smow Blog Design Calender: January 23rd 1897 – Happy Birthday Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky!
“The role of the architect is one of organisation. The house is the considered organisation of our ways of life”1, opined the Austrian architect Margarete Lihotzky in 1921.
And in the course of a long, varied career, she repeatedly demonstrated what she understood by such; including most famously, if somewhat narrowly, in a kitchen design………….
smow Blog Design Calender: December 10th 1869 – Thonet Relinquish Solid Wood Bending Privilege
On December 10th 1869 Gebrüder Thonet voluntarily relinquished their 1856 Privilege in respect of “The manufacture of chairs and table legs made of bent wood, the bending facilitated by the action of steam or simmering liquids”; thereby ending not only a thirteen year monopoly during which time Thonet became a firmly established global brand, but also the culmination of a neigh on three decade story which highlights the importance of patent protection in the furniture industry.
5 New Architecture & Design Exhibitions for December 2018
If you are planning visiting an architecture or design museum, anywhere in the world, in 2019, it will be staging a Bauhaus themed special exhibition. Guaranteed. There are literally millions of them lined up. If not billions.
Which is no complaint. Or at least not unless they are exhibitions based on formulaic, lazy clichés. Then it is very much a complaint. But if they are exhibitions which take open, honest and unblinkered views on either the institution as a whole or a specific, ideally, under researched, aspect of the institution, and of course remember that it is 100 years Bauhaus Weimar, and not 100 years Bauhaus Dessau, then it is no complaint.
Consequently, December 2018 could be your last chance to experience anything else for a goodly while.
Our Bauhaus free recommendations or December 2018 can be found in Vienna, Dortmund, New York, London & San Francisco……..
5 New Architecture & Design Exhibitions for May 2018
In the wonderful month of May,
As all the buds bloomed,
My heart became,
With Love consumedIn the wonderful month of May,
As all the birds did sing,
I confessed to her
My desire and yearning.
Heinrich Heine, Im wunderschönen Monat Mai, 1827
And then???
Heinrich, don’t leave us hanging! It all started out so positive!
It’s an awkward month May, the vitality of blooming buds and oratorio of singing birds luring us into hopeful fantasies, utopian visions of what lies ahead: but what will become of them? Will the freshly bloomed buds survive the inevitable late frost? Will the birds’ new chicks evade their predators to flee the nest and carry their song to pastures new? Will she respond to your confessions of desire and yearning?
Probably not. And so therefore rather than losing your May to romantic dreaming, before May becomes but a painful memory of what could have been, something destined to remain forever in the past tense, use it to improve your understandings of the realities of the world around you, to learn to talk confidently in the future.
Our five recommendations for new architecture and design exhibitions opening during May 2018………
Wagner, Hoffmann, Loos and Viennese Modernist Furniture Design. Artists, Patrons, Producers @ The Hofmobiliendepot Vienna
1918 was a bad year for the Wiener Moderne, losing as it did with the deaths of Koloman Moser, Egon Schiele, Gustav Klimt and Otto Wagner four of its leading protagonists.
To mark the centenary, and help underscore the important role Vienna played at the turn of the 19th/20th century in the development of art, architecture, music and literature, museums across Vienna are staging a wide range of specially themed exhibitions throughout 2018; the Hofmobiliendepot – Imperial Furniture Museum – taking the opportunity to celebrate not only Otto Wagner, but his younger contemporaries Josef Hoffmann and Adolf Loos.
5 New Architecture & Design Exhibitions for December 2017
On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me, a ticket for a design exhibition.
On the second day of Christmas my true love gave to me, two tickets for two design exhibitions, and a ticket for a design exhibition.
On the third day of Christmas my true love gave to me…… You get the idea.
Our five goohoold rings for December 2017 are new architecture and design exhibitions in Winterthur, Barcelona, New York, Munich and Moscow.
Vitra Design Museum presents Hello, Robot. Design between Human and Machine
“Have you ever met a robot?” asks the Vitra Design Museum.
The answer is yes.
The answers to the other 13 questions posed by the exhibition Hello, Robot. Design between Human and Machine are not necessarily so easily answered: but are important for defining our relationship with digital technology.
5 New Design Exhibitions for October 2016
O hushed October morning mild, Thy leaves have ripened to the fall; Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild* You’d be
5 New Design Exhibitions for August 2016
Such are the vagaries of the autumn/spring cycle in the global design exhibition industry, and it is an industry people,
smow blog Design Calendar: July 13th 1841 – Happy Birthday Otto Wagner!
If the (hi)story of 20th century architecture and design is unimaginable without the contribution made by Austria/Hungary/Austria-Hungary; then the contribution
5 New Design Exhibitions for July 2016
Inaugurated in July 212 BC* the Ludi Apollinares were Roman games staged in honour of Apollo and featuring a mix
5 New Design Exhibitions for December 2015
December can be a trying month: always having to think of others; always having to patronise bars and restaurants you’ve
5 New Design Exhibitions for March 2015
March is a month for caution. Yes, the sun shines. Yes, the days are getting longer Yes, one can smell
smow blog 2014. A pictorial review: September
Following on from the relative inactivity of August September saw us wind back up towards the 2014 autumn design festival
5 New Design Exhibitions for December 2014
One of the advantages of having been running our “5 New Design Exhibitions” series for over a year is that
(smow) blog compact Vienna Design Week Special: Kultúrgorilla – Guide the Diver! Design for Dumpster Dialogue
As long as we’ve been going to Vienna Design Week the festival has always included a focus on social responsibility.
(smow) blog compact Vienna Design Week Special: Servant by Katharina Wernig
At an otherwise disappointing presentation of projects by students from the TU Graz Institute of Spatial Design during Vienna Design
Gaudí. Architecture Ahead of it’s Time at the Architekturzentrum Wien
Ask most people what they identify as the central feature in the work of Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí and they’ll
Vienna Design Week 2014: Passionswege – Big-Game @ Wiener Silber Manufactur
For some 200 years Wiener Silber Manufactur have produced the finest silverware. Exquisite cutlery, table services, coffee pots and sugar
(smow) blog compact Vienna Design Week Special: TU Wien present Light Thing
In context of a 2014 summer semester project students from Vienna Technical University’s Department for 3D Design and Model Construction
Vienna Design Week 2014: Passionswege – Pedrita Studio @ Glaserei Stiefelmeyer
We’re spending an awful lot of time at Vienna Design Week 2014 photographing mirrors. If we were at all competent
(smow) blog compact Vienna Design Week Special: Frugal Collection Cape Town at harald bichler_rauminhalt
In context of Cape Town’s tenure as World Design Capital 2014 Franco-Austrian design and architecture studio Celia-Hannes spent six weeks
Vienna Design Week 2014: Passionswege – Studio deFORM @ Rudolf Scheer & Söhne
The last time we visited the premises of Vienna shoemaker Rudolf Scheer & Söhne it was for the presentation of
(smow) blog compact Vienna Design Week Special: chmara.rosinke present “Private Room”
As we alluded to in our post from Vienna based design studio chmara.rosinke’s Passionswege 2013 project with Wäscheflott, we’ve not
5 New Design Exhibitions for October 2014
“I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers” exclaims Anne Shirley in Lucy Maud Montgomery’s 1908 novel