Magazin

Design Miami/Basel took place this year for the fifth time parallel to Art Basel, where the international art world gathers each June. The focus is still on high-end one-offs.

China has given the Expo a new lease of life. With enthusiasm and pride, the Chinese presented pavilions from all over the world and the pinnacle of current achievements. However, there are also a few flaws here and there. Observations on the Expo 2010 in Shanghai.

Pupils from Westminster Academy in London were set the task of creating fantasy public spaces. The Serpentine Gallery is now presenting the results of the Fantasy Architecture competition.

The Audi Urban Future Award aims to analyze the future of our cities in the context of questions of mobility, and to offer concrete suggestions for their reconfiguration. During a Conference in London initial results are presented in a workshop. The process is documented and discussed in a publication.

In recent years, the Designer's Days in Paris have emerged as a summer festival, with a very mixed audience strolling through the galleries and showrooms.

In the new issue of the Stylepark magazine for product culture, we and our authors take a close look at whether in Milan, New York or Shanghai "it's all in the detail".

This year's DMY Design Festival in Berlin showed experimental prototypes by young designers and injected life into the disused Tempelhof airport.

Our economy is based on growth, but growth has its limits. And thus our current urban planning stands on wobbly foundations. Architect Peter Haimerl and his team are working on a new city for the future. "Zoom Town" is an urban concept that coordinates various forms of mobility with each other in an overarching urban fabric.

The exhibition "Climate Capsules - Means of Surviving Disaster" has opened at the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe in Hamburg. What interest's curator Friedrich von Borries are the cultural images for future environments.

Architect Renzo Piano's design for Central St. Giles breathes new life into a part of London that was otherwise in a sorry state. Urban design that as a stroke of good fortune.

The symposium on "Regionalism in current industrial design from Japan and Europe" offered an opportunity to converse with designer Makoto Koizumi who does not yet have a presence outside Japan. In conversation with Nina Reetzke he explains what his furniture collection "Tetsubo" and his new interpretations of the "9tubohouse" are all about.

Herbert Hirche - only the design cognoscente tend to know his name today. Now Werkbundarchiv in Berlin is hosting a retrospective to mark the 100th anniversary of the designer's birthday. It gives an idea of the breadth and quality of Hirche's oeuvre.

"Go on with your patchwork, like a little lady", wrote George Eliot, a reminder of the socially aspirational art of making quilts. This British artistic practice went on to influence crafts internationally, think of the Amish quilt. Linking art and social life at all levels, it is the subject of an ongoing exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.

On behalf of Munich's Neue Pinakothek Alessandro Mendini has curated a retrospective of the last 30 years of Italian design. Sandra Hofmeister talked with him about the "Objects with a Soul" and eclecticism in design.

What will cities of the future look like? How will we move around in them? Archigram's utopia provide answers which are still exciting. Thanks to the Archigram Archival Project the designs and activities of the British architect group can now be viewed in detail on the Internet.

Industrial designer Christian Förg has developed a concept for electric cars called "Speedway". An electromagnetic field drives the car and charges the battery at the same time!

Sustainability before beauty would seem to be the intention at New York's ICFF Furniture Fair and its various satellite venues in the city. However, the eco-awareness they so laud is not always real.

"Immediately looks better" claims a slogan in a brochure brought out by a furniture discount store. While we are busy studying the new design items from Milan, the everyday madness of interiors continues unabated in the mega- and XXXL stores. A glance at the mailings to the world where the furniture then stands.

Italian luminaire maker Flos is now producing walls - that light up, of course.

Four months prior to the opening of the 12th Architecture Biennial in Venice director Kazuo Sejima presents her concept.

Cruises are big business. Ever more tourists are using the floating islands of comfort to observe like a photograph foreign shores from a safe distance while enjoying round-the-clock service. Notes on the "cruise system".

Centuries ago, in a small town in Tunisia on the edge of the Sahara, craftsmen experimented with the decorative potential of brick. At the same time they created functional but contemporary architecture.-

The ski slope in blistering hot Dubai, the tropical theme pool in Bochum or a shopping experience in the air-conditioned shopping mall in Edmonton - artificial weather conditions and the exclusion of the forces of nature are today more than ever a task for architecture. The manual "-arium" approaches these challenges in an unusual way.

In Munich's Mühlbachviertel you can "test-live in" a new apartment block.

Dutch designer duo Scholten & Baijings add subtle patterns and colors to forms, make fabric rhubarb stalks objects of communication, envelop design classics with their "Colour Plaids" and reinterpret traditional Dutch items of furniture. At the Milan Furniture Fair, they premiered designs with Established & Sons. Markus Frenzl caught up with the designers in Rotterdam and Milan.

What happens if you cross BMW, Kvadrat and Flos with Patricia Urquiola and Guilio Ridolfo in order to try and develop a completely new interior design for an automobile? "The Dwelling Lab" shows you.

At this year's Light+Building fair Stylepark has presented itself in the new Hall 11 of Messe Frankfurt.

The two articles on how art and architecture deal with the realm of mood have each created their own atmosphere with respect to their subject. And while we are on the subject of atmospheres and creativity our author embarks on a brief trip through Germany and notices some surprising things along the way.

Salone del Mobile 2010 has been and gone. Which of the new designs will endure, and which will swiftly be forgotten? The Stylepark ABC of the most persuasive new products predicts what may that future may be.

April showers bring May flowers: This year it brings the trend color yellow. Be it lemon yellow, Indian yellow or golden yellow - the ambivalent effect of the color is being put to the test.

At this year's Light+Building fair Stylepark has presented itself in the new Hall 11 of Messe Frankfurt.

One basic design, six variations, three colors, countless combinations: the vessel "Juuri" of young designer Sarah Böttger delights with its special design and material language.

Ideas, sketches, creative processes: The exhibition "The Hand of the Designer" at Villa Necchi Campiglio in Milan presents drawings by designers and architects and demonstrates the importance of hand sketches in the digital age.

Admittedly, the borders of the Zona Tortona are a little frayed at the edges and in the new design district Ventura Lambrate designers are pushing into an area where artists once thronged, but there is a great deal to be discovered here. And, when all is said, when it comes to furniture design, things do tend to go around in productive circles.

Young, courageous, and experimental, the Salone Satellite in Milan. So one might think. But the mostly young exhibitors were all somewhat staid and highly professional. Bar a few exceptions, of course.