Category: Producer


The Historia Supellexalis V for Vitra

Vitra

A Fehlbaum; A Campus; A Commonwealth

“When architecture is born, a place is born” opined Japanese architect Tsuyoshi Tane in 2018, continuing, “humans began to understand that by building architecture, a meaning is given to a place, and then that place has a story that can be passed on to others”.

But for Tane architecture doesn’t just bequeath a place meaning and a story, it also “gives memories to a place”, memories of the past and memories of the future, collective memories that help create bonds. But memories that are increasingly being lost in our complex, high-tempo, contemporary society, with all the inevitable consequences that has for an architecture that must grow organically from itself in unison with society; architecture and society which both need the memories of the past and the memories of future.

Thus, argues Tane, “to create the architecture of a more meaningful further future, perhaps we must … dive in to the past to think of the future, rather than only looking forward”.1

The exhibition Tsuyoshi Tane: The Garden House in the Vitra Design Museum Gallery, and the eponymous Garden House by Tsuyoshi Tane, the latest addition to the Vitra Campus in Weil am Rhein, allow one to approach not only a better appreciation of Tane’s positions but also to experience how they influence and inform his approach, his works, his architecture…….

Tsuyoshi Tane: The Garden House, Vitra Design Museum Gallery, Weil am Rhein

Edition 33 as seen at Passagen Interior Design Week Cologne 2024

Imagine you were one of the best selling and most widely used chairs in your country. But (hi)story had forgotten you.

Imagine you were informative in context of elucidating important, but rarely illuminated, chapters in the (hi)story of furniture design. But (hi)story had forgotten you.

Imagine you were instructive in context of the practice and craft and industry of furniture design. But (hi)story had forgotten you.

Imagine you were in use in a great many locations. But no-one saw you. No-one knew your name. Just sat on you.

Imagine you were the EW 1192 by Horst Heyder.

With Der ungesehene Designklassiker the Deutsches Stuhlbaumuseum, Rabenau, not only enable one to imagine, but for all begin to redress the situation……

Der ungesehene Designklassiker, Deutsches Stuhlbaumuseum, Rabenau

The Historia Supellexalis U for USM Haller

 

USM Haller

A Fritz; A Ball; A System

The Historia Supellexalis T for Thonet

Thonet

A Michael; A Twist; A Portfolio of Patents

3D printed ceramics by Babette Wiezorek, as seen at Grassimesse 2023, Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Leipzig

The H2L lounge chair by Studio Machwerk, as seen at Grassimesse 2023, Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Leipzig

Andreas Möller - Weberei Hamburg & Flying8, as seen at Grassimesse 2023, Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Leipzig

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…….

smow co-founder Martina Stadler reads the laudatio for Cornelius Réer (m) Annabella Hevesi / Line and Round IO (l, represented by Gabor Bella) at the opening of the 2023 Grassimesse Leipzig

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…….

Design Without Borders, Collegium Hungaricum, Vienna Design Week 2023

The MOWO - Move with VIVI and CC collections, as seen at Vienna Design Week 2023

The popular Bauhaus focus, preoccupation, of discussions on creativity in the 1920s very naturally leads to us all ignoring other important protagonists, causes us all, when oft unwittingly, to miss other equally valid, and enjoyable, paths to appreciations of developments in craft, design, technology and our objects of daily use in the early decades of the 20th century, that important, and still very relevant, period where handwork increasingly ceded to industry.

With Haël. Margarete Heymann-Loebenstein and her workshops for decorative ceramics 1923-1934 the Bröhan Museum, Berlin, helps one locate, and begin to explore, one of those regularly overlooked paths and thereby allows one to begin to develop those more probable appreciations…….

Haël. Margarete Heymann-Loebenstein and her workshops for decorative ceramics 1923-1934, Bröhan Museum, Berlin

The Historia Supellexalis S for Switzerland

Switzerland

A Confoederatio; A Range; A Context

The Historia Supellexalis R for Rowac

Rowac

A Rivet; A Crimp; A Schemel

For all that the Schwarzwald is popularly known for its cuckoo clocks, as Mythos SABA – Memories of a Global Company at the Franziskanermuseum, Villingen-Schwenningen, helps elucidate, such aren’t the only noise emitting precision technical objects, nor indeed the only harmonies, rhythms, melodies and metres, associated with the (hi)story of, and the cultural contribution of, the Schwarzwald.

If alternative noise emitting precision technical objects and alternative harmonies, rhythms, melodies and metres that are all too often masked by the call of the cuckoo.

And also an elucidation, an enunciation, of the alternatives by the Franziskanermuseum that begins, somewhat inevitably, with clocks…….

Mythos SABA – Memories of a Global Company, Franziskanermuseum, Villingen-Schwenningen

The Historia Supellexalis: "Q" for Quercus

Quercus

An oak; A cultural good; A material

In the northern Hemisphere May is a month of ritual; rituals primarily associated with the awakening of nature, the approaching of summer with the associated hope of a successful and bountiful harvest. And rituals which include, amongst many others, maypoles in various contexts, bonfires for various reasons and a myriad dances, including the traditional English children’s dance/game Nuts in May, with its repetition of the line “Here we come gathering nuts in May”… which obviously raises the pertinent question, which nuts can, could, should one gather in England in May? Or indeed anywhere in northern Europe in May? Are they not all a bit underdeveloped in May? Is gathering nuts in late summer, early autumn not a more worthwhile experience? As squirrels do.

So, children and adults alike, don’t waste your time looking for edible nuts in May and invest your time instead in visiting an architecture and/or design exhibition and thereby gathering fresh perspectives and insights in May.

Our five recommendations for new shows opening in May 2023 can be found in Hamburg, Rotterdam, Helsinki, Friedrichshafen and, once again, Rotterdam…….

5 New Architecture & Design Exhibitions for May 2023

The Historia Supellexalis: "P" for Paris

Paris

An Île; A Commune; A Context

The return of an old favourite, and no not (smow) introducing, although Welcome Back!!!, but the Rowac-Schemel, the Rowac stool, a work initially launched in 1909 as one of the world’s first sheet steel furniture objects, a work that once graced not only innumerable industrial workshops, craft ateliers and educational institutes, but the workshops and ateliers at Bauhauses Weimar and Dessau, a work that became lost in the confusions of post-War eastern Germany.

A work returning in 2023, some 80 years after production ended: and that from and in its native Chemnitz.

And via a Kickstarter crowdfunding project.

To find out more we caught up with Alide and Dieter Amick from Rowac…….

The Rowac-Schemel, Rowac Stool

When is an ironing board, not an ironing board?

 

 

When it’s Cinderella by Anna Kraitz for Design House Stockholm.

Cinderella by Anna Kraitz for Design House Stockholm, as seen during Stockholm Design Week 2023

Rom and Lupa from Lentala, as seen at Stockholm Furniture Fair 2023

Stockholm Furniture Fair 2023: Say Hej! to... Stair Lamp by Notchi Architects for Oblure

Stockholm Furniture Fair 2023: Say Hej! to... VS Stakki by Martin Ballendat for VS Vereinigte Spezialmöbelfabriken

Ondulé by Anton Björsing for Karl Andersson & Söner, as seen at Stockholm Furniture Fair 2023