In the alpine regions of Europe the arrival of September marks the start of the Almabtrieb, that annual migration of the cattle, sheep and goats of the region from their high pastures to the valleys far, far below.

A migration undertaken because, as the cattle, sheep and goats of the alps innately understand, September is the month when the global architecture and design museum community (slowly) end their summer siesta and begin to invite us all to peruse their autumn/winter exhibition programmes.

And a migration that looks particularly worthwhile in September 2023, being as it is abloom with a crop of new showcases every bit as enticing and flavoursome as the herb rich pastures of any alpine alm. Indeed so bountiful is the September 2023 harvest we could have written two lists. For probity’s sake we stick with the one.

Our five reasons for saying Servus, Tschüs and Adieu to the fresh air and green, green, grass of the high alps and venturing into the city can be found in Frankfurt, New York, Kolding, Vienna and Malmö…….

5 New Architecture & Design Exhibitions for September 2023

We’re not saying that Capellagården is the best design school in the world.

But would say it is, without question, one of the most delightful and most engaging and most relaxing to visit, one of the best to visit.

A genuine joy that was denied us during the Covid years.

But one we weren’t going to give up on.

In summer 2023 the stars aligned and we ventured once again over the seas to Öland…….

Capellagården Summer Exhibition 2023

According to Germanic folklore, A cold and wet June spoils the whole year.

For farmers possibly, but not for the rest of us, as a cold, wet June is a perfect excuse to visit an architecture or design exhibition, an experience that can only enrich and enliven and invigorate the rest of the not only your year, but your life.

Our recommendations for new showcases opening in June 2023 can be found in Värnamo, Ljubljana, East Lansing, Vienna and Ulm…….

5 New Architecture & Design Exhibitions for June 2023

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

As here in the northern hemisphere winter cedes to spring, not only is nature once again reawakening from its long repose but so too is the international museum community; and that, one senses, with more vigour than in the most recent springs where the Covid pandemic induced upsetting of the established order of the museal ecosystem, through both enforced closures and fundamental disruptions of essential exhibition development processes, dimmed somewhat the promise of the annual spring blush.

In spring 2022, one sense from wandering through the global museum landscape, the vitality, and for all variety, has returned to that landscape.

Which is to be welcomed, for little is as effective in helping us all broaden our minds, expand our perspectives, appreciate unseen associations, free us from prejudices, develop as human beings and as members of a functioning society, than a good museum exhibition. For while a good TV programme or a good podcast can inform, they tend to do so in definitives and in an unyieldingly linear fashion: they tell, they know, just how things were, are, will be. And in their telling tend to leave you bereft of tools of your own. A good museum exhibition in contrast gives you information but primarily bequeaths you a framework in which to develop your own understandings and positions, to question, to challenge, to expand on that which is presented; ’tis but a invitation to let your mind wander as it sees fit. And that in an environment which is devoid of time and space, where you are free to jump about as you wish, go back, rush forward. Stop.

 
 

Start again somewhere else

noiɈɔɘɿib bɘɈɔɘqxɘnυ nɒ ni ɘvoM

Discover new, uncharted, paths.

Thus whereas you can leave a TV programme or a podcast with new information on the subject at hand; you can leave a well organised exhibition not only with new information on the subject at hand, but with your thoughts immersed in a completely different subject and with your mind stimulated, receptive, restless.

And broad, receptive, questioning, unihibited, objective minds freed of definitives are very, very, important at this moment in global (hi)story.

Thus, get thee to an exhibition!

Our five recommendations for exiting the space-time continuum in April 2022 can be found in Essen, Brussels, Stockholm, Linz and Helsinki…….

5 New Architecture & Design Exhibitions for April 2022

The Historia Supellexalis H for Hygge

Hygge

A Curse; A Malediction; A Torment

The Historia Supellexalis: “F” for Front Design

Front

An Anna; A Sofia; A Charlotte; A Katja; A Conduit.

According to Germanic folklore Mairegen bringt Segen, Rain in May brings blessings.

It also brings an excellent excuse to visit an architecture and/or design exhibition.

Our five recommended shelters from the showers in May 2021 can be found in Ulm, Stockholm, Baruth, Zürich and Hasselt……

5 New Architecture & Design Exhibitions for May 2021

As Peer Gynt reminisces with his dying mother, they dwell long and fondly on how, when Peer was a child, they would imagine his bed was a sleigh whisking them across a frozen fjord, a sleigh pulled by “fleet-foot horses”.

Or more accurately by a cat proxying for fleet-foot horses; a cat who before being pressed into service as a horse had been peacefully “sad på en kubbestol1, sat upon a kubbestol: a chair hewn from a tree trunk, and an item of furniture which is as closely associated with Norway as is Peer Gynt, and which may have led just have as many lives and have just as many tales to tell…..

A World of Vernacular Furniture: The kubbestol/kubbstol

Having started this Bauhaus Weimar centenary year by exploring the path from Arts and Crafts to Bauhaus, the Bröhan Museum Berlin end this Bauhaus Weimar centenary year by exploring the path from Bauhaus to Arts and Crafts Scandinavia.

Or more accurately put, by exploring Nordic Design. The Response to the Bauhaus.

Nordic Design. The Response to the Bauhaus at the Bröhan Museum, Berlin

For Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince Summertime may very well be a “Time to sit back and unwind”, for us Summertime is when our year finally, finally, gets going.

While others spend the long hot days of summer on the beach, in the mountains, riding around in their Jeep, their Benzos, Nissan or eating pizza at Lorenzos, we’re to be found either riding backwards in trains, our eyes fixed firmly on the past as we race into the future, terrified that a metaphor is becoming an omen, or wandering the corridors, ateliers and workshops of European design schools, considering and reflecting on not only the students’ semester and graduation projects, but contemporary European design education, the positions of the coming generation of designers, and questioning if the world, the society, laid out before us is one we we want to be part off? Weeks of travel, reflection and existential anguish sustained by no more than our endless curiosity, more water than we consume the rest of the year and the promise of a (near) daily falafel.

That’s our “new definition of summer madness”

Drrrums please…….

In centuries past traditions were something that were established slowly, often becoming such long after those who had began them, who had understood their origins, meaning and function in contemporary society, had shuffled off this mortal coil; in our contemporary world traditions arrive over night, no-one having the patience to wait, no-one wanting to miss out on anything.

In which sense, celebrating in 2019 its second edition, our traditional 3daysofdesign Copenhagen #embassytour.

3daysofdesign Copenhagen 2019 embassytour

For the fifth year in succession ArkDes, Sweden’s national centre for architecture and design, is hosting the Ung Svensk Form/Young Swedish Design award/platform exhibition: a showcase of 25 projects providing for 25 understandings of contemporary design in/from Sweden.

Ung Svensk Form/Young Swedish Design 2019 Exhibition, ArkDes Stockholm

No, it’s not all shoulder pads and garish colour clashes……. although……..

…….much more, with the exhibition 1980s – A new era in furniture design Stockholm’s Museum of Furniture Studies explore furniture design in that most politically, culturally, socially and economically fluid of decades, and, and not completely unrelated, a decade which not only brought fundamental changes to understandings of furniture design, but arguably brought more abrupt, more curt, more enduring changes than at any time since the 1920s.

Works by Olle Anderson and First Chair Michele de Lucchi, as seen at 1980s - A new era in furniture design, The Museum of Furniture Studies, Stockholm

Anchored next to the Göta älv Bridge in Gothenburg is a decommissioned ferry. Repurposed as a car park.

While in no way a substitute for an integrated urban transport concept that reduces our dependence on the car, it is a really nice example that recycling, reusing and reappropriating isn’t just something for designers, is also a subject for architects and urban planners. And by extrapolation, us all.

Suitably motivated we scaled and crossed the Göta älv Bridge and made our way the 2018 HDK Gothenburg Degree Exhibition.

Frihamnen 11, location of the 2018 HDK Gothenburg Degree Exhibition

“Monsieur, with these Rocher you are really spoiling us!”

Ever since Ferrero brought a touch of self-congratulatory kitsch to the savoir-faire of international diplomacy, we’ve felt a great empathy for the concept of the Embassy.

And while the years since we first heard those words may not have seen us follow an illustrious, freely debonair, diplomatic career, we do have as a substitute the embassy design exhibition.

3daysofdesign Copenhagen 2018 offered such a wealth and variety of embassy exhibitions we simply couldn’t resist donning a metaphorical morning coat and taking a flânerie through the diplomatic quarter.

But would that which awaited us also be an ultimate “sign of good taste”……..?*

3daysofdesign Copenhagen 2018: #embassytour

It is fair to say that Malmö University wasn’t on our radar before we began our 2017 #campustour.

Which is in no way to detract from the institution, far from it, much more it highlights our ignorance. And also one of the aims of our tour, achieving a better understanding of contemporary European design education.

Form/Design Center Malmö

The Swedish town of Lund is famous as the birthplace of the Tetra Pak packaging system, and thus of a global revolution in food and drink distribution systems and consumption patterns.

If the new crop of Lund University School of Industrial Design graduation projects reached conclusions as simple, logical and resource efficient, if arguably, and ideally, without the associated post-use recycling problems, could be assessed at the institution’s 2017 Degree Exhibition.

Lund University School of Industrial Design Degree Exhibition 2017

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