Without wanting to in any way detract from the work undertaken by Kunsthochschule Berlin Weissensee students in the past year, a highlight of our visit to the 2017 Rundgang summer exhibition was the thunderstorm which broke while we there. Calling it biblical would be to trivialise the ferocity with which it smit the day asunder, turning in its fury the Bühringstraße in front of the school into a Bühring Straits. And the first of three storms which broke over Berlin in quick succession, almost
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Owing to the unique nature of Berlin's history and geopolitical relevance, the (hi)stories of all the city's cultural institutions are invariably complex. And the number of such institutions greater than in most comparable metropoli*. Few other cities can boast, for example, two public zoos, three public operas or four public universities. And while three of Berlin's universities offer individual courses in subjects such as architecture, theatre studies or music, there is only one which offers
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“What are you going to do this summer, Amory?”, Tom D’Invilliers asks of Amory Blaine in F Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise. “Don’t ask me", comes the somewhat languid reply, "same old things, I suppose. A month or two in Lake Geneva — I’m counting on you to be there in July, you know — then there'll be Minneapolis, and that means hundreds of summer hops, parlor-snaking, getting bored....." Sorry Amory, but you'll have to survive the magnificence of Lake Geneva on your own, would have
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Until Sunday June 4th state of Design, Berlin 2017 is presenting projects from over 80 international creatives, supported by films, lectures and workshops, in the Vollgutlager in Berlin-Neukölln. Viewing the 2017 edition it occurred to us there is a lot of charming ambiguity about the name state of Design, Berlin....... Folding Chair Arena by students from the Inside interior architecture masters course at the Royal Academy of Art The Hague. The main discussion forum at state of Design
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Inaugurated in 2016 state of Design Berlin is a festival which seeks to explore the experimental, critical, social character of design as much as present the industrial and commercial: and by extrapolation explain not only that design is all these things, but that the various aspects of design's character needn't be contradictory, far less conflicting or contrary. The 2017 edition of state of Design Berlin opens on Thursday June 1st state of Social Design Initiated by the German designer
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With the exhibition Much More Than One Good Chair. Design & Society in Denmark, the Danish Embassy in Berlin present an exploration of the evolution of design in Denmark since 1945. And by extrapolation of the evolution of society in Denmark since 1945. Much More Than One Good Chair @ Felleshus Berlin As regular readers will be very aware, we have an uneasy relationship with the term Danish Design. Or perhaps better put we don't believe in it. We believe in design from Denmark, but not that
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It's early May and once again the party ship we call the smow song contest is ready to set sail...... First staged in 1956 in Lugano, as a small, essentially regional, event, the smow song contest has grown as the smow family has, and now enjoys a popularity far outwith smow's geographic heartland. A fact acknowledged by the addition of Sydney to the competition in 2015: our antipodean cousins having long adopted the spirit of smow. Yes, some, ill informed, never happy's, oafs quite frankly,
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While it’s hard to feel anything even vaguely resembling joy in a month which sees the UK start its senseless and cowardly, withdrawal from the European Union … life goes on!! Our five top distractions for April 2017 features new design and architecture exhibitions in Berlin, New York, Paris, Dessau and Milan. "Otto Bartning (1883–1959). Architect of Social Modernism" at the Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Germany Born in Karlsruhe in 1883 the architect and theoretician Otto Bartning was, and
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Thingness. Noun. [ˈthiŋ-nəs] The quality or state of objective existence or reality1 Thingness. Exhibition. [ˈthiŋ-nəs] A comprehensive Jasper Morrison retrospective currently on show at the Bauhaus Archiv Berlin. Jasper Morrison. Thingness @ Bauhaus Archiv Berlin Originally conceived by and presented at the Centre d’innovation et de design, CID, Grand-Hornu, Belgium, Jasper Morrison. Thingness presents a chronological excursion through three decades of Jasper Morrison design. We first saw
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The exhibition Divine Golden Ingenious. The Golden Ratio as a Theory of Everything? at the Museum for Communication Berlin featured two projects by Berlin based designer Mark Braun, projects which, largely, if not exclusively, owe their form to deliberations on and experimentation with the Fibonacci number. A state of affairs, we considered, makes Mark Braun an ideal person with whom to speak to about the role, attraction and relevance of the Fibonacci number and Golden Ratio in product design.
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Our picks from the new architecture and design exhibitions opening in February 2017, featuring showcases in Weil am Rhein, Falkenberg, 's-Hertogenbosch, Berlin and Groningen. 5 New Design Exhibitions for February 2017 "Good morrow, Benedick. Why, what's the matter, That you have such a February face, So full of frost, of storm and cloudiness?", enquires Don Pedro of Benedick in Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing. Shakespeare gives the impression that Benedick's mood is somehow related to
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Understanding materials has helped contemporary society develop as it has. And remains as relevant today as ever. If not more so. Ergo material education is as relevant as ever. If not more so. Object Lessons. The Story of Material Education in 8 Chapters at the Werkbundarchiv - Museum der Dinge Berlin "We daily call a great many things by their names, without ever inquiring into their nature and properties; so that, in reality, it is only their names and the things themselves with which we
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O hushed October morning mild, Thy leaves have ripened to the fall; Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild* You'd be well advised to take yourself off to one of the following new architecture and design exhibitions....... (With apologies to Robert Frost) * Robert Frost - October (1913) "How Should We Live? Propositions for the Modern Interior" at the Museum of Modern Art, MoMA, New York, USA Whereas lifestyle magazines and lifestyle blogs are very keen to tell us how we should live, architects
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With their WerkBundStadt project the Werkbund Berlin aim to redevelop an industrial site in northern Berlin into a future orientated inner-city quarter. How can be explored in a new exhibition. WerkBundHaus Berlin Established in 1907 as an amalgamation of designers and manufactures, primarily with the intention of improving the quality of German industrial production - "Made in Germany" being at the end of the 19th century more an insult and synonym for shoddy tat than the quality guarantee
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(a+b)÷a = a÷b ≡ harmony? Or, the contemporary relevance of the Golden Ratio In addition to those artificial laws decreed by state and church our lives are also defined by innate laws, those of mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology and Murphy. But is there a law of harmony? A law which defines perfect proportions and thus the ideal form of any object? Proponents of the Golden Ratio would answer yes. With their exhibition Divine Golden Ingenious. The Golden Ratio as a Theory of Everything?
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As East Berlin's Art and Design College the Kunsthochschule Berlin Weissensee was in many ways symbolic of East Germany's difficult relationship with Bauhaus and the legacy of inter-war functionalism. On the one hand the DDR needed the reduced, cost effective, mass-market, industrial objects striven for during the period. On the other a need to define a new, socialist, tradition for the new, socialist, state meant an almost dogmatic rejection of everything associated with the pre-war "Germany",
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"Photography is the medium par excellence of our time. As a visual means of communication, it has no equal."1 So wrote the American photographer Berenice Abbott in 1941. How she set about proving such can be explored in the exhibition Berenice Abbott – Photographs at the Martin-Gropius-Bau Berlin Berenice Abbott - Photographs at the Martin-Gropius-Bau Berlin Born in Springfield, Ohio in 1898 Berenice Abbott initially, and only very briefly, studied journalism at Ohio State University before
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In our recent conversation with Birgit Severin and Guillaume Neu-Rinaudo about their Heimat Lamp project they told us that the lamp was not only their first joint project but in many ways a test joint project to see how well they cooperated. Or perhaps better put, if they could cooperate. And was a test which they obviously both passed, for at Salone Satellite 2016 in Milan Birgit and Guillaume presented new, joint, projects, and a new, joint, venture, the design studio "Proof of Guilt" For us
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We're not going to claim that DMY Berlin 2016 was a vintage year, for us the 14th edition of the international design festival featured too little of substance, too much superficial, too little original, too much that was too obvious and far, far, far too many intricate filigree light bulbs. And nothing says "lifestyle", or winds us up, more than an intricate, filigree light bulb. However our impression may have been partially clouded by the distraction caused by the large amount of open space
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The clearest sign that that things are changing in Berlin-Oberschöneweide is without question the new vegan Vietnamese restaurant on the corner of Edisonstrasse and Wilhelminenhofstrasse.* For all unfamiliar with Oberschöneweide, which we presume is everyone, the district in south eastern Berlin was never a particularly happy vegan hunting ground; yet as much as being a new culinary alternative the vegan Vietnamese restaurant is much more a sign that a new clientèle is active in the area, that
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As with contemporary football the story of contemporary architecture and design begins on the British Isles; and as with football it didn't take long before the British nations were replaced at the forefront of the art(s) by their European neighbours. In both cases Germany and France moving with notable speed, diligence and grace past the UK. Inspired by this coming summer's EURO 2016 European Football Championships in France, the Bröhan Museum Berlin are celebrating the creative rivalry which
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From May 4th and until May 8th 2016 Berlin will host the inaugural edition of the festival State of Design. Initiated by the Belgian design critic, author and curator Max Borka and the German Communications Designer Alexandra Klatt, State of Design promises a series of exhibitions, events and discussions which, in the words of the organisers, will "question the tyranny of what is all too often still proclaimed to be good design: slick, glamorous, luxurious, good looking and highly seductive, or
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The question as to what "home" means has never been an easy one to answer, and in our global age of networked, anonymous, communities, our age of refugees and migrant workers, our age of abstract "Homeland Security" agencies, the question has in many ways become even more complicated. The Lamp Heimat (Homeland) by Berlin based designers Birgit Severin and Guillaume Neu-Rinaudo is an attempt to approach an answer. Birgit Severin and Guillaume Neu-Rinaudo met while studying at Design Academy
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Mild-mannered and polite as we are, we still occasionally find ourselves causing offence, arousing feelings of mild outrage and generally causing people to turn against us; invariably, when we contend, as we regularly do, that fashion isn't design. Which of course it isn't. "This winter we'll be wearing stripes" is obviously as vacuous as it is untrue. Fashion isn't design. It's styling. And there's nothing wrong with that. Just don't call it design Textile design is design, because
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