We’re back from Copenhagen – at least physically. In our minds, we’re still caught up in the design bubble amongst the showrooms, installations and courtyards of this year’s 3daysofdesign. After three days packed with new impressions, the transition back to everyday life isn’t exactly easy. Like a sponge, we soaked up the city, its exhibitions and new products; along the way, we met designers such as Sebastian Herkner and Lise Vester, had a chat with Knud Erik Hansen – and a few themes
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The 3daysofdesign event in Copenhagen usually features showrooms from major brands, new collections, experiments with materials and the latest trends in Scandinavian design. But if you only look to the future, you’ll quickly miss the very thing that made the present possible in the first place: the places where design history wasn’t merely exhibited, but actually created. The SAS Royal Hotel, now the Radisson Collection Royal, is precisely such a place: a building that not only showcases
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The opening of Charlotte Kerner’s book about Eileen Gray is almost too good to be true. That is precisely why it sticks in the memory. In the 1980s, she finds herself in a furniture shop without any particular purpose, more in passing than in search of anything specific. Then she is drawn to a small side table: steel, glass, height-adjustable, as light as a thought and yet astonishingly striking. She sees it and simply buys it. At this moment, she doesn’t know that this table was designed
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What do you actually do during Milan Design Week, apart from admiring installations, checking out new releases, and walking from one end of the city to the other? We met CEO Knud Erik Hansen of Carl Hansen & Søn in the Milan showroom for an interview – and experienced a moment that felt like a piece of Denmark: calm, clear, with a breath of fresh air in the summerly overheated atmosphere of Milan’s aperitivo culture. A cup of coffee before the talk Knud Erik Hansen brings something to
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For us, the end of Milan Design Week means one thing above all else every year: the anticipation of 3daysofdesign in Copenhagen. It makes perfect sense, really – and that’s precisely why it’s so fascinating to see how differently these two design worlds operate. Milan is one great work of art. The city becomes a stage, with design blending seamlessly with art, fashion and architecture. Amidst installations, courtyards and aperitifs, that characteristic sense of excitement takes hold,
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Why do special experiences always seem to fly by so quickly? No sooner had Milan Design Week 2026 really got into full swing than it felt like it was already over. Between impressive installations, changing venues and endless impressions, there was barely time to catch our breath – we couldn`t even enjoy la dolce vita or an ice cream in the sun. Instead: around 20,000 steps a day, the tram as our best friend, a constant cycle of wonder, moving on and fresh wonder. Milan Design Week was like
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Just before the interview, we checked the notes one last time – and wondered who would be sitting opposite me: a person or a star. That’s exactly the moment we found ourselves in at the ClassiCon Roadshow in Leipzig’s smow Store, just before his design talk, which was packed to the rafters. There we met Sebastian Herkner, whose designs have long been established on the international stage – respect and a touch of nervousness included. But then he sat there: open, attentive, fully present.
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Every year, we "smowies" eagerly await the Milan Furniture Fair – but the anticipation begins long before the first installation. Almost more exciting than the fair itself is the question: who gets to go to Milan this year? Between hope, speculation and the welcome news, the tension builds – and with the decision in hand, the anticipation for Milan as a place of longing, as the beating heart of the international design scene, grows immeasurably. For a few days, the city becomes a feast for
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The smow Design Contest brings young talents in furniture design to the trade fair Grassimesse Leipzig and helps young designers entering into the furniture industry. In addition to the smow Design Prize, which is awarded to one of all the exhibitors, smow will be providing five sponsored exhibition spaces for the first time in 2026. The smow Design Contest at a Glance • Venue: Grassimesse Leipzig • Support for young talents: Covering the stand fee for 5 newcomers aged 35 or under •
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Fashion Week was buzzing. Light fell on fabrics, materials sparkled, and unique settings merged into a multi-sensory experience. And right in the middle of it all: smow – classic furniture that doesn't stand still, but plays along. For us one of the design stars at Berlin Fashion Week 2026: Eiermann Table from Richard Lampert Together with the fashion label OBS and sponsor USM, a fashion show was created that combined fashion and interior design in an unusual way. Under the motto ‘...you
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Objects of daily use, certainly higher price-end objects of daily use, don't just sell on the basis of what they physically are and what they physically do — possible alternatives are generally far too numerous for such to be decisive in itself — but also sell on their semantics: what the potential purchaser believes an object says about them, how the potential purchaser believes others will read their possession of such an object, the associations the potential purchaser makes in context of a
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For all that everyone is familiar with the new furniture of the first third of the 20th century in its tubular steel and with its breaks with the conventions and traditions of the past... is and was that the full (hi)story? With Josef Frank and the others. New furniture 1920–1940 the Möbelmuseum, Wien, argue... no....... Josef Frank and the others. New furniture 1920–1940, Möbelmuseum Wien Staged by way of marking both the 140th anniversary of Josef Frank's birth and the centenary of
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On the terrace of Das Minsk, Potsdam you stand before a sweeping panorama of the city's downtown; a panorama that not only stretches back over Stüler, Persius and Schinkel's St Nikolai Church, an instructive unification of the three, all the way up to the summit of the Pfingstberg with its Italian renaissance influenced Belvedere, thus two easily read indicators of Potsdam's royal Prussian past, but a panorama that also includes an awful lot of Plattenbauten, prefabricated buildings, primarily
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¿September in Switzerland? Why the devil not? Can think of worse places to spend late summer, early autumn. Not that the trip to the Confoederatio, welcome as it sounds, was planned. Rather, in context of preparing our list of recommendations for new architecture and design exhibitions opening in September 2025, we realised we had a quintet of easily recommendable Swiss exhibitions opening in September 2025. Specifically a quintet of Swiss architecture based exhibitions opening in September
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As Bob Dylan once wrote, but The Byrds most elegantly enunciated, "I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now". Same with us... ...aaach, what the heck... ...after neigh on 17 years, and over 2,100 posts, 2.4 average a week, for all you stats nerds, I can drop the character for one post, and step through the fourth wall to join yous in the auditorium. Hi! How are you? Good to meet you! 17 years ago I... ohhh!!, that feels weird, if exhilarating... 17 years ago I was much older. I
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In Leipzig the Christmas biscuits and gingerbreads have reappeared on the supermarket shelves, a sure sign of not only the increasingly aggressive commercialisation of Yuletide celebrations that one can't help thinking surely used to have another, long since forgotten, function, an origin beyond profit and gluttony; but also the surest of signs that summer is on its way out. As is the news that the Grassimesse Jury have decreed who have been invited to present their works at the 2025
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"L'architecture est l'un des plus urgents besoins de l'homme"1, opined Le Corbusier in his 1923 book, Vers une architecture, 'Architecture is one of the most urgent needs of man'. An urgent need that, to paraphrase, summarise, Vers une architecture, was in urgent need of renewal. Was in urgent need of a new direction in context of the technological, material, ecological, economic, et al realities of the early 1920s; that there was, on account of the realities of the age, an urgent need for a
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"Gegen Ende meiner Silberschmied-Ausbildung hatte ich begonnen, mich mit Lichtproblemen zu befassen", recalled the Swiss architect, designer and artist Max Bill in 1979, 'towards the end of my silversmith training I started to concern myself with problems of lighting', continuing, 'when I arrived at Bauhaus in the spring of 1927 I was impressed by the variety of Lichtträgern [light bearers] that alternated throughout the building according to functional needs'. In particular Bill's attention
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As the old adage has it, and as (hi)story tends to confirm, we, collectively and individually, often can't see the wood for the trees. An amblyopia that of late has developed to a, collective and individual, difficultly in seeing both those metaphoric trees and those physical trees. And therefore to a deterioration of the understanding that we exist in a metaphoric and physical wood. With all the inevitable consequences that has, and will continue to have. With Trees, Time, Architecture.
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"Spielzeug zu gestaltung, ist immer wieder eine anregende und unheimlich aufregende Herausforderung"1, opined once Renate Müller, 'designing toys is always a stimulating and terrifically exciting challenge", a challenge that for Müller isn't just technical, rather requires that "you bring human emotion into every piece" and that, not least because, nothing meaningful can result, "if you don't have the heart for it, and the love and the understanding'.2 With Renate Müller Spielzeug + Design
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After a decade of exploring life, humanity, being, their back yard, and themselves, in each others inseparable company, apart from the many moments they fell out, obviously, the final Calvin and Hobbes strip sees the philosophical duo sat in their sled at the top of a snow covered hill... "It's a magical world, Hobbes, ol' buddy..." Calvin opines. Adding, as they head off down that hill into the great unknown of their next adventure, "...Let's go exploring!" We're not going to argue with any
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As oft opined in these dispatches, the popular narrative of the (hi)story of design in Europe is a very abridged retelling, one contributed to by but a limited number of protagonists, invariably from dominant groups, and viewed from a limited number of perspectives, invariably those perspectives we're all conditioned to view that narrative, and those protagonists, from, with the myriad problems the thereby inherent skews and distortions cause not only for our understandings of the (hi)story and
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Arguably nothing encapsulates the self-image and the external image of the United States of America more universally than the concept and the physical reality of suburbia. Nothing says United States of America quite like suburbia. But what is 'suburbia'? Why is 'suburbia'? How is 'suburbia'? With Suburbia. Living the American Dream the Architekturzentrum Wien invite us all to explore the (hi)story and culture of that most American of locations and thereby to better approach not only suburbia,
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Water is, and long has been, one of the most important resources for human society. Not just as a life-giving elixir for the human species and the flora and fauna with whom we share the planet and on whom we rely for our existence, but also as a source of power, as a basis for hygiene, as a transportation conduit, as a cultural identifier, as focal point for communities, as a location for fun, etc, etc, etc. Factors neatly elucidated by the Limmat that flows through Zürich, the Zürichsee into
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