International Style

Eames called him a “Florentine magpie”. With “A Designer’s Universe” the Vitra Design Museum is hosting a very interesting retrospective on Alexander Girard.

Young designers can still learn a lot from him, even if this year Hans J.Wegner would have turned 100. On the occasion of his anniversary, ChristianHolmsted Olesen has dedicated an insightful book to the life, work andapproach of the exceptional designer.

Takashi Ueno, Mamoru Naito, Keizaburo Honda and Mizuho Naito are the creative minds behind Leif.designpark. Uta Abendroth met the Japanese team to talk about nature as a source of inspiration, their strong links with Europe and about sweeping sofas in Japanese apartments.

It was not so much aesthetic architectural approaches that were called for as temporary solutions with a socio-cultural touch: For the second time Berlin has challenged Europe’s architects to submit entries for the “Urban Intervention Award”. A prize somewhere between “cute” and “best practice”.

Patterns, once shunned by Modernism, have long since become ubiquitous in art, architecture and design. A noteworthy exhibition in Lingen explores the question what makes patterns so attractive in all these fields – and why they are so easy on the eyes.

On a rocky outcrop of Newfoundland, where there’s nothing between you and the Artic, the Fogo Island Inn has since May of this year proved that good design can foster tourism and thus create jobs.

Be it appealing street paintings, opulent façade décor or surrealist staircases, for Sabina Lang and Daniel Baumann public space is one large playground. The Swiss artist duo chats to Özlem Özdemir.

Our recce of the London Design Festival scouts six of the core venues to discover the current design tendencies. On this 16 mile whistle-stop tour from the west to the east of London, we start at the Victoria & Albert Museum, the self-proclaimed design hub of the LDF.

An architecture triennale in a time of crisis shows how architecture itself is in a time of crisis. In the face of surging financial and social problems in Portugal, the third Lisbon Architecture Triennale under the theme “Close, Closer” aptly proposes to rethink the role of architecture and architects.

Luminaires, chairs, cutting boards. Sebastian Bergne’s portfolio is diverse and his designs are often persuasively clever. Daniel von Bernstorff spoke with the multi-talented designer about his new role as design curator and about his love of traditional crafts workshops.

Daniel von Bernstorff, Stylepark, met Cocksedge in London to talk about his recent projects, his solo exhibition in New York and his fascination for crowd-funding.