Wilhelm Wagenfeld Archives

May

02

2023

Although the Grassimesse has been staged, with readily understandable pauses, since 1920, the Grassimesse smow-Designpreis is being staged for the first time in 2023.

Which means a highly impressive roster of innovative, intelligent, imaginative, informative, designers from back in the day can’t win it. Have, if one so will, missed out

But you can win it and the associated €2,500.

Or can if your reading this before ~~Friday May 12th~~ Sunday May 21st, the new extended, deadline for entries.

Otherwise you’ve also missed out.

You’ve now missed out.

Putting you in an illustrious, if very unfortunate, group along with the likes of…….

Jul

01

2022

As we all know, the key to reading is learning your ABC. Once you’ve learned the letters, and combined them in simple words, you can approach more complex words, then sentences, paragraphs, essays and finally let that which you read discourse with your observations and experiences to help you better develop your understandings and appreciations of the world around us and those with whom we share it. But can learning the ABC of a designer help us to better approach understandings and appreciations of their work, their relevance, their legacy? With the exhibition Wilhelm Wagenfeld A to Z the Wilhelm Wagenfeld Haus, Bremen, attempt just that, in context of an eminently interesting and informative, if at times very difficult to read, designer…….

May

24

2019

“I assure you that you and your work are the model case for what the Bauhaus has been after” wrote Walter Gropius to Wilhelm Wagenfeld in April 1965.

Just how Wilhelm Wagenfeld developed that “model case” “after” Bauhaus is explored, at least in terms of one design genre, in that genre for which Wilhelm Wagenfeld is most popularly known as a Bauhaus model, in the exhibition Wilhelm Wagenfeld: Lamps at the Wilhelm Wagenfeld Haus Bremen.

May

07

2019

More or less……

…..while 3 of the 5 have a direct connection to Bauhaus, 5 of the 5 are very much in the spirit of the attempts of inter-War architects and designers to reform architecture and design, to establish a new architecture and design for the new society, attempts in which Bauhaus played an important role.

And for those seeking escape from Dessau and Weimar, figuratively not physically, we refer you to our more general 5 New Architecture & Design Exhibitions for May 2019 recommendations….

Nov

23

2017

The first metaphors may, or may not, have been animal based, but materials are just as adaptable. And few are as adaptable as glass. The Glass Ceiling as the impenetrable, yet invisible boundary. The Heart of Glass as a state of extreme emotional weakness. While in most glass metaphors the focus is an inherent property of glass: transparency.

With the exhibition Welt aus Glas. Transparentes Design the Wilhelm Wagenfeld Haus Bremen abstract that metaphor to explore the link between transparency in design and architecture, and transparency in society.

Nov

18

2016

With the exhibition Stapeln. Ein Prinzip der Moderne the Wilhelm Wagenfeld Haus in Bremen celebrate the complex diversity of one of design’s simplest principles …. Stacking.

Jan

01

2016

Normally October is all about design festivals, October 2015 wasn’t. On the one hand we weren’t at that many this

Oct

12

2015

WA 24 Bauhaus Lamp by Wilhelm Wagenfeld Tecnolumen

The WA 24 table lamp by Wilhelm Wagenfeld is without question one of the most instantly recognisable pieces of Bauhaus

May

22

2014

“The purpose of an object is of secondary importance” claimed the German designer and artist Wilhelm Wagenfeld, “the use however

May

06

2014

“When”, we asked in context of the Grassi Leipzig exhibition Sitting – Lying – Swinging. Furniture from Thonet, “does an exhibition

Sep

28

2013

“My, my, my, Delilah! Why, why, why, Delilah!”

The morning of Friday September 27th 2013 was one of those misty autumn occasions that cause SANAA’s immense new Vitra Factory Building in Weil am Rhein to merge, almost unseen, with the grey background. Even Herzog & de Meuron’s new Basel Messe complex was reduced to nothing more grand than a continuation of the uncaring monotonous sky. The glitzing, shimmering palace of high summer just the weak shadow of a memory.

And so it was perhaps fitting that the Vitra Design Museum choose this dank September morn to open their latest exhibition, “Lightopia”, an exhibition devoted to light.

For today was a clear warning, in the coming months we will all be in need of a little light.