...With whom over a coffee they spoke about his work, the poetic power of his work, the story behind the iconic La Grange barn — and, of course, the new Vitra Mynt chair... How did the project for the Mynt chair for Vitra come about?...
...1 The exhibition Tsuyoshi Tane: The Garden House in the Vitra Design Museum Gallery, and the eponymous Garden House by Tsuyoshi Tane, the latest addition to the Vitra Campus in Weil am Rhein, allow one to approach not only a better appreciation of Tane's positions but also to experience how they influence and inform his approach, his works, his architecture... For all that Vitra is popularly associated with Weil am Rhein, Germany, the company's origins are to be found just across the border in Switzerland, specifically in Birsfelden on the edge of Basel, the association with Weil am Rhein being first forged in the early 1950s, a period when Vitra was still, primarily, a shop-fitting company, if one taking its first, tentative, steps into domestic interiors alongside retail interiors...
...Diaries which contain some of the most complete and detailed descriptions of Swiss society, and in which one also finds the earliest descriptions of the earliest (hi)story of the contemporary Switzerland, a, as Heidi records, nation constituted from a loosely bound collective, a cantonation, of ancient peoples, including, and amongst many, many others, the Röthlisberger, the Horgenglarus, the Usm, the Wohnbedarf, the Embru, or the Vitronians whose contemporary Commonwealth of Vitra was initially established across a number of fields on the banks of the river Birs in the north-western corner of the Toblerone cordillera... Yet it was, inarguably, the Vitronians, for all under the leadership of the benevolent Fehlbaum der Jüngere, who were the most active in terms of international exchange; not only cooperating with an American Miller by the name of Herman to introduce works and positions by the likes of, for example, Eames Office, I Samunoguchi, George Nel-son or Alexander Gi Rard into Switzerland, but also expanding the Commonwealth of Vitra to the neighbouring regions of Germany and from where they introduced the furniture of the American Miller Herman to the many peoples of Europe...
...Kempten - Dedication of the Anna Schwegelin Fountain: Oh Bondage, Up Yours - X-ray Spex Long believed to have been the last witch executed in the lands of the contemporary Germany, a belief largely debunked by the discovery in the 1990s of a record of her death in Kempten prison in 1781, some 6 years after her believed execution in the city, Anna Schwegelin is without question one of the last women convicted of being a witch, and persecuted for being a witch, in the lands of the contemporary Germany... If an initiative which needed a very long breath: on June 27th 2002 the Anna-Schwegelin-Brunnen was dedicated on Kempten's Residenzplatz, in front of the District Court, the end of a 17 year campaign which, again as best we can ascertain, was fought against much resistance from the authorities and political leadership in Kempten who, apparently, understood little need for a memorial, a monument, for Anna Schwegelin...
...Kempten, Höhenegg, 915m: Grateful Dead - Friend of the Devil Situated in Mariaberg in south-western Kempten, and offering views over both Kempten and the Alps, the path to Höhenegg takes you past the so-called Mulzer-Föhre, a solitary Scots Pine - and solitary Scots do - planted in memory of Max Ritter von Mulzer, one of the most successful, i...
...Kempten - Helene Nonné: Georges Brassens - Les Sabots d'Hélène Kempten and Bauhaus don't have the closest of associations, even Bauhaus and Allgäu caused the selection committee a few headaches; however, for a few post-War years Helene Nonné lived in Wangen im Allgäu...
...Kempten/Quiberon, Brittany: Bertrand Belin - Hypernuít Formally the twin with Quiberon was arranged in 1971 by the village of Sankt Mang, before being taken on by Kempten following Sankt Mang's assimilation in the course of the 1972 local government reorganisation; and although both Sankt Mang/Kempten and Quiberon can boast a Celtic origin there is otherwise very little that links the Breton peninsula community with the one at the foot of the Allgäuer Alpen... Given Sankt Mang/Kempten/Quiberon's Celtic heritage there was an obvious temptation to select a Breton roots artist, and the responsible committee got stupidly overexcited when they discovered the band Ar Re Yaouank, established by two brothers from Quimper...
