July is famously the month we escape the tight constraints of the professional design circus and head out to annoy design students at their annual end of year shows. Only to come back not only in awe at the quality of some of the works we have seen; but confident in the bright future of the German design community. Whereas our tour traditionally keeps us safely within the confines of the former DDR - this year we're including Stuttgart. Design? Stuttgart? We know. Stuttgart! But lest we
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Until October 31st 2012 Bauhaus Dessau is showing the exhibition "Marcel Breuer – Design and Architecture" Presenting a wide-ranging look at Breuer's furniture and architectural legacy "Marcel Breuer – Design and Architecture" is a product of the Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein and is curated by the journalist/curator/lecturer Mathias Remmele. At the exhibition opening we caught up with Mathias Remmele for a quick chat about Marcel Breuer, his work and his influences. (smow)blog: From the
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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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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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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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As regular readers will know one of our favourite design festivals is Vienna Design Week. And one of our all-time favourite Vienna Design Week projects is LacesLamp by Antoinette Bader. Because it delt so playfully with statics. And believe us, we've suffered for statics. And so anything that presents it as something to be enjoyed is to be celebrated. Consequently it was a particular joy to discover Antoinette at Salone Satellite 2012 with three new projects: projects which although
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At Milan 2011 Moormann presented the prototype of Pressed Chair by Harry Thaler. At Milan 2012 the market ready version was/is being officially unveiled. Last year Nils Holger Moormann enthused at great length about Pressed Chair. And so to complete the story, ahead of Milan 2012 we caught up with Harry Thaler in his London studio to learn more about both him and the background to Pressed Chair. (smow)blog: To begin with maybe a little to your background. If we're correctly informed you
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As anyone involved in the designer furniture industry will confirm; it's a secretive old world. Probably only matched in its inherent furtiveness by the Freemasons, Papal Conclaves or the committee responsible for setting petrol prices. Simply saying that you might have heard that designer X may be considering a possible future cooperation with producer Y is to risk a long interrogation by a Product Manager wanting to know who told you what. The situation is even more clandestine when it
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As we've already admitted the first time we saw a Dutch Invertuals exhibition we didn't hang around very long. Since then however we have matured a lot and the show has become a regular feature of our visits to Eindhoven and Milan. Simply put, one always finds something challenging, exciting and beautiful at a Dutch Invertuals show. And invariably something you don't really understand, no matter how often it is explained to you. But that itself is for us reason enough to go. In 2012 Dutch
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Although proud of the number of "issues" we have with Milan design week and furniture fair. It does of course also have its positive sides. Most of which are to be found down quiet, unassuming side streets. Last year we discovered Azucena. This year Villa Necchi. Built in the first half of the 1930s by Italian architect Piero Portaluppi on behalf of a (very) rich Milanese industrial family, Villa Necchi is just about the most "In-your-face" building you are ever likely to set foot in. In
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