Category: Designer
5 New Architecture & Design Exhibitions for December 2023
According to Germanic folklore, “If December is wild with rain, then leave your fields and get thee to an architecture or design museum”
Our five locations for escaping the rains of December 2023 can be found in Cottbus, Rome, Maastricht, Tallinn and Zürich…….
smow Blog Interview: Line and Round – It is a bit of a mission impossible to try to make a career as a furniture designer in Hungary
Line and Round, I O, was established in Budapest in 2017 by Annabella Hevesi, a Masters graduate from the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design and Gábor Bella, a Masters graduate from the “School of Life”, with a background in carpentry and numerous years experience in a variety of construction/interior/design fields, including the creation, development and realisation of escape room games, a concept that enjoys a particular popularity in Hungary, and in which context Annabella and Gábor met and began their professional cooperation.
A cooperation that in the six years since it has been staged as Line and Round has seen Annabella and Gábor develop and realise a variety of interior and furniture design projects including, for example, the creation of a locker room and press conference space for the Sopron Basket basketball team, numerous hotel and private interior projects, and the Burnt Geometry collection, Line and Round’s first self-initiated furniture collection, and part of that presentation at the 2023 Grassimesse, Leipzig, that saw Line and Round win the inaugural smow-Designpreis, or more accurately co-win the inaugural smow-Designpreis alongside Nürnberg based glassmaker Cornelius Réer.
Following their success in Leipzig we caught up Annabella and Gábor, virtually, online, to chat about their work, approaches and the realities of life as designers in the contemporary Hungary, but began by asking how Line and Round came to be, how Line and Round liberated itself from the escape room game industry…….
Hej rup! The Czech Avant-Garde at the Bröhan Museum, Berlin
There is an argument to be made that popular understandings of, and the popular presentation of, inter-War European avant-garde architecture and design tend to focus on Germany and Russia, and on Functionalism, popular foci that tend to cause us all to forget that the inter-War European avant-Garde was a homogenous mix of positions and, and as with the Art Nouveau before it, an international moment defined by its variety of regional dialects.
With the exhibition Hej rup! The Czech Avant-Garde the Bröhan Museum, Berlin, provide for an introductory course in inter-War Czechoslovakian…….
Everything at Once: Postmodernity, 1967–1992 at the Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn
Postmodernism
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
With the exhibition Everything at Once: Postmodernity, 1967–1992 the Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn, request a more considered response…….
5 New Architecture & Design Exhibitions for November 2023
Back in the spring Haitian musician Wyclef Jean informed us all he’d be “Gone Till November”.
And so he should be back any day now; and given how busy he’s invariably been all summer, earning as he has been enough money to buy out blocks, he’s probably not had a chance to visit an architecture or design museum. And so, we assume, will be absolutely desperate to stimulate his cognitive faculties.
Our five recommendations for new exhibitions opening in November 2023 for Wyclef Jean, or indeed for anyone seeking to achieve fresh perspectives on architecture, design and the world around us, can be found in Vienna, Oslo, Brno, Krefeld and Ljubljana…….
Grassimesse 2023 Compact: Burg Giebichenstein Kunsthochschule Halle – Faserland oder 8mm und 100% Bio
Grassimesse 2023: smow-Designpreis Co-Winners – Annabella Hevesi / Line and Round IO & Cornelius Réer
Let’s be honest, it wouldn’t be smow if it followed the rules and did that which you’d expected it to.
Thus it should have come as absolutely no surprise to anyone that the inaugural Grassimesse smow-Designpreis produced not the expected one, but two, joint, co-winners: Budapest based designer Annabella Hevesi and her studio Line and Round I O and Nürnberg based glassmaker Cornelius Réer…….
Grassimesse 2023: Grassipreis Winners
While in many regards being selected to participate at the Grassimesse can be considered an accolade in itself, the event also awards a number of prizes: some specific, others general, all well worth winning.
Ahead of the opening of the 2023 edition the winners of the seven Grassi Prizes were announced on Thursday evening in the Grassi Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Leipzig.
Selected by the 2023 Grassmesse jury from the 80+ exhibitors, the victorious seven are…….
Nanna Ditzel. Taking Design to New Heights at Trapholt, Kolding
“Something is happening to the way people live” opined Nanna Ditzel in 1961; changing realities which caused her to reflect that, in terms of our furniture and interiors, “don’t we carry around a whole load of stuff that is old and defunct – and could actually be different.”1
With the exhibition Nanna Ditzel. Taking Design to New Heights, Trapholt, Kolding, explore how Nanna Ditzel approached and understood and realised that “different”…….
Campus Grassimesse
For all that the annual Leipzig Grassimesse is and always has been as a sales fair, a place to peruse, discourse with and purchase, contemporary craft, applied art and design, and thereby an opportunity to support contemporary craft, applied art and design practitioners, or perhaps more accurately an opportunity to support those practitioners whose practice you most enjoy, it has also always been a platform for creative schools and their students to present their works and approaches and positions; the inaugural Grassimesse in 1920 featuring students from the Staatliche Kunstschule für Textilindustrie Plauen, the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, the Kunstgewerbeschule Magdeburg, the Kunstgewerbeschule Nürnberg and the Handwerker- und Kunstgewerbeschule Halle, the latter an institution who in their various guises since 1920 have been more or less ever presents at the Grassimesse.
And will be present at the 2023 Grassimesse where, as Burg Giebichenstein Kunsthochschule, Halle, they will present current projects alongside students from the Kunsthochschule Weißensee Berlin, the Universität der Künste Berlin, HAWK Hildesheim, the Hochschule Wismar, the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart and the Alchimia Contemporary Jewellery School, Florence.
Yet for all that schools have always been a pillar on which the Grassimesse stands, they are one that can be all too easily overlooked amidst the perusing, discoursing and purchasing. Thus ahead of the 2023 edition by way of helping reinforce that the Grassimesse is more than the selected exhibitors and their works, we thought we’d take a brief moment to reflect on some of those schools who’ve graced the halls of the Grassi Museum, and thereby allow for reflections on both the (hi)story of creative education and also on the Grassimesse as a platform for schools and a coming generation of creatives as much as one for those creatives currently practising…….
Vienna Design Week 2023: Design Without Borders at Collegium Hungaricum
Established in Budapest in 2004 by textile designer Szilvia Szigeti and her interior designer husband Tamás Radnóti, Design Without Borders understands itself, and summarising to the point of inaccuracy, as a platform for international design dialogue across, or perhaps more accurately indifferent to, not only national borders but borders of genre, scale, approach, position et al.
By way of preparing for the platform’s forthcoming 20th birthday a showcase of projects presented, hosted, by Design Without Borders over the past two decades is being staged in context of Vienna Design Week 2023.
A presentation that allows some insights into the aforementioned understandings of itself, and also access to some reflections on the realities of contemporary design in Europe…….
Vienna Design Week 2023, Griaß di!
It’s been a while, and we were beginning to think it would never happen again; however, after an inordinately long absence September 2023 sees us once again meet up with Vienna Design Week…….
5 New Architecture & Design Exhibitions for September 2023
In the alpine regions of Europe the arrival of September marks the start of the Almabtrieb, that annual migration of the cattle, sheep and goats of the region from their high pastures to the valleys far, far below.
A migration undertaken because, as the cattle, sheep and goats of the alps innately understand, September is the month when the global architecture and design museum community (slowly) end their summer siesta and begin to invite us all to peruse their autumn/winter exhibition programmes.
And a migration that looks particularly worthwhile in September 2023, being as it is abloom with a crop of new showcases every bit as enticing and flavoursome as the herb rich pastures of any alpine alm. Indeed so bountiful is the September 2023 harvest we could have written two lists. For probity’s sake we stick with the one.
Our five reasons for saying Servus, Tschüs and Adieu to the fresh air and green, green, grass of the high alps and venturing into the city can be found in Frankfurt, New York, Kolding, Vienna and Malmö…….
Capellagården Summer Exhibition 2023
We’re not saying that Capellagården is the best design school in the world.
But would say it is, without question, one of the most delightful and most engaging and most relaxing to visit, one of the best to visit.
A genuine joy that was denied us during the Covid years.
But one we weren’t going to give up on.
In summer 2023 the stars aligned and we ventured once again over the seas to Öland…….
