In the form of the "Fortune Factory" in Erbach in the Odenwald forest, Koziol recently opened a corporate museum that outlines the company's 80-year-plus history, from its origins as ivory carvers through to the design-keen manufacturer of plastic products.

Many things are different in America. Design, for example. Which is supposed to be good, cheap and something for John Doe. As can be seen from the New York exhibition "Design USA. Contemporary Innovation" that presents the winners of the National Design Award.

In Miami's Viceroy Hotel Philippe Starck has created a spa that flummoxed anyone expecting the reduced Zen aesthetics of many wellness interiors.

TEN! That would be more fitting for the decade and the coming new year. And back with Jim Henson's great numbers films. In our case the special focus is on the number TEN.

The Boston City Hall is one of the most controversial examples of American Brutalism. Once celebrated as avant-garde, today it gets greeted only with scorn - and is gradually falling apart.

Driven by creativity and shaken by diamond fever, Spanish designer Jaime Hayon created the concept for the Kuwait store for the jewelry label "Octium".

Experiments with materials, poetry and diversity are typical for the work of Atelier Oï. Projects for all over the world evolve at their new base, a former motel in La Neuveville.

Ströhmann Steinkult, a company based in Central Germany, devotes itself to experimenting with stone, especially with stone surfaces. What they achieve by combining the effects of materials, shapes and light is quite astonishing.

The world is so full of useful things that they easily escape our notice. Konstantin Grcic's current exhibition "Design Real" at London's Serpentine Gallery directs our attention in innovative and insightful fashion at a particularly intriguing corner of the vast realm of the useful, one where technical innovation and iconic power are held in artful balance.

The current Stylepark Magazine for Product Culture is devoted to the topic of color and how color is used in the fields of design, architecture and material.

A visit to Tecta in Lauenförde is like an excursion into a different, better world. There, managing director Axel Bruchhäuser has created a cosmos where the Bauhaus and international post-war architects and artists enter into a fantastic symbiosis.

Shop window decoration by artists and designers have a long-standing tradition. Now Tokujin Yoshioka has created an installation for Maison Hermès in Tokyo that plays superbly with the power of images.

In Dallas, too, business yearns for culture. A theater designed by Rem Kohlhaas and an opera house created by Norman Foster are supposed to help give the city of oil a makeover.

The company Wogg focuses consistently on continuity and new technologies. Sandra Hofmeister talks to Mark Werder, manager of the Swiss furniture company, about roll-front systems, precision perfection and the playful use with unusual materials.

Hansandfranz is a young Munich design company which first took the international limelight when it participated in the Milan Furniture Fair in 2007. The names of the two designers who founded the studio, however, are neither Hans nor Franz.

Detroit, the very name stands for cutting-edge industrial architecture. America's very first car factory was built her, a concrete frame structure, and it was here that Albert Kahn, the "builder of Detroit", created the Highland Park factory for the Ford "Model T", which first rolled off the production line in 1908. In a city whose future seems to be behind it, what is happening to the built monuments of the industrial revolution fuelled by automobile construction?

Now that both Chrysler and General Motors have hit the wall America's auto industry seeks to reinvent itself. In Detroit, which is still a great if increasingly pale showroom of what was once world-famous auto-architecture, no one has stopped believing in the future of the US automobile.

There's no escaping the impression that designers, engineers and ad men like to be seen as artists. Yet experience shows that art does not sit easy with the advertising world, which rarely produces anything other than bland me-too's.

Taken by surprise in the current crisis, the automobile industry now seems to be rushing towards an ecological future wearing seven league boots. But where is this future to be found? Does part of it perhaps not lie in the simplicity of its European past?

Will the good old gas station soon become extinct?

Our society seems to be an unparalleled generator of talents. Seldom in history has so much effort been devoted to talent scouting and, what is more, been rewarded. Ever new compilations are published for us.

A Munich exhibition illuminates the future possibilities of OLED light sources.

In Smallspace Gallery in Berlin architect and artist Michael Hansmeyer is currently exhibiting a series of images he has entitled "Platonic Solids".

Construction has been completed in Hamburg Hafencity of the first office building in the world to be lighted exclusively by LED technology - the new Unilever HQ. Is this the energy concept of the future?

The films of Charles and Ray Eames tell with their elegantly composed images the story of special beauty, of the beauty of the optimistic look at the simplest of things.

"Fare Mondi - Welten machen" was the title Daniel Birnbaum chose for his major Biennale show at the Arsenale and in the Biennial Pavilion.

After Russia, the Ukraine is the biggest country in Europe in terms of area. While the capital Kiev is characterised by monumental edifices from the Stalin era, in the provincial town of Kharkiv one finds masterpieces of Russian constructivism from the 1920s, in total contrast to the town of Lemberg in the Western Ukraine, where time seems to have stood still since the era of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy.

Prague has just hosted the "Designblok" for the 11th time. Although many manufacturers lacked the budgets for large-scale presentations, Czech design still held numerous discoveries in store for the visitor.

Now that the nights are drawing in, Artemide has opened its first showroom in Germany. The founder and President of the Artemide Group, Ernesto Gismondi, was there in person to toast the opening in Frankfurt.

A symposium in Berlin organized by the company Sulfurcell addresses the demand for and reality of construction with building-integrated photovoltaics.

It has the charm of most things Viennese, once hung in a bespoke tailors and in the "American Bar" - the luminaire Adolf Loos designed for Knize back in 1909. And now it has emerged in the 21st century as a redesign.

It is not easy to avoid his judgment: As the Director of Die Neue Sammlung in Munich, when it comes to design Florian Hufnagl is not only an excellent connoisseur but also an enthusiast. Franziska Horn talked to him about design expertise in companies, the qualities of products that survive for longer than one season and non-existent mega trends.

Sometimes the future really is cardboard. Yet it is not only paper models that have gained new standing in the design process, paper itself has emerged as a highly regarded material. And so now for the very first time an entire book addresses the topic of paper as a sculptural material.