

5 Online Architecture & Design Exhibitions for April 2020

In centuries past traditions were something that were established slowly, often becoming such long after those who had began them, who had understood their origins, meaning and function in contemporary society, had shuffled off this mortal coil; in our contemporary world traditions arrive over night, no-one having the patience to wait, no-one wanting to miss out on anything.

In which sense, celebrating in 2019 its second edition, our traditional 3daysofdesign Copenhagen #embassytour.

3daysofdesign Copenhagen 2019 embassytour

“Low bowls with flowers, as well as flowers placed on the tablecloth and a platter of fruit, are the most beautiful table decorations. All table centrepieces with rocks, palm trees, ostriches, deer, and such are ludicrous, for these things have no business on a table, and all tall table decorations – even those made of flowers – are also unsuitable since they screen the dinner guests from one another”, opined Ellen Key of table culture in her 1899 essay Beauty in the Home.1

But that was then.

With the exhibition table talks — Tischgespräche the Kunstgewerbemuseum Dresden present positions by students from Weißensee Kunsthochschule Berlin and the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts Copenhagen on contemporary table culture.

Jelly Effect by Elena Eulitz & Hybrid by Dan Saroussi, as seen at table talks - Tischgespräche, Kunstgewerbemuseum, Schloss Pillnitz, Dresden

Counting amongst its alumni the likes of Finn Juhl, Arne Jacobsen, Nanna Ditzel, Kaare Klint, Georg Jensen, do stop us if we get boring, Verner Panton, Thorvald Bindesbøll, Ole Wanscher, Poul Kjærholm, and pretty much any other Danish designer or architect of whom you’ve ever heard, and a great many more of whom you haven’t, the Kongelige Danske Kunstakademi Copenhagen was formally inaugurated on March 31st 1754 in honour of the 31st birthday of Frederik V.

But is it a gift that keeps on giving?

A visit to the Schools’ of Architecture, Design and Conservation 2018 graduation exhibition promised to provide some answers……

KADK, Løsninger

“Monsieur, with these Rocher you are really spoiling us!”

Ever since Ferrero brought a touch of self-congratulatory kitsch to the savoir-faire of international diplomacy, we’ve felt a great empathy for the concept of the Embassy.

And while the years since we first heard those words may not have seen us follow an illustrious, freely debonair, diplomatic career, we do have as a substitute the embassy design exhibition.

3daysofdesign Copenhagen 2018 offered such a wealth and variety of embassy exhibitions we simply couldn’t resist donning a metaphorical morning coat and taking a flânerie through the diplomatic quarter.

But would that which awaited us also be an ultimate “sign of good taste”……..?*

3daysofdesign Copenhagen 2018: #embassytour

Summer traditionally sees a fall off in the number of new exhibitions opening, the 2017 drought is however especially hard, so much so that we can only find four recommendations. Either the global museum community assume we’re all at the beach, and thus not interested, or expect the world to end in September and so don’t see the point in new exhibitions.

It is a little unclear.

However, not only are we interested, but it takes a little more than the threat of an imminent apocalypse to keep us away from an interesting exhibition ….  our recommendations for August 2017 with new exhibitions in Zürich, Copenhagen, Moscow and Weimar.

5 New Design Exhibitions for August 2017

Five recommendations for new architecture and design exhibitions opening in December 2016, featuring shows in Copenhagen, Weimar, Nürnberg, London and Munich

5 New Design Exhibitions for December 2016

Arne Jacobsen Bellevue Lifeguard Tower

Sand is not a material on which many architects would hope to successfully build a project, far less a career.

gren light chandelier by Gunnar Søren Petersen (Photo © Alex Kueper)

In our recent review of contemporary Berlin creativity we noted that one of the problems increasingly being faced by Berlin

Manifesto. Works by Students and Graduates of the Studio of Glass in Prague at the Kunstgewerbemuseum, Dresden, Germany

As old Mother Goose, allegedly, once claimed: Thirty days hath September, and the following five enticing new design and architecture

As all old thesauruans know “April” is merely a synonym for “Milan” And lo despite all promises to the contrary

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Villa Tugendhat Brno

“I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers” exclaims Anne Shirley in Lucy Maud Montgomery’s 1908 novel

Finn Juhl Poet Sofa

By way of a final addendum to our “5 New Design Exhibitions for July 2014” post, the Design museum Gent are

CH24 Wishbone Chair Hans J. Wegner Carl Hansen & Søn Sketch

At the 1949 Copenhagen Carpenters Guild exhibition Hans J. Wegner presented his JH501 “Round Chair” for Johannes Hansen. Often referred

hans j wegner ox chair

Born on April 2nd 1914 Hans Jørgensen Wegner is without question one of the most important designers of the so-called

Hans J Wegner and Johannes Hansen JH550 PP550 The Peacock Chair

April 2014, as every April we can ever remember, means Milanese purgatory. Apparently it is meant to cleanse the soul,

It’s not all hard work you know. Just read a nice little article on dutch design portal design.nl in which