Archive

The mood was good, the atmosphere great: The DMY Design Festival at Berlin’s Tempelhof Airport complex showed what 500 new design talents can come up with if they try. Innovations were in short supply, however, for all the party feeling and Poland as guest country.

Hamburg thrives on its port and on occasion subordinates quality of life to the port’s needs. A new city highway is expected primarily to ease commercial traffic. First up, a design for a new bridge was highlighted. It is stunningly beautiful, but the overall project remains dubious.

Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto created this year’s Serpentine Gallery Pavilion in London. Daniel von Bernstorff, Stylepark, spoke to Sophie O’Brian, Senior Exhibition Curator, about the idea behind, the choice of Fujimoto and the Pavilion as an interdisciplinary platform.

The central exhibition at the 55th Art Biennale of Venice tries to gather the intuitive knowledge of art in a “Palazzo Enciclopedico”. Another sets out to reconstruct a legendary 1969 show.

Diébédo Francis Kéré’s works on the premise that building with mud and clay is not only inexpensive and sustainable; it also constitutes a unique cultural asset. Özlem Özdemir spoke to the architect from Burkina Faso about why mud’s appeal as a building material, knowledge transfer in his homeland and the responsibility to preserve one’s own culture.

The art world is changing ever more swiftly. For the most part the country pavilions at the 55th Art Biennale in Venice hardly staged much more than opinions. Yet there were a few exceptions.

Three intensive days in May on Clerkenwell Design Week are brought to a close. Catching up with a truly British interpretation of international design impulses and gaining glimpses of the thought processes that drives creative studios.

Sauerbruch Hutton has designed a forum for the Hager Group at its head office in Obernai, Alsace. Robert Volhard talked to Daniel Hager, CEO of the Hager Group, and architect Matthias Sauerbruch on the requirements the new building had to meet, the human resource factor and the advantages of flexible, open structures.

At the moment, as part of the Van-de-Velde Year, Erfurt’s hosting an exhibition on architect and designer Peter Behrens. While there can be no doubting his status as the father of Modernism, in retrospect the one or other of his designs seems decidedly a product of its day.

Our cities are already bursting at the seams. We need new forms of mobility to shape life in the megacities of tomorrow. In New York experts from Audi teamed up with architects, urban planners and academics to seek answers to one of the most pressing questions of the future.

Coworking spaces need not invariably look as if they were the living room in a flat share; for the Modul 57 project, the emphasis was on technical equipment and ergonomic chairs courtesy of Wilkhahn.

For their 25th annual setting, the International Contemporary Furniture Fair brought environmental awareness to New York.

Not just for aviation enthusiasts: The photo book “Swissair Souvenirs” affords readers an insight into all areas of civil aviation and at the same time makes for a new piece of photography history.

Disappointed by political developments in her home country, after World War II Lina Bo Bardi turned her back on Italy. In Brazil, the architect followed the new social trends and took part in designing Modernism there – and to this day has taken a back seat to great colleagues such as Oscar Niemeyer.

The new collection by Rem Kohlhaas’ OMA for Knoll International is one of the positive surprises of this years Salone. Daniel von Bernstorff spoke to Ippolito Pestellini Laparelli, head of the OMA design team, about the cooperation with Knoll, the poetry of moving marble and about the end of signature design.

“Werner Aisslinger – Home of the Future” is currently on display in Berlin’s Haus am Waldsee, an exhibition space for contemporary art. A designer presenting his work in the art context: Can that be a good thing?

It is often the case that quantity trumps quality nowadays and the leather industry is no exception. The new handbag label Tsatsas consciously takes a different approach. The bags it makes not only demonstrate flawless craftsmanship; they are also wowing the design world with their clear-cut forms.