Archive

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.