One of the reasons we've never got on well with trends is because ultimately he who shouts loudest is perceived as being the best, most innovative or most important. DMY Berlin 2012 demonstrates that is not the case. While in Hangar 4 the main sponsor screams his marketing budget at full volume; about 40 metres away two FH Potsdam graduates are quietly presenting much more interesting and socially relevant objects. And much as we'd like to proclaim that their minimal, non-intrusive stand
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If we're honest we can't remember if the Vitra Design Museum exhibition "The Essence of Things: Design and the Art of Reduction" has a section devoted to ergonomics. If not, they may need to extend it to include "The Half" by Finnish/Korean design collective Studio Sailing to Mars. Initially developed with musicians in mind, "The Half" is... half a chair Proportionally. Not physically. Through the reduced form the sitter is more or less forced to adopt a more positive posture - one simply
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Egon Eiermann allegedly once began work on a series of coffins for a Berlin funeral company. The series was sadly never realised, but we can well imagine in which direction Eiermann would have gone.... On the Farmer's Creativity by Agri-expo Yunlin stand at DMY Berlin 2012 is an object that approaches the subject with a little more agility. Return by Sa' Bella Design / Sally Lin is an urn. An urn made of recycled paper, the walls of which are impregnated with seeds. As the paper
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One of the real joys of the first few days of DMY Berlin 2012 has been catching up with Stephan Schulz. Not just because Stephan is without question the product designer we know with the healthiest attitude to the whole circus, and as such after a few minutes in his company you no longer fear the workload that lies ahead. But also because we'd been looking forward to seeing his new Domestic Landscape collection. A collection that as the press material so promisingly begins "... transports
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As already stated, DMY Berlin 2012 is hosting not only the Designpreis der Bundesrepublik Deutschland 2012 exhibition but also the jury meeting to decide which entries should be nominated - and as such go forward to the short list from which the winners will be selected. The jury have done their work and until June 10th we all have the chance to not only view all submitted entries. But also disagree with the jury's decisions. It's why jury's make decisions! The first thing to say is that
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144th birthdays aren't occasions all celebrate; however, because Charles Rennie Mackintosh ties in so nicely with so many of the themes we've covered in the past weeks it seems like an occasion we can't ignore. Born in Glasgow on June 7th 1868 Charles Rennie Mackintosh trained as an architect with John Hutchinson before moving to the larger company Honeyman & Keppie following his qualification in 1889. In 1890 Mackintosh was given his first solo project, designing an extension for the back
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Because we know what's coming up at DMY Berlin, we loved this quote from Marcel Breuer that we discovered in connection with the exhibition Marcel Breuer – Design and Architecture at Bauhaus Dessau "The furniture, even the walls of rooms, are no longer solid, monumental, seemingly immobile, or even in-built. They are much more light, open, almost plotted in the room...."1 All will, hopefully, be clear by the end of the week! 1. Marcel Breuer, Das Neue Frankfurt, January 1928. Quoted in
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As part of the 2012 festival DMY Berlin will be hosting a one day symposium-cum-workgroup looking at design education. As regular readers will be aware design education is a subject we often come back to; be it in terms of business education in design schools, questioning the number of design students or looking at opportunities for networking design schools with local communities. It therefore goes without saying that we find the fact that DMY Berlin is staging such an event very
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Much as Gerrit Rietveld's career is publicly reduced down to the Rood-blauwe stoel, so too is it all to easy to imagine Marcel Breuer spent his days doing nothing more than creating chairs and tables from bent steel tubing. Indeed start typing the name "Marcel Breuer" into google and the all-knowing, all-seeing algorithm will only offer you "Marcel Breuer Chair", "Marcel Breuer Wassily Chair" and "Marcel Breuer Biography" as searches. That the public impression of Marcel Breuer should be so
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Parallel to "Gerrit Rietveld – The Revolution of Space" the Vitra Design Museum Gallery is staging an exhibition exploring some of the central themes of the great Dutch modernist's work: experimentation, recycling, working in unison with your materials. Under the title "Confrontations - Contemporary Dutch Design Live", five Dutch design studios will each collaborate with a company from the Basel metropolitan area to develop an object or installation using the respective firm's principle
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Although we know better, sometimes we could almost believe that this blog is planned. In our "Belgium is Design" post from Milan we wrote "Tim Baute from interror was for several years one of the true highlights at Designers Fair in Cologne." And a couple of weeks later in pops the information that he will be making his debut at DMY Berlin. If his new "Stealth" product range will be a highlight remains to be seen. And certainly the competition is tough. New Zealand designer David Trubridge,
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To round off our coverage of the exhibition Bauhaus: Art as Life at the Barbican Art Gallery London we decided to finish where all such exhibitions begin. With the curator. It seems fair. Specifically we spoke with Lydia Yee who, together with Catherine Ince, was responsible for organising the exhibition. With the first conceptual seeds having been sown in 2009, the pair can look back not only on an awful lot of work, but for all on a concentrated, and very exclusive, study of Bauhaus and
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As we've repeated ad nauseam Depot Basel is a project that has interested and excited us since the first show, but is a location that we've never manged to visit. Happily when we were in Weil am Rhein for the opening of "Gerrit Rietveld – The Revolution of Space" at the Vitra Design Museum the smallest of small gaps opened in our schedule, and we seized the opportunity to sneak across the border. Located in a former grain storage building on the site of a former railway freight yard next to a
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Talk to anyone about design and the furniture industry in the UK and you'll quickly come to realise that while the British Isles may be home to an enviable wealth of design talent. It ain't home to that many producers of quality, contemporary furniture. Or at least anymore. Whereas, for example, the early years of "British Design 1948-2012. Innovation in the Modern Age" at the V&A feature regular examples of British produced furniture, the later years are all but bereft of such. Britain
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If your going to organise an exhibition called "The Revolution of Space", there is probably no more fitting location than Frank Gehry's "revolutionary spaced" Vitra Design Museum building in Weil am Rhein. Unless that it is your exhibition happens to be dedicated to Gerrit Rietveld a man whose canon is principally defined by linear, regular, sober forms. Then you might think twice. The Vitra Design Museum have risked the contrast and consequently visitors to "The Revolution of Space" are not
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Is there anything left to say about Bauhaus? Have we not all seen, read, written enough? We all know the important points of the story. We all know the famous art works and design classics. Most of us can name three or four Bauhäusler, the cleverer among you might reach a dozen. There's nothing new to be said. Were it only that simple.... Some 1200 students attended Bauhaus Weimar, Dessau and Berlin, add to that number the teaching and workshop staff and one reaches not only an
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We're almost at the end of our Milan 2012 coverage. Not because we've run out of themes; but have run out of time. In the coming weeks we've got the opening of the Gerrit Rietveld exhibition at the Vitra Design Museum, the opening of the Marcel Breuer Exhibition at Bauhaus Dessau, Belgrade Design Week, DMY Berlin, Design Miami Basel, and all in addition to a couple of further interviews in connection with "British Design" at the V&A London and "Bauhaus: Art as Life" at the Barbican Art
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As reported elsewhere in these pages, there is a great deal of hope in the UK that the 2012 Summer Olympics will provide fresh impulse for the UK design industry. Something we doubt. But then, what do we know. No honestly. What do we know? And so we've taken the opportunity in recent weeks to talk to some people who are much better placed than us to asses the situation, not just in terms of the opportunities presented by the Olympics, but more generally about the state of the UK design
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On May 3rd the exhibition "Bauhaus: Art as Life" opens at the Barbican Art Gallery London. Organised in co-operation with the Bauhaus Archiv Berlin, Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau and Klassik Stiftung Weimar, "Bauhaus: Art as Life" presents some 450 works by the likes of as Marianne Brandt, Wassily Kandinsky, Marcel Breuer, Walter Gropius et al and is the first major Bauhaus exhibition in the UK since 1968. We'll have a full report on the exhibition shortly. But ahead of the official opening we
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Back in October one of our highlights at Vienna Design Week 2011 was the exhibition kidsroomZOOM! Essentially a mid-town Vienna apartment kitted out entirely in furniture for children, we were not only impressed by the objects on display, but by the concept. Forget adults! We're doin' it for the kids! Being the message we got. And one we wholeheartedly approved of. kidsroomZOOM! originated in Milan, and so this year we not only visited the new 2012 show, but also spoke to curator Paola Noè to
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Until September 16th the Grassi Museum Leipzig is showing the Vitra Design Museum exhibition The Essence of Things: Design and the Art of Reduction. And so keeping with the theme, we'll keep our post reduced and simply link to our post from The Essence of Things: Design and the Art of Reduction at the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein. Paul Weller is famously of the opinion that it's ludicrous to expect him to sing songs today that he wrote as an 18 year old. His world view having,
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The V&A Museum London exhibition "British Design 1948-2012" pretty much does what it says on the tin. It reviews British Design from 1948 to 2012. But how does the future look ? Where is British design going ? What issues are important? Where do the coming generation of designers see their futures ? Answers to these and similar questions can be found in the newly published "21 Designers for twenty-first century Britain" by Gareth Williams. Profiling designers and design studios such as Raw
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It's probably fair to say the biggest surprise at Salone Satellite 2012 was seeing Rui Alves aka My Own Super Studio. Because we thought 2011 had been the last year he was allowed to exhibit. Turns out we can't count. And that the rules for Salone Satellite are a lot more complicated than even we were aware. Fortunately. For in addition to the chance to catch up with Rui, he also had new projects with him. While most industry attention of late has been focused on his Lapa chair, for us the
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We bow to no man in our admiration for the people of Belgium. Not only have they common sense to make chips their national dish, but they have proved beyond all reasonable doubt that politicians are no pre-requisite for a functioning state in 21st century Europe. We've just always found it a real shame that the various parts of the country have never got on. It's so unnecessary in such a small nation. Fortunately, at least in design, that is starting to change, and in the last couple of
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