One furniture manufacturer which has recognized and supported the potential of Spanish creative talent ever since the 1950s is Andreu World. The initially small furniture company has specialized in the production and sale of designer tables and chairs for home living and the commercial world.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The way design in the West references the Middle and Far East is often influenced more by economic and less by creative transfer.The furniture company e15 has shown that there is another way, having won the Design Award of the Federal Republic of Germany 2008 for its sofa system SF03 Shiraz, which represents a successful synthesis of the Oriental culture of seating and communication, and the minimalist formal language of the Occident.

The spring fairs in Paris and Stockholm make important marks.

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.

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.

Foscarini is not only an Italian luminaire manufacturer but also a supplier of insights into the multifarious aspects of light, which they gather in a variety of ways and, time and again, show that light is not just light: lighting determines the character of a room and interprets it in a certain way. Foscarini are extremely sensitive when it comes to registering these different moods and in moulding them into luminaires, the designs of which embody the different requirements placed on them with great clarity and precision.

To date, when buying a new kettle you could choose between various stainless steel or plastic models. Indeed, while current models display greater differences in terms of the quality of production and material, as regards form, they do not differ considerably from one another. They are all based on a water boiler or a cylindrical pot, have a handle, a spout on the opposite side and a water gauge.

Be it touchscreens or kitchen units with no handles or doors that open automatically, with the digitalization of our everyday surroundings the surface has increasingly gained importance. Yet they are still about, analog operating devices. Berker, a company which manufactures switches and electronic systems, offers them both as new products and re-editions.

In Italy, the institution of the family traditionally has a high standing, and keeping it together requires a constant, active entrepreneurial spirit. As such it is no wonder that precisely in Italy there is an above average number of family-run companies - and extremely successful ones at that. In the case of Molteni & C, with a payroll of 250 the family business has long since reached corporate size, and is one of the most important manufacturers in the furniture industry. Its history is typical of such firms.

No sponsor, and instead unconventional and successful ideas. Swedish design quartet Defyra sets itself high standards in terms of commitment. In its studio in Stockholm, it recycles discarded skis to form chairs.

Cologne has had to take a lot of criticism this year. Ben van Berkel's already almost legendary carpet flop in Hall 11, which was heralded as an urban master plan, visibly lacked an overarching concept, and the international audience increasingly shied away from Cologne, hitting it very hard.

How do you celebrate the big birthday of a seat, which has even been honored by a museum? In this particular instance it is quite simple: you take a run and jump into it – and by way of thanks are lovingly embraced by this universal favorite.Only a few items of furniture can withstand such a celebratory feat but for the Sacco beanbag it is a walkover. The flexible bag for sitting and lying on has always been an exception and precisely its ability to mold and conform exactly to the human body make Sacco the most nonconformist piece of furniture ever.

"Fashion" is as good as a synonym for the City of Paris. For a long time now, haute couture has not only referred to clothing, but the exquisite and tailor-made design of one's own home is often mentioned in the same breath. The Maison & Objet in Paris is an example par excellence of this. Originally a classic specialist fair for interior decorating, tables and gift items, today it is a major event for dealers and creative professionals from all interior design and fashion branches.

Every year, when the Christmas turkey has been digested, New Year endured and maybe even a couple of days skiing successfully overcome, design aficionados, tired of all the exuberance of the festivities and about to enter a state of long-term lethargy, head to Cologne for the Furniture Fair and the Passagen program.

Ettore Sottsass died in his home in Milan aged 90 on the very last day of 2007. Not only in Italy, and not only in the world of design and architecture are people mourning the loss of a designer of genius, as the world has lost a great humanist. For Sottsass, who construed design as the incessant search for a possible metaphor of existence, the search has come to a dramatic end.

When an international chemical conglomerate, an Italian furniture manufacturer and a German designer collaborate on the development of new materials and their application then legends are born. For example the new plastic cantilever chair "Myto".

In Miami, where Art Basel and Design Miami take place simultaneously, art and design take a look at each other's playing hand and each tries to outdo the other with a perfect performance. In this glossy atmosphere, the idea of showing products live as they are being created and showing designers at work looks refreshingly unpretentious.

Be it a collector's cup, a porcelain figure, crystal glass or your favorite plate, it is often the fragile things with which we surround ourselves that could be souvenirs, commodities or cult objects. As transient as they are, they still have a fetish character. And it was this which was right at the forefront of the Fragiles exhibition. Curated by publishers "Die Gestalten Verlag", more than 50 designers and artists presented their mainly figurative glass, porcelain and ceramic visions at this exhibition as part of the Design Miami show.

When, in the early nineties, all the major brands started using the same design format for all their stores and showrooms in the main metropolitan shopping areas, Spanish cult shoe label Camper did things differently, investing in identity through diversity.

From HVACR and door communication to music and light control - Gira designs switch units for overall building management. The Profil 55 function strip, for example, is a wall-mounted expansion module that boasts than can be equipped with over two hundred functions - from sockets, timers, and dimmers to sensors - without the wall having to be prised open every time.

Look up and you see the heavens. And the sheer variety of what you can see there is something Italian luminaire maker FLOS has reinterpreted time and time again and with great poetry. With luminiares by legendary designers - including Achille Castiglioni, Antonio Citterio, Jasper Morrison, Philippe Starck and Patricia Urquiola - the company established in 1962 has brought profane living space closer to the celestial lights.