Turin - the new World Design Capital The International Council of Societies for Industrial Design (ICSID) has chosen the north Italian city of Turin as the "World Design Capital 2008". We already know that Italy is renowned for its good design. But that a city can be designated the "world design capital" is something new.

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Stephen Burks - or The readymade spirit Marcel Duchamp's famous readymades are objects which have been removed from the sphere of the useful and placed in a new context. For US designer Stephen Burks, this "multiple use" and the fact that our perception influences the intuitive use of an object are highly inspiring.

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Solid jewels Now that the market for big boys and girls is saturated, it is evidently the little ones' turn. Jacobsen's Ameise chair and Panton's chair have long been available for children too, and now Living Jewels is continuing the trend with its Serie_01 furniture. The items are a miniature version of the LC2 series designed by Corbusier and Charlotte Perriand, or rather something close to the original. After all, the cubic armchair LC2, which we know well enough from talk shows and reception areas, is one of the modern furniture classics.

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The choreography of production - Sarah van Gameren She is not an engineer, yet she loves machines. She is not a performance artist, yet she gives design a theatrical component. She is not a pyrotechnic, yet she loves playing with fire. Sarah van Gameren does not stage the end product, she makes the production process a spectacle.

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Explosions of light - Vicente García Jiménez Fields is the name of the luminaire, which builds upon the basic geometric shape of the rectangle, by the young Spanish designer Vicente García Jiménez for Foscarini. Different sized rectangles overlap on several levels, creating different areas of light and shadow. Jiménez developed the idea for this striking luminaire from a view of the rural expanses of the region where he grew up, La Mancha.

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Tobias Rehberger's "the chicken-and-egg-no-problem wall-painting" This is the place to enjoy it, the real fun of a productive confusion of the senses and the mind. Because Tobias Rehberger, who together with Claus Richter will this year be creating a major installation in the Frankfurt Festhalle on the occasion of "The Design Annual - inside: showtime", is currently leaving viewers marvelously puzzled, not to say astonished in Amsterdam.

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Mondrian speaks Italian - Ferruccio Laviani It can be quite a burden to accept an inheritance. In this case, it may help to nurture a somewhat uncomplicated dialog with color, material and form, like Ferruccio Laviani, born in Cremona (Italy) in 1960, whose approach gives him a definite advantage.

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It's my Favourite! - Sandra Hofmeister's book "My Favourite Chair" It is a man's best friend - even though it does not always have four legs and neither is it alive, but it is always there for us, especially when our steadfastness wavers slightly: the chair.

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On purposive beauty - Sebastian Bergne In the midst of limited special editions and installations fit for a theater, today some may be asking whether there are any designers left who create such profane things as vacuum cleaners, for example? Yes, there are! One who is full of enthusiasm when it comes to identifying functional shortcomings, user needs and other requirements is Sebastian Bergne.

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Fundstücke: Light and semantics in the work of Hannes Wettstein Living light can be felt and experienced in various ways - as brightness and darkness, as concentrated rays or as reflections on a wall. Swiss designer Hannes Wettstein speaks in this context of "light semantics". And it was the key factor determining his design for the Scope family of luminaires.

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Summit meeting with Zaha Hadid - the new Hungerburg rack railway One might be forgiven thinking that Bruno Taut's vision of "alpine architecture" has partly come true: With the hybrid freeforms typical of her work, architect Zaha Hadid has taken up Taut's utopian idea of architecture blending with nature and has transformed Innsbruck's Hungerburg rack rail track into an art-scape par excellence.

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Paul Cocksedge's marvelous world of light If graphite conducts electricity, then surely you can make light using a pencil? And yes you can! Brit Paul Cocksedge is someone who views the world through the enthusiastic eyes of a boy who has just been given his first science kit. He is a young designer, and he makes lights. Using a gin-&-tonic, pencils or flowers.

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H.O.M.E.D.E.P.O.T - Vienna's Design Event Fair with a Lounge Format Vienna, a city that knows how to celebrate with countless celebrities, will be hosting Austria's only design event fair for the 8th time on March 5-9, 2008. H.O.M.E.D.E.P.O.T in the Semperdepot will showcase novelties by internationally renowned designers made by 50 top manufacturers.

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Gio Ponti - the indescribable lightness of design When architects design furniture and utility items, their love of things is often animated by a certain desire for absoluteness. By designing the atmosphere right down to the smallest detail they hope to produce a harmonious whole. This applies particularly to modern architects who, in schools such as the Bauhaus and De Stijl, were aiming for a kind of universality.

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Eric Degenhardt - Constructed Volumes If architecture approximates to the outer covering, i.e., the skin of a room, then the interior and the people who use it are its inside. It is only these that give the room its definition. Accordingly, design is the interface between a building and its inside. This is the disarming logic used by Cologne-based designer Eric Degenhardt to explain his move from one design discipline to another.

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Roll models - the Colombo classics from B-Line It was the end of the 1960s. They were young and they were wild. At least, they were hell-bent. They wanted to change the world. To change the world with furniture. The kind of furniture that would be really true to its name, flexible and ready for action, furniture that would adapt dynamically to its spatial conditions and to the needs of the people who bought it, allowing its users complete freedom in what they did with it.

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Second homes and other seating opportunities - arper in the Design Post Köln If one and the same chair looks as good in the living room as it does in the office or a hotel lobby and in each location looks as though it were tailor made, it could well be a chair by arper. The company, founded in 1989, is one of the most innovative furniture manufacturers in Italy and specializes in seating.

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The BLOCK exhibition at the Haaz Gallery Good design is everlasting. But it does not need to be carved in stone. On the other hand it can be, and this precisely is the idea of design-mad Murat Patavi, the owner of the Haaz Gallery in Istanbul. He came up with a very special idea to mark the first anniversary of the art and design gallery for young Turkish and international creative talents: he invited 18 well-known designers to each make an exclusive design for the occasion - and what's more, in marble.

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