A Questionnaire answered by Johanna Grawunder.

Artists and designers, cultural ambassadors and dreamers: Vitra Design Museum presents the refreshingly diverse oeuvre of Brazilians Fernando and Humberto Campana.

The Danish Dinesen company produces what are probably the world's most extraordinary wooden floors. Recent examples of Dinesen floors can been seen at the Saatchi Gallery in London, at the newly opened Museum Brandhorst in Munich and the ‘Table' restaurant in the Schirn art gallery in Frankfurt.

Brazil is the land of tropical forests. Very few actually know that bamboo also grows here in abundance. The more radical the changes in current policies of exploiting the rainforest, the better the chances that bamboo, a versatile material boasting a multitude of different applications, will soon be attributed a far more prominent role - in architecture as well as in design and automotive engineering.

A Questionnaire answered by Nynke Tynagel and Job Smeets.

Don't let anyone tell you there is no point investigating UFOs. On the contrary. The exhibition "U.F.O - Grenzgänge zwischen Design und Kunst" (U.F.O. - Design and Art) has opened in the NRW Forum in Düsseldorf.

The Metocene Material Edition, which Stylepark has developed in conjunction with the chemical company LyondellBasell, illustrates, with a variety of examples and products, the diversity of visual possibilities that this plastic offers.

Charles and Ray Eames once experimented with glass fiber reinforced plastics, today Konstantin Grcic experiments with Hirek plastic while Patricia Urquiola favors transparent polymers in a bid to achieve totally new shapes, surface qualities or uses that make design not only the formal but also technological manifestation of our age capable of altering people's lives. A little story to the significance of plastics for design.

Three questions to Tom Price.

Museum Brandhorst in Munich's Maxvorstadt district opened to the public on May 21. The building's iridescent outer skin has been on view for some months, and now the interior with its exciting architecture is proudly displaying works from the Udo and Anette Brandhorst Collection.

In design, interculturality is currently the big hit. Elements from different cultures are being combined in ever more sophisticated ways. However, the reality in cities like Rio de Janeiro provides a very different picture. Soon the favela could become a model of uncontrolled urban growth in Germany too.

What do you find unsettling about design? Three questions to Richard Prince.

He is a like a phantom. Almost everybody has heard of him, but hardly anyone has ever seen Belgian fashion designer Martin Margiela. While he has managed to stay as good as invisible for over 20 years now, his oeuvre has been constantly present and truly celebrated.

He is a Brazilian superstar. Idolized at the Salone in Milan, wherever he goes and wherever he stands, South American fans want to have their picture taken with him - Sergio Rodrigues. We caught up with him at ClassiCon in Munich, took a seat in his squashy leather armchair Mole and talked about his life.

As always, the Milan Design Week 2009 was much more than the sum of the events at the fair itself and in the city. Our series of photos offers you an impression of the many small venues, situations and settings that makes Milan the undisputed climax of each and every design year.

The "U.F.O. - Art and Design" exhibition at NRW-Forum Kultur und Wirtschaft in Düsseldorf concerns itself with the increasing indeterminacy and hybrid qualities of objects.

Hussein Chalayan "Afterwords"

One of the highpoints of this year's Milan Design Week took place at the Triennial: the "Tokyo Fiber 09 - Senseware" exhibition. It presented new materials and was also a festival of the senses.

Belgrade's qualities may not be apparent at first sight. Yet they are plentiful. The "Belgrade Design Week", which will take place from May 25 until 31, 2009 for the third time, is a good example of the Serbian capital's increasing self-confidence.

At the Euroluce in Milan the profession focused on what lamps would in future be used in luminaires. And it was primarily Ingo Maurer who highlighted the absurdity of the EU ban on certain lamp bulbs.

The Futurists did not just love cars, they also designed houses, clothes, bars, soda bottles and much more besides. And even if they wanted to get rid of pasta, they still created some interesting dishes. Now numerous exhibitions are celebrating Futurism, which arrived on the European scene 100 years ago with the publication of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti's Manifesto.

Konstantin Grcic "Missing Object"

Artek is re-issuing an old, modular chair design created by Shigeru Ban in 1993, and is thus continuing its successful collaboration with the architect, making a statement fully in keeping with its corporate culture.

The items in the minimalux collection, presented for the first time in Milan, are small, refined, expensive and perfect for an executive desk or the breakfast table in a discerning home.

The diverse world of furniture in Milan leaves us facing many questions. Can we shed our fear of the foreign in the current worlds of sofa cushions with all their different patterns? Can a fashion label does everything better? And what is the future of Mannerism and the Ethno mix?

The newly established furniture brand "Moustache" from France introduces itself on Via Tortona in Milan.

The really important facts from 4 days of Salone and Fuorisalone, which no-one else will tell you about.

Just as a quodlibet combines different melodies that essentially having nothing to do with one another, but now resound simultaneously, Milan's Salone del Mobile brings together all manner of things. One set of objects seem to be art, another a matter of banalities - and here or there you may sense the sounds of the future.

The automobile industry is continually developing new safety systems to prevent crashes from happening at all. Art, however, as shown in Ricarda Roggan's photographs, uses the crash to make commodities things again.

Mona Hatoum "Paravent"

Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown first opened their archive of photographs that formed the basis of their thesis for the Museum im Bellpark in Kriens, Switzerland. A characteristic selection is now on display at Deutsches Architekturmuseum in Frankfurt/Main.

Inspired by colourful leaves the architects Tham & Videgård Hansson create a bold composition of colours and patterns, which flow between the rooms of a large 10-room apartment in central Stockholm.

Stefan Diez is also presenting a new chair in Milan, which he has named after the famous American escapologist and conjurer "Houdini".

Every two years it accompanies the Milan furniture fair: Euroluce. Once again this year numerous new designs and technical innovations will be on display at the light fair. And no doubt visitors will come across this or that answer to the future of the light bulb.

Artek launcht das 10-Unit System von Shigeru Ban.