December is famously a half month - no one does anything useful in the second half of the month, unless eating, drinking and stressing can be considered useful! We however managed to more than fill the first half of December 2015 with Berlin based Bora Hong's cosmetic surgery of the Eames LCW, the architecture of Ferdinand Kramer in Frankfurt and a very long chat with Köln International School of Design director, and neuen Deutschen Design protagonist, Wolfgang Laubersheimer. Cosmetic Surgery
read more
November 2015 was a month of exhibitions, including Konstantin Grcic at the Grassi Museum Leipzig and Anton Corbijn at C/O Berlin, but we did also find time for a very long chat with Budapest designer András Kerékgyártó about life as a contemporary Hungarian designer. The Work Space, as seen at Konstantin Grcic – Panorama, Grassi Museum for Applied Arts Leipzig Biela by András Kerékgyártó Moderne in der Werkstatt - 100 Years Burg Giebichenstein Kunsthochschule Halle @ Kunstmuseum
read more
Normally October is all about design festivals, October 2015 wasn't. On the one hand we weren't at that many this year, and on the other those we were at didn't impress us that much. What did impress us was the new collection by Ateliers J&J. Oh yes! In addition October 2015 saw us consider questions of housing provision at Wohnungsfrage at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin, the oeuvre of Charles and Ray Eames at the Barbican Art Gallery in London and Art Nouveau at the Kunst und Gewerbe
read more
As we noted in our 5 New Design Exhibitions for August 2015 post "Everyone, but everyone, it would appear is on holiday." We weren't, even if the relatively meagre number of posts tends to imply otherwise. A meagre number of posts which elegantly prove that reduction can lead to higher quality... Eliel Saarinen's entry for the 1922 Chicago Tribune Tower competition Havina by Samuli Helavuo, as seen at Garden Unique Youngstars Cologne 2015 The Shrine by Sigurd
read more
The older we get the more important July becomes as it allows us to return to college to view design schools end of term exhibitions - a genuine highlight of our year. In addition July 2015 saw us celebrate two of the most important representatives of concrete construction, two completely contrasting representatives of concrete construction: Ulrich Muther und Le Corbusier. Rescue station on Binz Beach, Rügen, Germany by Ulrich Müther (completed 1968) Garderobe7 by Juliane Huhn as seen at
read more
June 2015 saw the DMY Berlin festival re-launch after the original organiser ran into financial difficulties; a re-launch which we took as a chance to study Berlin design in a little more detail..... Turtleneck Christof Flötotto & Sven Funcke, as seen at Pet Market, Galerie erstererster, Berlin during Berlin Design Week 2015 The Shrinking Office Project by Roy Yin, as seen at DMY Berlin 2015 Structural Skin New material by Jorge Penades, as seen at DMY Berlin 2015 Summus Aqua by Song
read moreFor the 13th century Dominican friar Thomas Aquinas beauty required a perfect combination of integritas, consonantia & claritas - integrity, harmony, clarity. In a similar vein the 15th century Italian playwright and philosopher Leon Battista Alberti defined beauty as the harmony of all parts in relation to one another, a character in one of his plays extending this idea to proclaim, in answer to a question concerning a woman's' beauty, "She is so beautiful that nothing could be added to her,
read more
Obviously defining a "Best of" Dutch Design Week, or indeed any design week, is impossible, one can only hope to attempt to collate your personal highlights and thus provide an impression of how you experienced the event: which is exactly what DAD Galerie Berlin are currently doing with a presentation of some their highlights. Our highlight of their highlights is without question the new hanging lamp by Floris Wubben. When we spoke to Floris at his solo Low Tech Crafts exhibition at DAD
read more
As older and more loyal readers will be aware if there is one thing we really, really dislike, more so than even "street food" or swans, it is black and white portrait photography. Which of course explains why we are so fascinated by the black and white portraits by Dutch photographer Anton Corbijn........ Anton Corbijn - Hollands Deep & 1-2-3-4 @ C/O Berlin Born in Strijen, Holland as the son of a clergyman and nurse Anton Corbijn taught himself photography in his teenage years and cut his
read more
We were first introduced to the work of Berlin based designer Uli Budde when we saw his "Reading Table" project at Designers Fair 2010 in Cologne. A delightfully simple object Reading Table combines table top and magazine/newspaper storage space in a manner that is as painfully obvious as it genial. An easily accessible, contemporary object the fact that no producer has seen fit to take it into production is one of those design mysteries which often keep us awake at night. Having begun his
read more
"What is understood today as the housing problem is a specific intensification of the bad housing conditions endured by the working class through the sudden large scale movement of the population to the major cities; huge increases in rents, an even greater overcrowding of individuals in houses, and for some the impossibility of even finding suitable accommodation." 1 Although written in 1872 Friedrich Engels analysis of the urban housing situation remains in many ways as contemporary as it
read more
Among the more interesting and entertaining texts we didn't publish from IMM Cologne 2015 was our post on the showcase "The Journey of Things" featuring works by 6 Berlin and 2 London based designers. It would have been a great text. Had it been published. That it wasn't is one of those mysteries which only those with an intimate knowledge of the inner workings of the smow blog can understand. Fortunately for us, and indeed all in or near Berlin in the coming weeks, until October 31st works
read more
In our recent review of contemporary Berlin creativity we noted that one of the problems increasingly being faced by Berlin is that of holding on to the ever increasing number of graduates from the city's many design institutions. Thus it seemed apposite to talk to a recent Berlin design graduate about the reality of life as a recent Berlin design graduate. A recent Berlin design graduate such as Gunnar Søren Petersen. Born and raised in Bonn Gunnar Søren Petersen studied Industrial Design
read more
As old Mother Goose, allegedly, once claimed: Thirty days hath September, and the following five enticing new design and architecture exhibitions which are probably well worth checking out if you get the chance....... "Piet Mondrian. The Line" at the Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, Germany Just as those architects who were to lead the move to modernism in the first decades of the 20th century generally began working in more classic styles before being seduced by the reduced charm of modernism,
read more
As we noted in our recent review of contemporary creativity in Berlin, the creative landscape in the German capital is not just an eclectic composition of genres and philosophies but for all of nationalities: in addition to a, relatively, low number of native Berliner the Berlin creative community is characterised by a goodly mix of German and international creatives. International creatives such as the Danish architect Sigurd Larsen. Following completion of his studies at the Royal Academy of
read moreThe so-called "Teepott" on the promenade at Warnemünde on Germany's Baltic See coast is a rare and precious construction. Not only because of the way it starkly contrasts with the 19th century lighthouse next to it, nor on account of the delightful way it sweeps and flows in harmony with the dunes and water behind it, nor because it reminds of work by Eero Saarinen, Pier Luigi Nervi or Félix Candela, yet is geographically far removed from such. But much more because it is a work by the German
read more
It is probably fair to say that over the years and decades the Universität der Künste Berlin, UdK Berlin, has produced the majority of the more interesting and important Berlin designers. Whereas historically that was largely on account of the lack of alternatives; today the school has responded to the increasing competition by employing good sensible teaching staff who set the students good sensible semester projects and also give them the freedom to develop their own individual projects as
read more
"Fancy a cup of tea?" "Oh, yes please! Thank you!" "OK, I'll put the kettle on" "Troglodyte" Boiling water for tea is a process as old as, well...... the drinking of hot tea. And a process that has remained largely unchanged since. When change has come it has invariably been influenced by technology: kettles over open fires, kettles on stoves, electric kettles. But always involving a kettle. (Accepting that is that the samovar is a "kettle".......and even if you don't, the samovar has
read more
There is little in this world that brings us more pleasure than a good modular shelving system. We know that sentence speaks volumes about the state of our alleged "lives", but we're not embarrassed to admit it. We like shelves. Consequently, given that it appears that everybody but everybody is developing a modular shelving system and that as a result you currently can't visit a furniture fair or design event without stumbling every few metres across another new system, these would appear
read more
Customs are a form of social regulation. Love them or loath them customs allow us to form connections, to find a sense of stability and order, to differentiate ourselves from others, align ourselves with others, and not least enjoy regular festivities and parties as customs are celebrated and/or enacted. Customs are therefore inherently good. Unless it is the sort of Customs which sit at the border between two counties and stop a young Swiss ceramicist displaying their work at an
read more
The first thing any carpentry apprentice does is build their own wooden toolbox. It makes sense. You're learning to work with wood, you will need somewhere to keep all your chisels and saws. So you build a toolbox. The first thing anyone wanting to chop logs does is make their own wooden axe head ? Or perhaps better put ?????????????????? But why couldn't it be the case, for as HFBK Hamburg student Bastian Austermann demonstrates with his Splitting Wood project, such is eminently
read more
Much as we adore our pets they can be troublesome. Be it the cat the refuses to move from your bed, the dog that chews your shoes, pillows, newspapers et al, or the sweary parrot embarrassing us at every (inopportune) moment. If only we could distract them. Maybe we should treat them better? Or at least treat them to better possessions, to objects that meet a standard of functionality and design quality that we demand from our objects. We’re not averse to claiming our pets are family members,
read more
As we have often noted in these pages, a combination of increasing automation, advancing technology, the changing nature of industry and commerce and the associated evolution of the term "office work" will increasingly enforce changes in office furniture design. And we're not being particularly clever or perceptive when we say such, its simply how the process works, how office furniture design has always progressed: be it the evolution of the office chair in the 19th century as ever more
read more
When making biscuits, after having cut out the required shapes you invariably have a lot of dough left over, dough you clump together, roll out again and use to make more biscuits. A process which can be repeated ad nauseam until all your dough is used. With leather you can't. Having cut the required shapes from your chosen piece of leather you are left with a lot of holes surrounded by a lot of waste leather. It is therefore little surprise that the furniture, fashion, automotive, luxury
read more
