Radio smow Special: 2000 smow Blog Posts…….

So unwilling are we here at smow Blog to blow our own trumpet, we don’t even own a trumpet. Why would we, we’d never blow it. It would just lie in the corner, unused, wastefully untooted.

However, 2000 smow Blog posts is an occasion very much demanding of a fanfare.

Technically 2001 smow Blog posts, the nature of these things meaning this post didn’t appear as planned between Transform! Designing the Future of Energy at the Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein and 5 New Architecture & Design Exhibitions for April 2024, but hey when did things ever go to plan round our way.

And while we can’t sound a fanfare, wouldn’t sound a fanfare even if we could, we can do that thing we enjoy almost as much as furniture: we can have a bit of a dance.

And, and making a rare exception, it is after all a very special occasion, you’re all invited…….

Radio smow: A Garden Furniture Playlist…….

With spring approaching thoughts invariably turn to days spent out of doors, and, for those fortunate enough, to thoughts of leisurely days spent sat in the garden.

Leisurely days spent sat in the garden, ideally, listening to music.

¿Listening to music about being sat in the garden; sat in the garden listening to songs about garden furniture……?

Radio smow: A Tables Playlist…….

Of all the genres of furniture which accompany global society, none, arguably, is more self-explanatory, more obvious, than the table.

Yet for all the simplicity, or perhaps exactly because of all the simplicity, the table is, arguably, the most versatile of all the genres of furniture which accompany global society; the contemporary table existing as it does in a myriad forms and contexts.

And not just physical forms and contexts………

Radio smow: A Le Corbusier Playlist…….

In 1956 the Dutch electronics conglomerate Phillips asked Le Corbusier if he would be interested in designing their pavilion for the 1958 World’s Fair in Brussels.

Le Corbusier was.

Albeit, “je ne ferai pas de pavillon; je ferai un Poème électronique avec la bouteille qui contiendra“, “I will not create a pavilion; I will create a Poème électronique with the bottle to contain it.”¹

And a pavilion/bottle/Poème électronique which offers an apposite starting point to approaching a differentiated image, a differentiated composition?, of Le Corbusier…….²

Radio smow: A Clocks Playlist…….

The sense, logic or otherwise of the biannual changing of the clocks is a subject that can keep any conversation animated until the next change occurs……When it can start all over again.

The biannual repositioning of the hands of time is however also an opportune moments to consider our relationship to time, for all our measurement of time, our harnessing of time, our charting of time, and of time metaphoric and time symbolic as represented by that embodiment of time tangible … the clock.

Radio smow: A Bookcase Playlist…….

“At the present day a library has become as necessary an appendage to a house as a hot and cold bath” wrote the Roman Stoic Seneca at some point in the first century CE, “I would excuse them straightway if they really were carried away by an excessive zeal for literature; but as it is, these costly works of sacred genius, with all the illustrations that adorn them, are merely bought for display and to serve as wall-furniture.”¹

And today?

While the glossy coffee table book may be have become an increasingly popular, and commercially successful, use of books as idle representation, we’d be interested to know how many individuals in the past months have deliberately positioned themselves in front of a carefully reorganised bookcase for work video conferences, or how many politicians have ensured that an appropriately stocked bookcase serves as the background for their video interview?

For, and despite the, alleged, reduction in the relevance and importance of the printed word in contemporary society, the bookcase remains, in contrast to the bath, not only a near ubiquitous piece of domestic furniture, but a strongly symbolic object…….

Radio smow: A Musical Designer Playlist…….

Our deliberations on Bauhaus and music very naturally led us to a whole raft of further deliberations on the associations between music and other forms of creative expression; and for all the question, given that so many of those Bauhäusler who had/could have had second careers as musicians were artists, are there designers who have/had second careers as musicians…….

…….of course there are……

Radio smow: A Sofa, Couch, Settee Playlist…….

In these days of uncertainty one thing is indubitable: we will all become much better acquainted with our sofa, our couch and our settee.

To accompany us all, a Radio smow playlist dedicated to the sofa, couch, settee and an invitation to reflect on the symbolic, figurative and cultural role of the sofa, couch, settee…

Radio smow: 89 from ’89

“Das tritt nach …meiner Kenntnis … ist das sofort, unverzüglich”

“As far as I’m aware….. that applies …. with immediate effect, forthwith”

Rarely has an almost sentence in a press conference had such consequences. With his confidently unconfident utterances on the evening of Thursday November 9th 1989, a statement concerning a relaxation on restrictions for those East Germans wanting to travel to West Germany, a statement made while distractedly flicking through papers looking for, and missing, the answer to the question of when the relaxations applied, Günter Schabowski, East Germany’s ruling SED’s somewhat bombastically titled, Secretary of Information, in effect, opened the Berlin Wall. Within the hour streams of those East Germans were taking advantage of the freshly, prematurely, relaxed restrictions and flowing westwards…….

Yet for all its momentousness, as the exhibition 1989 – ​Culture and Politics at the National Museum Stockholm reinforces, the fall of the Wall, was only another event in a remarkable, momentousness, political year.

And a remarkable year for creative expressions: 1989 seeing the death throes of Postmodern design, art getting political, again, while in music the increasing influence of electronic dance music, for all House, in all in its numerous guises, was not only being felt in the music produced, but in the attitudes of the yoof: the poodle rockers and 80s pop kids were still there, still enjoying success, but a new generation was preparing to replace them. And a new generation who were, when not necessarily more aware than the poodle rockers and pop kids of contemporary political, economic, environmental and social realities, certainly were much more prepared to vocalise their opinions, and developing new soundscapes in which to do that.

And so by way of marking not only 30 years of Günter Schabowski stumbling towards the reunification of Europe, but all those other moments, good and less so, in 1989….. a Radio smow playlist of 89 songs from ’89……

Radio smow: A Lighting Playlist…….

On this, the longest day, a radio smow playlist devoted to that which Europe for the next 24 hours will have more of than at any other time this year. And which somehow still won’t seem enough.

We could do with a lot more light, a lot more illumination, in our contemporary society…………………

Radio smow: A Shelving Playlist…….

Following the #smowblogfact revelation from Vitra Work at Orgatec Cologne 2018 that the smow blog office is devoid of shelving, we were inundated with an e-mail asking why? why has the smow blog office no shelving….?

A very simple question, and one which for the first time caused us to pose ourselves a much more fundamental question, why? why, has the smow blog office no shelving….?

Considerations which quickly evolved and diverged to concern themselves with the more general questions of what, how, when and why shelving…….

Radio smow: A Beds Playlist…….

Slowly but surely the temperatures across Europe begin to fall, along with the leaves and the hours of daylight.

Hibernation approaches.

And by way of an accompaniment to the imminent long sleep, a Radio smow beds playlist.

Radio smow: An Office Furniture Playlist…..

It’s probably no exaggeration to claim that musicians have at best an ambivalent, truculent, openly confrontational relationship with the office. When not writing about being in love, not being in love, wanting to be in love, wanting to not be in love, etc, they can be found pouring scorn and ridicule on those who dutifully waste their days in offices when there is all that freedom to be enjoyed.

Thus one could imagine songs about office furniture being about as rare as occasions when Caílte mac Rónáin is unable to explain how a particular hill, valley or river in Ireland came by its name.

Could.

A Radio smow playlist devoted to office furniture and our complex relationship with such……

Radio smow: A Cupboards, Closets, Wardrobes Playlist……

While preparing our 5 New Architecture & Design Exhibitions for December 2017 post we spent a not inconsiderate amount of time contemplating the exhibition Cupboard Love at the Gewerbemuseum Winterthur, in particular the fact the while it promises to explore cupboards in their metaphoric manifestations as expressed in film, literature and art, they appear to have overlooked the use of cupboards, closets and other storage units in music.

We just had to rectify that…….

smow Blog Playlist. Reprise.

There is one song missing from the smow blog playlist: missing for the simple, regrettable, and thoroughly avoidable, reason that it isn’t on spotify.

For din skyld by the Danish singer Birgit Brüel. Denmark’s entry for the 1965 Eurovision Song Contest. And featuring lyrics by Poul Henningsen.

Yes, that Poul Henningsen.

Good Design Needs Good Music: The smow Blog Playlist

It’s not quite radio smow. Not yet. But we hope it is another way to enjoy, and understand, the smow blog…….