Category: Architecture
#officetour Milestones – Mobile Office by Hans Hollein
In December 1969 the Austrian TV station ORF broadcast a half-hour portrait of the architect Hans Hollein, including a presentation of Hollein’s Mobile Office project: essentially an inflatable plastic bubble in which one person could sit and work.
“Klingt vielleicht etwas verrückt”, mused the presenter, “sounds perhaps a bit crazy”.
And in 1969 a device, a construct, that allowed for the creation of a private domain in the midst of a public space, unquestionably did sound “etwas verrückt”.
And in 2022…….
5 New Architecture & Design Exhibitions for March 2022
“It was one of those March days” reflects Philip “Pip” Pirrip in Great Expectations, “when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade”.1
And thus exactly the sort of dithering, indecisive, capricious, March day when rather than surreptitiously rowing down the Thames towards Gravesend, one should seek refuge in the consistent climate and warming intellectual atmosphere of an architecture or design exhibition.
Our five Great exhibition Expectations for March 2022 can be found in Weil am Rhein, Brussels, Wolfsburg, Vienna and Ulm…….
5 New Architecture & Design Exhibitions for February 2022
According to the Roman scholar Marcus Terentius Varro February 7th marks the first day of spring.
Which strikes us, as we’re sure it does you, as a little early; however, there was reason in Varro’s bold claim, for Varro further sets February 7th as the start of the year, and for all links February 7th with the rising of the west wind, a favourable, warming wind, whose arrival indicates the need to start cultivating your land and crops, specifically Varro advises, “these are things which should be done in the first period, from the rising of the west wind to the vernal equinox: All kinds of nurseries should be set out, orchards pruned, meadows manured, vines trenched and outcropping roots removed, meadows cleared, willow beds planted, grain-land weeded.”1
But not just the cultivation of your land and crops is important from the rising of the west wind to the vernal equinox, the cultivation of mind and spirit and character is of equal importance.
Our five non-agrarian cultivation tips for February 2022 can be found in Halle, Garðabær, Paris, Stockholm and Zürich…….
5 New Architecture & Design Exhibitions for January 2022
According to Germanic folklore, “If January is frosty and cold, a green woodland will soon entice us”.
The implication being that a severe January is the necessary pre-requisite not only for a timeous spring bursting forth with new life, but also for a warm, (meteorologically) settled, summer.
But in the frost and cold and dark and endlessness of January that green (deciduous) woodland is still a long way off, is unimaginable, is unreachable, is almost mythical; however, protection, and distraction, from January can always be found in the warmth and stimulation and light of a good architecture or art or design exhibition.
Our five enticing shelters from the climatic vagaries of January 2022 can be found in Berlin, Humlebæk, Bloomfield Hills, Moscow and New York…….
The Ulmer Hocker: Idea ─ Icon ─ Idol at the HfG-Archiv, Ulm
1 x rounded piece of beech, 2 x quadratic pieces of beech, 3 x quadratic pieces of spruce…
1, 2, 3… An Ulmer Hocker1
With the exhibition The Ulmer Hocker: Idea ─ Icon ─ Idol the HfG-Archiv, Ulm, help elucidate that while an Ulmer Hocker is that simple, it is a deceptive, and highly informative, simplicity…….
5 New Architecture & Design Exhibitions for December 2021
In 1922 the Scottish novelist J.M. Barrie told the undergraduates at St. Andrews University “you remember someone said that God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December”, an allusion to the summer of your life filling your darkening winter days with colour and aroma, and an analogy he neatly reinforces a little later with a, “you have June coming”.1
But that was 1922. Roses were seasonal. Today roses are available all year round, which is not only symbolic of the short-sighted idiocy with which we’re intent on destroying our planet, but also means the rose has been reduced from a metaphor that can be so poignantly and joyously employed as Barrie did, to a cheap, stereotypical, derivative trope devoid of real meaning.
Not that a century later we can’t all do things to ensure that as we progress down life’s highway, as we all approach our own, personal, December, we do so with our emotional and mental capacities fully stimulated and finely honed. Amongst the most rewarding method of which is the regular visit to architecture or design exhibitions: spaces, experiences, whose intellectual and cultural stimulation and nourishment mean that it can be forever June.
Our five new Junes blooming forth in the non-metaphoric December 2021, can be found in Vienna, New York, Düsseldorf, Kanazawa and Paris.
And as ever in these times, if you are planning visiting any exhibition please familiarise yourself in advance with the current ticketing, entry, safety, hygiene, cloakroom, etc rules and systems. And during your visit please stay safe, stay responsible, and above all, stay curious……
#officetour Milestones – The Centraal Beheer Office Building by Herman Hertzberger
“The problem”, elucidated Herman Hertzberger in 1973, in context of his project for the Centraal Beheer insurance company in Apeldoorn, The Netherlands, “was to make an office building that would be a working place where everybody would feel at home: a house for 1000 people.”1
How Herman Hertzberger sought to solve that problem not only helping explain aspects of the development of architecture in the course of the 20th century, nor only aspects of the development of office design in the course of the 20th century, but also being informative in context of the problems associated with designing our contemporary, and future, office spaces……
German Design 1949–1989. Two Countries, One History at the Kunsthalle im Lipsiusbau, Dresden
Whereas politics, economics or sport in West Germany and East Germany are well and widely studied, and the similarities and differences regularly and publicly analysed and contextualised, thereby allowing for more refined, nuanced, popular understandings; design in and from the two Germanys remains, largely, a niche subject for a small band of specialists, and on a popular level something not only repeatedly reduced to a few works, institutions and protagonists, but also defined by understandings that, popularly, have barely changed since 1989.
With the exhibition German Design 1949–1989. Two Countries, One History the Kunstgewerbemuseum Dresden challenge those ingrained understandings and thereby allow for the development of more differentiated and detached perspectives……
5 New Architecture & Design Exhibitions for November 2021
“November’s night is dark and drear, The dullest month of all the year”, opined Letitia Elizabeth Landon in 1836, however, ’twas not all doom and gloom, for, as she continues, “the November evening now closing in round Mrs. Cameron’s house was of a very cheerful nature.”*
A cheerfulness in Mrs. Cameron’s house/school occasioned by the gaiety associated with the rapidly approaching annual school prize-giving and ball; and a cheerfulness to banish the dreary darkness of a November evening that can also be achieved through the intellectual stimulation of an architecture and/or design exhibition.
Our five recommended distractions from November 2021 can be found in Frankfurt, Basel, Dresden, Miami Beach and Munich…..
Le Corbusier and Color at the Museum für Gestaltung, Pavillon Le Corbusier, Zürich
One could be forgiven for thinking that little would be as pointless as a Le Corbusier colouring-in book.
So singularly achromatic is the popular understanding of Le Corbusier, a lack of colour reinforced by the dour, austere, round bespectacled, persona which so universally defines Le Corbusier: what, one asks oneself, could there possibly be to colour in a Le Corbusier colouring-in book?
Yet in contrast to the popular Le Corbusier image, Le Corbusier’s career was one undertaken in colour. A career accompanied by, informed by, arguably driven by, considerations on and the study of colour.
An (oft overlooked) aspect of his work, of his understandings and approaches, and persona, explored in the exhibition Le Corbusier and Color at the, appropriately kaleidoscopic, Pavillon Le Corbusier, Zürich.
Verner Panton – Colouring a New World at Trapholt, Kolding
“Space and form are important elements in the creation of the [interior] environment”, opined the Danish architect, artist and designer Verner Panton in 1969, however, he continues, “colours are even more important”.
And no-one, even those with but the briefest familiarity with Verner Panton, can oversee the colour in Verner Panton’s work.
Yet important as colour and space and form were for Panton, “in the creation of the [interior] environment”, “l’homme reste l’élément central“, man remains the central element.1
With the exhibition Verner Panton – Colouring a New World, Trapholt, Kolding, undertake a search for the human in the colourful new world of Verner Panton.
5 New Architecture & Design Exhibitions for October 2021
In days of yore October was known in Germanic lands as Weinmonat, Wine Month, Month of Wine, whereby thoughts were, unquestionably, less with the drink as with the grape and the harvest, and thus the promise of the new wine.
And in many regards our exhibition recommendations can be considered a monthly harvest of the new crop of architecture and design exhibitions; specifically, and staying in Germanic registers, an Auslese, a considered selection of those well ripened concepts and premises it is hoped will most excite an invigorate the palate both experienced and novice. Or the viewer, experienced or novice.
Our quintet of, possible, new, memorable vintages from Weinmonat 2021 can be found in Ulm, Stockholm, ’s-Hertogenbosch, Paris and Tokyo…….
Here We Are! Women in Design 1900 – Today at the Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein
In her 1929 essay A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf, as a component of her reflections on the myriad subjects of ‘women and fiction’, reads her way, chronologically, through a bookcase of works written by women from across the centuries.
Here We Are! Women in Design 1900 – Today at the Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein, has the feeling of Virginia Woolf’s bookcase, allowing as it does for reflections on, and a critical questioning of, the myriad subjects of ‘women and design’…….
Endless Beginning. The Transformation of the Socialist City at the Museum Utopie und Alltag, Eisenhüttenstadt
In September 1951 the East German newspaper Neue Zeit informed its readers that, “whomever travels to Fürstenberg sees the beginnings of the new city, a city planned according to the “Principles of Urban Development”.1
Whomever travels to Fürstenberg today arrives in Eisenhüttenstadt, the planned city that arose from those “beginnings”; and a city which, arguably, more than any other, stands proxy for the rise and fall of East Germany.
With the exhibition Endless Beginning. The Transformation of the Socialist City, the Museum Utopie und Alltag explore not only the past, present and future of Eisenhüttenstadt, but also employs Eisenhüttenstadt as a conduit for more general reflections on urban planning and the ongoing, inevitable, intrinsic, transformation(s) of our cities. Socialist or otherwise……
5 New Architecture & Design Exhibitions for September 2021
According to the 6th century CE antiquarian John the Lydian, “the oracle recommends drinking milk for the sake of good health all through the month of September”.1
And while milk may have advantages in terms of your physical health, for your spiritual and intellectual health, we’d recommend the following quintet of new architecture, design and art exhibitions opening in September 2021.
Whereby, exhibitions and milk aren’t mutually exclusive, you can partake of both if you so wish……
Die Stadt. Between Skyline and Latrine at the smac – Staatliches Museum für Archäologie Chemnitz
Globally some 2 billion of us live in a city of more than 500,000 inhabitants.1
A number that is progressively growing.
But what does “city” mean?
Not lexicographically, but physically, culturally, socially, politically, economically, morally, etc, etc, etc?
With the exhibition Die Stadt. Between Skyline and Latrine the smac – Staatliches Museum für Archäologie Chemnitz attempt to approach possible answers……
Design. Colour. Theory.: Amédée Ozenfant – Colour
“We must endeavour to introduce a little order into this business, or at least sense into a great deal of it. But what is sense without order? We must try to find some method of arriving at some sort of order – one that will at least enable us to escape from this vagueness in the design of colour”, opined Amédée Ozenfant in 1937.1
And had an idea or two as to the how…….
32 new-ish Architecture & Design Exhibitions for August 2021
We published our first exhibition recommendations list in November 2013, and have diligently, and joyfully, ended every month since with a list of five architecture and design related exhibitions opening in the coming month that appear worthy of a recommendation.
A tradition we very much planned to continue in July 2021 for August 2021.
And would have; however, having undertaken our regular tour through our database of international museums and galleries, we can find but two exhibitions opening in August 2021 we, in all good conscience, can recommend. And while we don’t always stick religiously to the 5 in months of scarcity, 2 is… 2 few. And so we’ll find another way to integrate them into the blog.
August is always slow for new exhibitions, primarily because, and certainly in the USA and Europe, everyone is on holiday; however, we get the feeling that August 2021’s paucity is related to the realities of the past few months.
Any exhibition is the result of years of planning, years of planning that never feels quite long enough, and events such as a Covid pandemic that eats into that limited time have a very real effect on the preparation and realisation of exhibitions; meaning that all museums have been forced to reschedule their programmes, a rescheduling that in addition to a great many, and regrettable, cancellations has seen many museums extend the runs of those exhibitions that are open until the accrued losses in time can be made good.
And which, we very much get the feeling, means many museums are waiting for autumn 2021 (northern hemisphere)/spring 2021 (southern hemisphere) to launch new exhibitions, to re-set their programmes and planning schedules. Which means that for September 2021 and October 2021 we may very well get two lists for each month. All going to plan.
But means for August 2021, rather than 5 new openings… 32 architecture and design exhibitions already running that are, or certainly appear to be, worthy of a recommendation.
And as ever in these times, if you are planning visiting any exhibition please familiarise yourself in advance with the current ticketing, entry, safety, hygiene, cloakroom, etc rules and systems. And during your visit please stay safe, stay responsible, and above all, stay curious……
Anything Goes? Berlin Architecture in the 1980s at the Berlinische Galerie, Berlin
As the worldline of architecture’s spacetime continuum moves through the 1970s and ever further into the 1980s it becomes increasingly blurry, indistinct, harder to confidently follow: established conventions and systems, acknowledged fundamental and/or necessary rules of architecture become increasingly difficult to locate.
Indeed were there rules in 1980s architecture?
With the exhibition Anything Goes? Berlin Architecture in the 1980s the Berlinische Galerie explore the architectural developments in the, then, two Berlins, and in doing so not only allow one to approach better understandings of the architectural development of the, now, one Berlin, but also to question the putative lawless of 1980s architecture…….
5 New Architecture & Design Exhibitions for July 2021
We go in withering July,
To ply the hard incessant hoe;
Panting beneath the brazen sky,
We sweat and grumble, but we go…..1
…..alternatively, skip the panting, sweating and grumbling with a visit to an air-conditioned museum.
Our recommendations for escaping the brazen sky of withering July 2021 can be found in Munich, Aalborg, Eisenhüttenstadt, Wrocław and Karlsruhe.
And as ever in these times, if you are planning visiting any exhibition please familiarise yourself in advance with the current ticketing, entry, safety, hygiene, cloakroom, etc rules and systems. And during your visit please stay safe, stay responsible, and above all, stay curious……
5 New Architecture & Design Exhibitions for June 2021
“I wonder what it would be like to live in a world where it is always June”, ponders Anne Shirley in Lucy Maud Montgomery’s 1915 novel Anne of the Island.
“You’d get tired of it”, sighs her adoptive mother Marilla Cuthbert by way of reply.
“I daresay”, responds Anne, “but just now I feel that it would take me a long time to get tired of it…”
Thoughts we very much concur with as we survey and contemplate the varied profusion of new architecture and design exhibitions sprouting forth in June 2021. Who could ever tire of such a joyous abundance? Who?
Our five recommendations from that early summer crop can be found in Leipzig, Hornu, Berlin, Bloomfield Hills and Chemnitz…….
smow Blog Design Calendar: May 25th 1895 – Happy Birthday Clara Porset!
“¿Qué es diseño?” asked Clara Porset in 1949. What is design?1
Not because she didn’t know. Far from it. Over the course of the preceding two decades Clara Porset had ably demonstrated her considered, critical and responsive understandings of design; understandings that saw her develop into one of the most important, interesting and informative furniture designers in Mexico, understandings that saw her develop into one of the more important, interesting and informative protagonists in the development of industrial design in Mexico.
Before she slipped from view and into the (relative) anonymity she finds herself today.
Before the more pertinent question became, ¿quién es Clara Porset?
TASCHEN Verlag presents Gio Ponti: A coffee table book that comes with its own coffee table
In 1935 George Nelson opined that “the history of art in Italy presents the astonishing spectacle of a series of men who knew no boundaries between the arts”; a history, a tradition, Nelson saw continued into 1930s Italy through “the cheering example of Gio Ponti, who found early in life that no one profession was sufficient to use up his energy or exhaust his interests, and added others with the nonchalance of a small boy increasing his collection of marbles”.1
A borderless, inexhaustible collection of marbles explored and discussed in the new Gio Ponti monograph from TASCHEN Verlag……
5 New Architecture & Design Exhibitions for May 2021
According to Germanic folklore Mairegen bringt Segen, Rain in May brings blessings.
It also brings an excellent excuse to visit an architecture and/or design exhibition.
Our five recommended shelters from the showers in May 2021 can be found in Ulm, Stockholm, Baruth, Zürich and Hasselt……
Radio smow: A Le Corbusier Playlist…….
In 1956 the Dutch electronics conglomerate Phillips asked Le Corbusier if he would be interested in designing their pavilion for the 1958 World’s Fair in Brussels.
Le Corbusier was.
Albeit, “je ne ferai pas de pavillon; je ferai un Poème électronique avec la bouteille qui contiendra“, “I will not create a pavilion; I will create a Poème électronique with the bottle to contain it.”1
And a pavilion/bottle/Poème électronique which offers an apposite starting point to approaching a differentiated image, a differentiated composition?, of Le Corbusier…….2
