The activist In the 1930s, Charlotte Perriand was convinced that it was necessary to fight for a better future. Not only did she strive for new forms in design, but she also sought to improve social conditions through design and architecture. She employed large photo collages on which she had applied layers of writing to communicate her political and social messages. The Museum of Design in Zurich is now holding an exhibition dedicated to these works.

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Tea’s traces Antonia Henschel's new magazine is about tea, nothing but tea and bags. "Tea-total" that is, not "teetotal". Abstinence is certainly not on the agenda here.

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When everyday life becomes a discovery "Hidden Heroes: the Genius of Everyday Things" is the title of a new exhibition at Vitra Design Museum. Not only can you familiarize yourself with these simple heroes of everyday life in the masterfully designed exhibition in the Buckminster Fuller Dome on the Vitra Campus in Weil, but you can explore them online too.


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A traveling house One area on which Jean Prouvé focused in his work was prefabricated houses, construction elements and façades. The now legendary Maison Tropicale was one product of this. The prototypes stood in West Africa for almost 50 years and are now on show in a series of exhibitions in Europe and the USA.

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The train is not a means of transport The future of mobility lies in a combination of various transport systems that dove-tail with one another. Train, streetcar and underground play an important role. Transport policy in this country, however, has not yet recognized the advantages of a customer-friendly train.

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The drapes and the Porsche Anyone who expects to find a book about cars between the covers of "The Porsche Book" will be wrong. The focus here is instead on the stagings by photo designer Frank M. Orel. The cars tend to play only a secondary role.

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“Save the traffic, so our cities can survive” During the reconstruction period in West Germany. a new control instrument entered the political landscape: urban planning. Its objective was to make a strict division between labor and living . People should work in the city, and live in the country. The fact that commuters were obliged to buy a car to cover the distance between the city center and the periphery merely boosted the economy. And produced slip roads, city highways and traffic jams lasting for kilometers. The car-friendly city - an unsuccessful historical concept or bitter-sweet reality?


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The Senior Leisure Nomad and the temporary city As part of the Audi Urban Future Award, New York architects Diller Scofido + Renfro devoted some thought to the issue of mobile dwellings, responding to changes in residential patterns. Many older people above all in the United States have cut their ties with conventional notions of domesticity.


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The pig and the racing car In the media age racing cars not only have to be fast, they also have to look fast and stand out on the racing track thanks to colors, lines, numbers and logos. In "Go Faster" Sven Voelker illustrates that this was not always so and shows what characterizes those models with particularly successful styling.

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Raumlaborberlin and the revival of the urban style The projects by the artists' and architects' collective "Raumlaborberlin" are far from being conventional. The group of eight, which is at present developing the exhibition architecture for the "Audi Urban Future Award" that is curated by Stylepark, is currently presenting a very special kind of installation at Kunsthaus Bregenz.

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The City as a Labo for Future Mobility The "AUFA Audi Urban Future Award 2010", which is curated by Stylepark, has set itself the task of thinking about the city of tomorrow as regards the issue of mobility. We are running a series of articles in coming weeks on some aspects of automobility and urban planning as relating to the AUFA - the latter will culminate on August 25 with a presentation of the findings in Venice in the form of an exhibition and the selection of the first prize winner.

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Return of the grid System furniture was long considered the epitome of no-fun and über-rational design, but now it is undergoing a revival. The new items of system furniture are proof that functionalist Modernism is being seen in a new light and mark the end
of the heyday of design art and limited editions.

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The return of the curved Be it purses, chairs or roofs: Wickerwork, one of the world's oldest construction methods is experiencing a revival.

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