Category: Architecture
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image of Bavaria as being all about mountains, forests, lakes, rivers and rugged herders on livestock dense alms, was no longer valid.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…….
Kaesz Homes 1925-1960. The homes of designer couple Kaesz Gyula and Lukáts Kató at Walter Rózsi Villa, Budapest
“A bútortörténet az általános művészettörténet és a művelődéstörténet egyik speciális ága” opined the Hungarian interior designer, furniture designer, editor and educator Kaesz Gyula in 1962, ‘furniture history is a special branch of general art history and cultural history’, continuing that ‘its task is to acquaint you with the part of human creative work that creates the human environment and means of use. Through the individual objects, we get to know the age, the production and social relations, which determined the living conditions, aspirations, and struggles of the people who created and used the objects. The objects of the human environment are meant to satisfy various needs. From the way these needs are met, we can learn about the characteristics of the human environment of each age’, adding that furniture, ‘inform[s] us precisely about the development of each society’s comfort needs, technical and artistic creative methods’.
And not just a society can be studied, according to Kaesz, through its furniture but also ‘the tastes of their former owners. Hobbies, whims, thoughts and needs are expressed in the forms of furniture’.1
With the exhibition Kaesz Homes 1925-1960 the Walter Rózsi Villa, Budapest, invite you into the former home of Kaesz Gyula and his wife, the graphic designer, packaging designer and illustrator, Lukáts Kató where their furniture, and interior design, allows one to not only ‘get to know’ two interesting, important and informative 20th century Hungarian creatives, ‘get to know’ their tastes, hobbies, whims, thoughts and needs, but also allows one to better approach the development of furniture and design, the path of ‘cultural history’, in both Hungary and in Europe…….
Science Fiction Design: From Space Age to Metaverse at the Vitra Design Museum Schaudepot, Weil am Rhein
Human society’s fascination with leaving behind the limitations and fragilities and vagaries of the human being, and of the planet we all call home, is almost as old as human society, and is inextricably linked with developments in technology, science, engineering and human society’s understandings of itself and its environments; amongst the earliest descriptions, for example, of flying to the moon being Francis Godwin’s 1638 book The Man in the Moone, an account of a journey, and of the beings who call the moone home, published just 28 years after Galileo Galilei published the first detailed sketches of the surface of the moon. As soon as we ‘knew’ about the moon in ‘detail’, we wanted to be there. And wanted to get to know the natives. Whom we assumed existed.
And a fascination that, for want of a better phrase, took off, as space travel became a reality in the second half of the 20th century, and that at a time when there was an active desire to rebuild global human society after the trials, tribulations and Wars of the first half of the 20th century, a very real desire to leave behind the most recent chapter in human (hi)story and to write a new one. Ideally in a place far, far away from recent memory. And a desire to establish that new human society with the aid of that newest of human species: the designer. A species who had evolved from a synthesis of architects and artists and artisans in the course of the first third of the 20th century with the promise of providing for all.
With the actual moon landing on July 20th 1969, just 331 years after that first moone landing, anything and everything became possible. Science fiction was becoming science reality.
With Science Fiction Design: From Space Age to Metaverse the Vitra Design Museum Schaudepot, Weil am Rhein explore science fiction and design, science fiction as design, design as science fiction, and in doing so invite you to re-imagine, re-construct, re-frame familiar narratives…….
5 New Architecture & Design Exhibitions for August 2024
August 2024 is Olympics, or at least the first half is. And while, yes, you could stay home and watch events in Paris unfold from the comfort of your sofa and fridge, you could also undertake a little cerebral, contemplative, conceptual, fencing, judo, weightlifting, skateboarding, and/or gymnastics of your own.
Go for that inner gold!!! Seek to become a new personal best!!!
Our five recommended cultural sporting venues for August 2024 can be found, not in Paris, or at least not directly, but in Thun, Melbourne, Maastricht, Värnamo and Philadelphia…..
Lucia Moholy: Exposures at Kunsthalle Praha
“The word ‘document’ which in the last few generations stood, and in many regards still stands for, papers relating to legal matters, such as deeds, contracts, affidavits and certificates, has in present-day professional usage reverted to its original meaning as derived from its Latin origin”, opined Lucia Moholy in 1948, “and now applies to spoken, written, printed and other materials, produced and distributed for the purpose of imparting knowledge”.1
With Lucia Moholy: Exposures Kunsthalle Praha allow one to approach a better understanding that for Lucia Moholy the most important “other material” of documentation was photography, and employs Lucia Moholy’s photography, and her spoken, written and printed material, to enable an imparting of enhanced knowledge of Lucia Moholy and on the (hi)story of 20th century creativity…….
Re:Generation. Climate change in a natural World Heritage Site – and what we can do about it at Park Sanssouci, Potsdam
As an (apparent) unending forest criss-crossed by visual axes and dotted with meadows, Park Sanssouci in Potsdam stands proxy for the garden design, the garden architecture, of 18th and 19th century Europe.
As an (apparent) unending forest criss-crossed by visual axes and dotted with meadows, Park Sanssouci in Potsdam stands proxy for the power and wealth and pomp and glory of 18th and 19th century Prussia.
According to the Stiftung Preußische Schlösser und Gärten Berlin-Brandenburg, who today are responsible for maintaining and managing Park Sanssouci, some 80% of Park Sanssouci’s trees are damaged, ill.
As an (apparent) unending forest criss-crossed by visual axes and dotted with meadows, Park Sanssouci in Potsdam stands proxy for the consequences and effects of climate change.
A reality employed in Re:Generation to, as the full title helpfully explains, discuss those effects – and the what we can do about it…….
5 New Architecture & Design Exhibitions for July 2024
As Sara Coleridge so very, very, nearly phrased it:
“Hot July brings cooling showers,
Apricots, and inspiring days in architecture and design museums”1
Our five apricots recommendations for inspiring new exhibitions opening in the, invariably, far, far, too hot July of 2024 take us all to Luxembourg, Remagen, Warsaw, Utrecht and Susch…….
Natalia Romik. Hideouts. Architecture of Survival at the Jewish Museum, Frankfurt
“There is terror and panic in our city”, wrote the, then, 14 year old Clara Schwarz of life in, then, Żółkiew, Poland, today, Zhovkva, Ukraine, in the summer of 1942 of life under German occupation, “the Jews are building bunkers of all kinds: underground, double walls, anywhere they can find a spot to hide”.1
For Clara and her family that “spot” was a “3 metres square and a meter and a half deep” bunker under a house, a bunker dug out by Clara and other children with their bare hands; a “spot” that saved 10 people from murder and/or deportation in the Gestapo raid of November 1942. And which was subsequently expanded to a “10- by 14- metre” bunker which saved 18 individuals from being interned in the new Żółkiew Ghetto in December 1942. A bunker, a “dank, unsanitary place”, under a house, in which Clara her family and neighbours lived for 18 months.
And just one of thousands of hideouts used by Jews across Europe in the 1930s and 40s; thousands for which nine stand proxy in Natalia Romik. Hideouts. Architecture of Survival at the Jewish Museum, Frankfurt, an exhibition which aside from helping focus attention on the terror, brutality and inhumanity of the NSDAP and standing testimony to those men, women and children forced to endure that terror, brutality and inhumanity, allows for differentiated reflections on both concealment and on the built environment, on the complexity of our relationships with the environments we build…….
Bauhaus and National Socialism at Klassik Stiftung Weimar
From the Bauhaus Museum Weimar you can see the Buchenwald concentration camp; from the Bauhaus Museum Weimar you can exactly locate the violence and inhumanity of the NSDAP.
However from Bauhaus Weimar and Bauhaus Dessau and Bauhaus Berlin locating the NSDAP is a lot less straightforward; from the Bauhauses seeing the NSDAP is not as simple, the view towards the NSDAP being as it is partially hidden, lightly distorted, unfocussed, by the mists of an unquestioned post-War narrative. And that despite, or perhaps exactly because of, the various and varied links between the Bauhauses and the NSDAP.
With the exhibition programme Bauhaus and National Socialism the Klassik Stiftung Weimar enable a much clearer view on not just the NSDAP from the perspective of the Bauhauses, but also allow for more nuanced reflections on a still astoundingly relevant, if often incompletely discussed, chapter in European (hi)story…….
Berlin Design Week 2024 Compact: Morari by Jesse Altmann, Valentina Lenk and Klara Schneider
5 New Architecture & Design Exhibitions for May 2024
As all around, certainly all around here in Europe, the world blossoms and blooms into life, as colour and variety and vitality abound, it’s strange to remember that just a few short weeks ago everything was so barren, monochrome, desolate.
Not least in context of the global architecture and design museum community: how hard we had to labour to achieve anything approaching what could justifiably be termed a ‘list’ of new architecture and design exhibitions.
Similarly it’s hard to imagine that in a few short weeks we will once again be in a position of scrubbing around looking for new exhibitions worthy of mention.
But spring and early summer are months of abundance, months where new exhibitions are waiting to be harvested, months to take advantage of while the going is good. We could have published two lists for May 2024, decided however to stay with the one; would however very much encourage you all to visit, at least, two lists worth. If not more. Get your fill while you can.
Our 6 recommendations for new exhibitions opening in May 2024, our starting points for May 2024, take us all to Berlin, Prague, Jyväskylä, Milan, Brussels and Weimar…….
The Gift. Stories of Generosity and Violence in Architecture at the Architekturmuseum der TU München
Amongst the great many delights of the exchange, the interplay, between German and English is the word ‘Gift’:
| German | English |
| Gift | Poison |
| Geschenk | Gift |
An interplay that, apart from all the other joys it brings, allows one to rephrase Virgil’s “timeō Danaōs et dōna ferentēs” ‘Beware Greeks bearing gifts’ as ‘Beware Germans bearing Gift‘.🤣
With the exhibition The Gift. Stories of Generosity and Violence in Architecture the Architekturmuseum der TU München explore architecture as a Geschenk and architecture as a poison…….
5 New Architecture & Design Exhibitions for April 2024
As Letitia Elizabeth Landon so very, very, nearly wrote in 1823,
Of all the months that fill the year
Give April’s month to me,
For the architecture and design museums are then so filled,
With sweet variety!
Our sweet variety in April’s month of 2024 can be found in Dessau, Brussels, Rome, Paris and Dresden…….
Transform! Designing the Future of Energy at the Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein
As we all know from the 1st Law of Thermodynamics, energy cannot be created nor destroyed, only transformed from one form to another.
And as a species we’ve developed a myriad ways of transforming one form of energy to another.
We burn oil.
We burn coal.
We burn gas.
We burn wood.
We burn an awful lot, don’t we…..
But we also employ, for example, the kinetic energy of wind, waves and photons or the potential energy of Uranium atoms.
With Transform! Designing the Future of Energy the Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein, focus less on the physical and chemical transformations of energy, as on transformations in how we source, supply and use energy…….
Otti Berger. Weaving for Modernist Architecture at the Temporary Bauhaus-Archiv, Berlin
“To meet the needs of a living architecture,” opined Otti Berger in 1930, “we need clarity about what fabric is, and further, what fabric in space is”.1
With the showcase Otti Berger. Weaving for Modernist Architecture the Temporary Bauhaus-Archiv, Berlin, allow one to begin to approach appreciations of what both Otti Berger understood as fabric, “and further, what fabric in space is”, and in doing so not only enable differentiated perspectives on Weaving and Modernist Architecture but allow Otti Berger to begin to retake her place on the helix of design, and architecture, (hi)story……
Water Pressure. Designing for the Future at the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg
It would inarguably, and inexcusably, be little more than employing a lazy, cheap, unwarrantable, stereotype and innuendo to opine that Hamburg is an apposite location for an exhibition exploring and discussing human societies’ relationships with water, being as it is a city where the incessant, clinging drizzle is only interrupted by the regular torrential downpours; rather, Hamburg is an apposite location for an exhibition exploring and discussing human societies’ relationships with water, as it is a city where the incessant, clinging drizzle is only interrupted by the regular torrential downpours. And because not only the fortunes and stature of the city were built on water, for all in the distant days of the fabled Hanseatic League, and of the pirates who cooperated with the city’s Hanseatic era leaders in their desires to assert Hamburg’s primacy on the Elbe1, but also Hamburg is physically built on, and for all physically built in, water. Which means that not only the streets and canals and banks – river and financial – of Hamburg offer access to perspectives on and of our relationships with water past and present, but that our relationships with water future will, invariably, be expressed through, and embodied by, Hamburg’s future. Or lack thereof.
With Water Pressure. Designing for the Future the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg, not only create space for that exploration of and discussion on human societies’ relationships with water, but also for reflections on the roles, functions and responsibilities of design, and designers, in context of forming and defining our relationships with water past, present and future…….
Perfectly Imperfect – Flaws, Blemishes and Defects at the Gewerbemuseum, Winterthur
There is a convincing argument to be made that in our contemporary age perfection is one of our primary aims, one of our guiding aims, individually and collectively. A convincing argument to be made that perfection is, to paraphrase a Shane MacGowan, ‘the measure of our dreams’. And there are no shortage of experts out there to tell us all how to achieve that perfection, in all areas of life and work and love and home and hobby.
With Perfectly Imperfect – Flaws, Blemishes and Defects the Gewerbemuseum Winterthur question perfection, and society’s fascination with perfection…….
Bold and Beautiful. Estonian private houses from the 1980s at the Eesti Arhitektuurimuuseum, Tallinn
In the popular narrative of architecture and design in the second half of the 20th century the phrase ‘Postmodern’ is widely used; a wide use, and an equally wide, unquestioning, popular acceptance of what is meant, that all too often not only blinds us all to the heterogeneity of the period but also impedes meaningful debate and discussion on the motivations, positions and realities of that period. And on the lessons of the period.
With Bold and Beautiful. Estonian private houses from the 1980s the Eesti Arhitektuurimuuseum, Tallinn, remind of the need for more nuanced, and wider-ranging, reflections and discussions…….
5 New Architecture & Design Exhibitions for March 2024
In Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale Perdita bewails that she has no “flowers o’ th’ spring” to make garlands for, and to strew over, her beloved Florizel; “flowers o’ th’ spring” including violets, primroses, oxlips or “daffodils, That come before the swallow dares, and take the winds of March with beauty”.
Whereby in her infatuation with, and fearless youthful love for, Florizel, Perdita fails to appreciate that it wasn’t fear of the winds of March that kept the swallows away, swallows love a stiff wind; rather that they are all in architecture and design museums enjoying the new blush of exhibitions that invariably blooms forth every March. As should she and Florizel, for the shared experience of an architecture and design exhibition is a more sustainable and resilient conduit to maintaining the thrill of young love than a violet, primrose, oxlip or daffodil that will soon wilt and fade.
Our six, yes six, ‘exhibitions o’ th’ spring’ opening in March 2024 for swallows, lovers, Elizabethans, and us all, can be found in Hamburg, Vienna, New York, London, Paris and Weil am Rhein……
