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
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Familiar as our objects and rituals of daily life are to us, to someone from the 16th century they would appear most, most, odd, just as their familiar 16th century objects and rituals would appear most, most, odd to someone from the 11th century: yet as Simon & Garfunkel teach us "that's not unusual, No, it isn't strange", for as societies develop they acquire new objects and rituals, daily life continually evolves anew alongside, and in conjunction with, new objects and new rituals. And if we
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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
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Braun occupy a special, ¿unique?, position not only in the mythology of product design but also in the (hi)story of West Germany; arguably no brand is as closely related with and to West Germany as Braun. With the exhibition Braun 100 the Bröhan-Museum, Berlin, explore the development of design at Braun in the post-War decades and in doing so help one approach differentiated understandings of not only Braun and Braun design, but also of the relationships between Braun, design and West
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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
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In 1950 the Dutch architect and designer Mart Stam told a conference in Leipzig, "when I speak here for a group of individuals active in industry about the problem of industrial design, I do so because I believe that it is necessary for us to concern ourselves in detail with the question of industrial design, and also because I believe that through intensive work and cooperation in this field we can contribute to increasing the cultural quality of our goods."1,2 With the exhibition The Early
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"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
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After a long, challenging, year the smow Song Contest finds itself exactly where it was: Rotterdam. Not just the location, but the stage, the decoration, the costumes, even the bier en frieten exactly as they were twelve months ago. The decisive, defining, difference between the 2020 smow Song Contest and the 2021 smow Song Contest being the new understandings, the new perceptions, the new perspectives, the new vitality, the new passions, the new desires, the new old new, articulated by the
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As the 19th century English poet Robert Browning so very, very, nearly phrased it: Oh, to be in Berlin, Vienna, Chemnitz, 's-Hertogenbosch, or Berlin (again), Now that April's there, And whoever wakes in Berlin, Vienna, Chemnitz, 's-Hertogenbosch, or Berlin (again), Sees, some morning a most interesting, entertaining and instructive sounding architecture and/or design exhibition, While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough...... "Hella Jongerius: Woven Cosmos" at the Gropius Bau, Berlin,
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With the 2021 Pritzker Architecture Prize being awarded to Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal international attention has become focused on architectural strategies geared towards maintaining existing buildings in the face of evolving economic, social, demographic, et al, realities rather than demolishing and erecting new ones by way of a response; and also of the value, the economic, the social, the cultural and the environmental value, of reusing, remodelling and reimagining that which
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In context of the exhibition Luigi Colani and Art Nouveau, the Bröhan-Museum Berlin's staircase is emblazoned with a long quote from Colani, a long and typically outspoken quote, in which Luigi Colani denigrates the Hochschule für Gestaltung Ulm, that design school which has such a prominent and pre-eminent position in popular understandings of design in post-War West Germany; and who for Luigi Colani were "defrauders of the German creative spirituality of the twenties and thirties! Imbecilic
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Cleaning is a chore. If only we could get through life without the necessity of dusting, sweeping, washing, polishing et al....... With the project Cleaning against the Dictatorship of Efficiency Birgit Severin and Guillaume Neu-Rinaudo a.k.a. studio b severin explore cleaning, its rituals, contexts, symbolism, functions, psychology, and in doing so enable differentiated perspectives on both that ubiquitous chore and the necessity in the necessity of dusting, sweeping, washing, polishing et
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The only certainty as 2020 flows into 2021 is the ongoing uncertainty. An uncertainty that is increasingly being understood as an ongoing certainty and thereby turning ever more "plans" into "options". And also causing a great many global architecture and design museums to skip over the first quarter of 2021 as if weren't there, and to move their new exhibition openings to April and beyond. A state of affairs which on the one hand means there are currently fewer lonelier locations than any
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To paraphrase the Propellerheads, this is just a little bit of a blog post repeating... For much as with our November 2020 exhibition recommendations, so some of our December 2020 exhibition recommendations won't be opening. Or at least not in December 2020. But then as now are in still in our list. On the one hand because they will open, and is an important part of any pleasure not the expectation and anticipation? And on the other hand, because that which makes an exhibition recommendable
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Outwith his native Denmark, the country home to the most architectural works by Arne Jacobsen is Germany. Yet the vast majority of them remain popularly unknown. As does Arne Jacobsen's partner on his German projects: Otto Weitling With the showcase Gesamtkunstwerke – Architecture by Arne Jacobsen and Otto Weitling in Germany, the Felleshus Berlin not only set the record straight but allow for some fresh reflections on both Arne Jacobsen and our relationships to and with architecture and our
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In 1977 Ludwig Glaeser, curator of the Mies van der Rohe Archive at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, opinioned that "it is certainly more than a coincidence that [Mies van der Rohe's] involvement in furniture and exhibition design began in the same year as his personal relationship with Lilly Reich."1 A statement that has in many regards come to define understandings of the furniture designs of both Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich. An understanding that "is certainly more than a
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In 1977 the German designer Luigi Colani demanded a "renaissance of Art Nouveau"1 What he meant, why he meant it, and if it is something we should all fear, can be explored and considered in the exhibition Luigi Colani and Art Nouveau at the Bröhan-Museum, Berlin....... Luigi Colani and Art Nouveau at the Bröhan-Museum, Berlin Born in Berlin on August 2nd 19282 Lutz Colani3 studied sculpture at Berlin's Hochschule für bildende Künste between 1946 and 1948, before moving to Paris where he
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As a general rule we prefer to focus the Design Calendar on positive events, it just seems more, well, positive; however, sometimes a negative event is more illustrative of a situation, provides for better access to a story. An event such as Mart Stam's beurlauben, suspension, as Rector of the Hochschule für angewandte Kunst, Berlin, on September 22nd 1952. The unhappy end of Mart Stam's not altogether joyful sojourn in East Germany. But also a moment that allows for some focussed
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On October 31st 1517 Martin Luther published his 95 Theses, his Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences, his criticism of the contemporary Catholic church. 95 theses which fired a debate and discourse that, ultimately, led to the splitting of the, until then, all-powerful Catholic church, an event which was to have consequences far, far, beyond religious practice and power, and which was arguably one of the single most important moments in the development of European society.
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Tuesday September 22nd marks the 2020 Southward Equinox, and thus the start of autumn in the northern hemisphere, and of spring in the southern hemisphere. Two seasons known throughout history for the vagaries, capriciousness, of their weather. And thus two seasons perfectly suited to a longer architecture and design, or art, museum visit. Our recommendations for four new showcases opening in September (autumn) 2020 can be found in Berlin, Kolding, Düsseldorf and Berlin (again); our
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"What August dosen't do, September puts right"1 declared Johann Wolfgang Goethe. And loathed as we are to contradict Goethe. He’s wrong. August may be a time when one can allow oneself a little more freedom than the rest of the year; however, that which we call life is the actions, experiences, leanings, emotions of each month consecutively and sequentially building on, informing and evolving one-another, a month of inactivity is a month of moments missed, and hoping that September can in
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In a year in which the familiar glow of many a beloved cultural event is missing, one beacon continues to shine. As a virtual, and in many regards virtual, event the smow Song Contest is one that can be staged regardless of prevailing physical social distancing regulations and physical travel restrictions. And while virtual closeness and virtual travel can never, and must never be allowed to, replace the physical, the 2020 smow Song Contest does allow us all an opportunity to cross great
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While we'd all much rather physically visit architecture and design museums, our current enforced virtual patronage does allow us all an excellent opportunity to begin to understand architecture and design museums as more than just an exhibition space with shop and café, and to begin to learn to interact with them, and for all their collections, in new, proactive, manners. To understand architecture and design museums as tools as much as institutions. And while a virtual visit can never
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Off late, and certainly in a European context, January has become a month of forgoing, eschewing and general abstention, with campaigns such as Dry January and Veganuary extolling us to utilise our guilt at our dangerous, decadent, gluttony of late December as an impetus to radically alter our behaviour, as a catalyst for reduction. And while less is unquestionably more, and thus worth striving for, fundamental change is invariably more sustainably and meaningfully achieved through better
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