A cobalt blue ship sails across the porcelain sea Royal Tichelaar Makkum is one of the very oldest companies in the Netherlands. For some years now the family-owned company has been catching the eye with products created by such renowned designers as Hella Jongerius and Studio Makkink & Bey. A book has now appeared describing the porcelain manufactory.


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Designpääkaupunki 2012 How much are titles, prizes and other distinctions really worth? What some consider a mark of quality is seen by others as a red rag. The Finnish capital Helsinki has been selected as the World Design Capital 2012 – and is definitely worth a visit.

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If it has a switch, you can turn the artwork on His works seem familiar and strange at once. Martin Brüger makes simple additions to everyday objects. Sometimes the proportions change, then the color effect alters, or a kind of frame is created. Nina Reetzke spoke to the Darmstadt artist about his views on the things that surround us.

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One hundred best posters From busy images to quiet ones to wild games with letters – the work featured in a competition, "100 best posters", gladdens the eye and makes the heart beat a little faster.

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What a kettle and a lamp have to teach us Designs by young designers are currently on display in Villa Noailles. With the help of craftsmanship Jean-Baptiste Fastrez,for example, restores individuality to industrial kettles. And Brynjar Sigurdarson has created a luminaire that at one and the same time is reminiscent of a brush, a torch, and a magic wand.

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Paris is not ready for the future French designer Inga Sempé is one of the most interesting phenomena in the current design scene. Nancy Jehmlich talked with her about the status design has in France, about her experience with manufacturers, about expensive and cheap products, and about her favorite places in Paris.

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The two goddesses of Indian design When the discussion turns to contemporary design, few people in Germany necessarily think of India. In Ahmedabad, the descendant of an ancient textile empire is working hard to change this.

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Nothing can last In our current Stylepark Magazine for Product Culture we address the transient and fleeting nature of life – with temporary buildings, compostable materials and Japanese packaging design.

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In the here and now or Returning to the space In several of the pavilions and works of the 54th Venice Art Biennial we can see a return from the image to the space and thus to the incompressible here-and-now.

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On being on the move It would seem that the topic of the “nation” has by no means been exhausted – and this is true of the Venice Biennial, too. Nationality continues to play a major role in answering the questions of who is allowed membership and who is condemned to remain on the move. Examples from the Roma Pavilion and the disturbing photographic oeuvre of Hsieh Chun-Te from Taiwan show this most clearly.

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Only the copy makes the original It is well known that copycat versions of design objects cause high economic losses. That said, at universities copying is still considered a practical principle in learning. The upshot of this may be surprising – even pirate copies can sometimes lead to new insights.

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Politics as singing class In no less than three country pavilions, artists use opera and song as a means of discussing and criticizing the state of the world. In the Icelandic pavilion this takes the form of a criticism of European immigration policies, in the Hungarian pavilion music represents a metaphor for the crisis in post-communist Hungary, while in the Dutch pavilion opera acts as a model for teamwork in the nation.

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20 years of the present The Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt (MMK), is celebrating its 20th anniversary with a major exhibition, which is being held not only in museum itself.

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Phantasms on four wheels We have always known that Germans love cars. We can only conjecture what kind of fantasies surround the cult object. The exhibition “Fetisch Auto. Ich fahre, also bin ich” (Car fetish – I drive, therefore I am) in Basle provides an insight into the visual images surrounding what is actually a pretty functional object.

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The hamburger of architecture Greetings from Legoland: The NRW-Forum in Düsseldorf is showcasing an exhibition about containers, which reveals just how much enthusiasm there currently is in the architecture scene for transportation vessels such as these, but also how thoroughly the beautiful new world of standardized architecture ignores individuality and local circumstances.

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Patterns à la Prouvé Over the past few years several crossover projects between fashion and furniture have attracted much attention. Together, G-Star Raw and Vitra are sounding out the furniture cosmos of Jean Prouvé. The "Prouvé Raw" collection is a successful homage to the French designer.

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Head for the caravanserai Mike Nelson has assembled a labyrinth in the British pavilion. It could be the product of our fantasy or equally exist in Istanbul – and it certainly undermines our notions of time, place and action.

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Venezia, Piazza Tahrir At previous biennials, you could have safely passed up visiting the Egyptian pavilion, as all they staged were pro-regime shows that did not seem to fit in an artistic context. However, following the unrest in the Middle East, a revolution is also taking place in the Arab art world – as Ahmed Basiony's videos demonstrate.

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