Designblok Prague 2024 Compact: How many house plants are enough house plants? by Kateřina Husáková
Budapest Design Week 2024 Compact: Uniqueness in Mass Production by Fehérvári Panna Nóra
Standing Height Desks: Solution? Or same problems at a different height?
The 2024 edition of Orgatec Cologne, Europe’s, possibly the world’s, largest trade fair for office furniture and office design is being staged under the banner “New Visions of Work”.
And as that 2024 edition, and its new visions, approaches a report is published in the International Journal of Epidemiology that should provide for some animated discussions at the event: Standing to work at a desk may not be as good for you as you may have been told. And could even be problematic.
But there is some good news.
Though possibly not for desk manufacturers…….
Budapest Design Week 2024, Szia!
Much as with the narrator of Half Man Half Biscuit’s ‘I was a teenage armchair Honvéd fan’ we’ve also long “dreamt about a love affair in far-off Budapest”.
Unlike said narrator however our ongoing yearning doesn’t revolve around a football club in the Kispest district of the city whose black an red was once worn by the likes of Grosics Gyula, Kocsis Sándor, Bozsik József or Puskás Ferenc, but revolve around design.
Nor are we hankering after a golden age of either Hungarian football or Hungarian design, entertaining and informative as both unquestionably are, rather our focus is very much contemporary design in and from Hungary.
But perhaps the decisive difference between us and HMHB’s nostalgic narrator is that while he is content to sit passively in an armchair, we actively search for that design, we actively search for a differentiated interpretation, re-imagination, of an ‘armchair’, on the streets of Budapest.
Or did….. then came Covid and the Hungarian capital was as far removed as the years when Grosics, Kocsis, Bozsik, Puskás et al made Budapest a by-word for contemporary football.
2024 we’re back, have already been back. Several times. And are back once again for the annual Budapest Design Week……
E.1027 – Eileen Gray and the House by the Sea
“J’ai toujours aimé l’architecture. Plus que tout” reflected Eileen Gray in 1973, ‘I’ve always loved architecture. More than anything”, continuing, ‘but I didn’t think I was capable of it’.1
A capability her first major project, the villa E.1027 at Roquebrune-Cap-Martin on France’s Côte d’Azur, tended and tends to underscore she needn’t have doubted. If a capability that over the decades has oft been as concealed and inaccessible as E.1027.
With the film E.1027 – Eileen Gray and the House by the Sea writers and directors Beatrice Minger and Christoph Schaub explore not just the biography of E.1027, but architecture as more than just construction, and also relationships with and within architecture, and in doing so allow not only for differentiated reflections on the (hi)story of architecture, but also enable one to better locate Eileen Gray, and her House by the Sea, in that (hi)story, and thus to better locate Eileen Gray not only as the architect she doubted she could be, but as a more instructive and informative architect than she is often appreciated as…….
Designblok Prague 2024 Compact: Adam Kvaček – The Paradox of Isoëtes. Future of Almost Lost Species
Designblok Prague 2024, Ahoj!
Last time we were at Designblok Prague the roof blew of the venue.
Not our fault (this time); but the consequence of an enormous, monstrous in every sense of the word, hurricane that blew across central Europe, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake that meant it took us, if we recall correctly, about 15 weeks to get home. And that via one of the more adventurous and improbable routes we’ve ever travelled.
On the plus side we spent so long in Prague Central Station listening to announcements of cancelled trains we can now pronounce ‘České dráhy’ like natives. Or at least like parrots forced to listen to ‘České dráhy’ on constant loop over a railway station tannoy for days on end.
That was 2017. And since then we’ve not been back. Not for fear of hurricanes, but simply calendar clashes and then came, well you know, 2020 and that.
2024 we’re back at Designblok Prague…….
5 New Architecture & Design Exhibitions for October 2024
Despite what you may have have been led to believe, Oktoberfest isn’t in October.
Or is barely in October.
It’s primarily in September, ends on the first Sunday in October.
Meaning in 2024 it’s all over on the 6th of October.
Leaving you the rest of the month to over-consume in reasonably-priced architecture and design museums rather than over-consuming in over-priced beer tents.
Our five locations for a party of the spirit, intellect, soul and for improving your understanding of the world material and immaterial around you in October 2024 can be found in Brussels, New York, Hornu, Berlin, and, once the beer tents have been packed away for another year, Munich…….
Zagreb Design Week 2024, Bok!
The European design calendar is dominated by a few mega events, colossi whose shadows not only define the calendar but tend to hog the media and therefore the popular perception of contemporary design, not least since that media became primarily the unreflective echo chamber of Instagram; yet colossi whose (invariably stupidly high) costs mean that only those with the deepest of pockets can hope to find success at such events, only those with the deepest of pockets can hope to register on the popular radar. Wealth wins. Which surely isn’t in the interests of either design or the design industry that relies on selfless creative energy and a singular desire to approach contemporary solutions for the sake of the solutions themselves rather than for the rewards such solutions (might, potentially) bring. Alone serves the organisers of such events and the nefarious ends of the lifestyle industry and it faddy, if very profitable, tat.
In addition, we’d argue, the masses of exhibitors, media and visitors who flock to the mega events means that they have long since ceased to be ecologically sustainable, have long since become part of the problems, thus denying them any right to claim to offer solutions to our current malaises. But who are egotistical enough to claim they can.
A healthy design in Europe, a healthy design industry in Europe, and a healthy planet demands an end to the tyranny of the mega events and more small scale regional events.
Events such as Zagreb Design Week.
An event we’ve long sought to visit. Never managed. Have in 2024…….
Profitopolis or the Condition of the City at the Werkbundarchiv – Museum der Dinge, Berlin
“Das Unbehagen an unseren Städten ist ziemlich allgemein”1 opined the German architecture and design theoretician Hans Eckstein in 1972, ‘discontent with our cities is fairly universal’, continuing ‘it is growing day by day. Accusations and indignation are heard everywhere. It is almost impossible to ignore the amount of literature about the miserable condition of our cities.’ Yet despite the apparent, certainly for Eckstein, urgency and ubiquity of the discontent, he laments that ‘there are hardly any signs that this malaise could one day translate into behaviour, let alone action, that would give hope for a turn for the better.’
Hardly any signs, but some. Including the exhibition Profitopolis oder: Der Mensch braucht eine andere Stadt, Profitopolis or: We need a different city, a project initiated by architect Josef Lehmbrock and critic Wend Fischer, the latter the, then, director of Die Neue Sammlung, Munich, that premiered in Die Neue Sammlung in November 1971, and which reflected critically on contemporary cities and urban planning, was, as the subtitle announces, ‘An exhibition about the wretched condition of our cities and the need to change this situation so that people can once again live in a city with human dignity’; and thus an exhibition that sought to be a stimulus for the ‘turn for the better’ a Hans Eckstein longed for.
And 50 years later?
Where are our cities today?
Where are the residents of our cities today?
How (dis)content are we with our cities today?
With the exhibition Profitopolis or the Condition of the City the Werkbundarchiv – Museum der Dinge, Berlin, reflect on the arguments of 1971 in the 2024 we became, on the paths from then to now, on the role of the Deutsche Werkbund then, since and now, and thereby enable space for reflections and considerations on not only why our contemporary cities are as they are, but possible ways forward in context of our cities and those who inhabit them…….
al dente: Pasta & Design at the HfG-Archiv, Ulm
In 1991 the German, designer, theoretician, educator and co-initiator of the Hochschule für Gestaltung Ulm, Otl Aicher, opined that “die Relation von Form und Material lässt sich nirgendwo so gut nachweisen wie bei Nahrungsmitteln, also etwa bei Teigwaren”1, ‘the relationship between form and material is nowhere better demonstrated than in foodstuffs, such as pasta’.
With the exhibition al dente: Pasta & Design the HfG-Archiv, Ulm, explore not only the relationships between form and material in context of pasta, but also the wider connections between pasta and design, and in doing so enable differentiated perspectives on form, material, function, society, design and pasta…….
Khudi Bari by Marina Tabassum on the Vitra Campus, Weil am Rhein
The word on the wind was that Tsuyoshi Tane’s Garden House was to be the last addition to the Vitra Campus, Weil am Rhein.
The wind appears to have been ill-informed, thankfully, for with the project Khudi Bari by Marina Tabassum the Vitra Campus has a new addition that expands and extends it more than just physically…….
5 New Architecture & Design Exhibitions for September 2024
Across the northern hemisphere September generally marks the start of the academic year, be that in primary, secondary, tertiary or quaternary education contexts, as students at all levels return to their studies after the long summer break.
And while quinary education may not need an official start, or indeed a structured year, there is not only something appropriate in opening a new chapter in your studies alongside that of your fellow students, but for all the number and variety of new architecture and design exhibitions opening globally every September, as the international museum community return from their long summer break, positively invites you do so.
September 2024 being no exception. We could easily have published three lists of recommendations, decided to stick with the traditional one, a list that takes us all to Hamburg, Brühl, Falkenberg, Katowice and Bonn, but for all to the dominion of expanded appreciations of architecture, design, society, possibilities, and thus fires the desire to travel ever further, to continue your eduction…….
smow Blog Interview: Timon and Melchior Grau – We want to create lighting moods that really touch you
Ois Anders: Major Projects in Bavaria 1945-2020 at the Haus der Bayerischen Geschichte, Regensburg
In 1998 the then, German President, and native of Bavaria, Roman Herzog opined, “In München sind Lederhose und Laptop eine Symbiose eingegangen”, ‘In Munich, lederhose and laptops have entered into a symbiosis’.
One of innumerable partisan puffs for the Freistaat over the decades by Bavarian politicians; but also a very neat political statement implying that the popular image of Bavaria as being all about mountains, forests, lakes, rivers and rugged herders on livestock dense alms, was no longer valid. That Bavaria had changed, certainly was changing.
With the exhibition Ois Anders: Major Projects in Bavaria 1945 – 2020 the Haus der Bayerischen Geschichte, Regensburg, explore and discuss developments in Bavaria since the second half of the 20th century, and in doing so provide for wider reflection on not only change processes, but how we all view not only Bavaria, but the world around us in general…….
