All Stylepark columns at a glance | STYLEPARK

COLUMNS

Criticism, praise and thoughts on current developments: Our columns on the topics of architecture and design.

All Very Urban

The Van B apartment building designed by Ben van Berkel offers "Very Urban Living" and, according to the client, has what it takes to become Munich's new architectural icon. Our author Alexander Russ took a look at the concept in 2021 and wrote the headline "Less for more". A visit to the construction site shall clarify what the project is all about.

Karst away

The architects of MVRDV have built a spectacular building full of both a variety of uses and surprises in the Zuidas financial district on the south side of Amsterdam.

The world's longest fig leaf

When an Arab state wants to divert attention from its misdeeds and a renowned U.S. architectural firm provides the built fig leaf, the results are sometimes astonishing. Saudi Arabia has presented the current plans for the new city "The Line" on the Red Sea.

In the Dior Jungle

For five years, the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) has been working on a master plan for the conversion of the Kaufhaus Des Westens (KaDeWe) department stores' in Berlin. Now a first section of this transformation has been opened, with a spectacular escalator at its centre: The Spiral.

Danes in space

With the Mars Dune Alpha Project and Mars Science City Bjarke Ingels seeks to conquer the Red Planet and realize his concepts of Martian architecture.

Social gas station in the mice bunker

As a team, the gallery owner Johann König and the architect Arno Brandlhuber bring new wind into the discussion about the preservation as well as the further use of the "mice bunker" and the Institute for Hygiene and Microbiology in Berlin Lichterfelde.

Everyday Architecture

Anne Lacaton and Jean Philippe Vassal have won the Pritzker Prize. And it’s well overdue, as our author sees it, once again casting his gaze over the work and impact of the French architect duo.

Less for More

The “Van B” residential building in Munich hopes to provide answers to the housing questions of our time. Our author took a closer look at the concept behind it.

Architecture in a post-Fordist network society

The theories of Patrik Schumacher, which explain why parametrism is the architectural language of the 21st century, are controversial. Here we put them up for discussion on the basis of a lecture he originally gave in Munich.

Beauty of murder

A few contradictions on “Good Form”. A column by Michael Erlhoff.

Ads that don’t add up

Insights on mystified outlooks. A column by Michael Erlhoff.

A Posteriori

In retrospect everything looks clearer. A column by Michael Erlhoff.

Perfect design

When all the traditional criteria are evoked. A column by Michael Erlhoff.

Nothing is certain

Nothing is safe. A column by Michael Erlhoff

It smells!

Musings on the olfactory system. A column by Michael Erlhoff.

On collector zest and garbage dumps

A column by Michael Erlhoff how design preserves itself.

Show who belongs to the club

A column by Michael Erlhoff about Brands as designed denunciation.

High-profile criminals

In light of recent events, a look at the criminalization of design research

Paradisiacal Slips

A column by Michael Erlhoff on the tricky ambivalence of service design.

Not just the ball is round

How football ornamentalizes people

Narrow narratives

All objects, signs and even services are meant to tell stories – and the object as such to disappear.

Design rules

Rules, regulations, instructions – who decides on what is to be designed – and how?

After Shows

A new collecting frenzy is sweeping across the planet. But how did we develop this penchant for accumulating things? Is it rooted in early childhood?

No perspicacity

What happens if we simply believe our eyes and always go by the images we see?

Monsieur...’s vacation

So what actually is a vacation? There’s no simply vacationing. You need approval. In the third part of our summer series our author asks: Where have architecture and design got to while we are on the road?

Monsieur...’s vacation

The sun’s shining, we’re on holiday, and have escaped everyday life. During the one or other leisurely hour we notices how many exciting questions raised in recent years have still not been answered. We’ve selected a few for you.

Architecture’s quaint qualifications

Those lamenting the fact that the introduction of the Bologna Reform has sounded the death knell of the good old German diploma certificate can rest assured. It is manifestly still going strong. Take the Half-Timbered Guide Certificate, for example, which was introduced in 2010. Germany’s veteran comedian institution Loriot would have gone to town on the oh-so-typical moniker of Half-Timbered Guide Certificate. Precisely because the matter is hardly wooden.

Deeply bewildering the world sends out sounds

A pity that tunnels cost so much money. And involve so much work. Because actually they are perfect problem-solvers. What you’re not supposed to see simply disappears. Above them flowers bloom, trees grow, sometimes new “urban” districts arise, at others existing quarters grow together. But sometimes they also collapse and among other things take down the illusion of a perfect world with them.

On conflicting aims and ramps in the wrong places

How a society deals with people with impairments says a lot about the prevailing social climate. Mind you, the way in which bureaucracy’s quaint logic often succeeds in thwarting aspirations for an ideal barrier-free world is just as insightful.

The same only in green

The country is something fundamentally different from the city. It is a different type of settlement, there is social control, people have more space, but shopping opportunities are not as good. In one respect though, the country is thoroughly urbanized, namely in the way we perceive it. In the country too people are viewing it the way previously only city dwellers did. And they build things the same way.

Near the end of the tunnel

Initially there were not enough people talking about ecological architecture and resource-saving building, and then suddenly too many were. The debate about the energy reform and ecological responsibility didn’t do architecture in Germany any good.

The world of the 113 football fields

Would anyone think that bad performances in a provincial theater are a reason to issue laws stating that plays can only be staged in the big theaters? Things are different in architecture. In our new column on “Building in Germany” Christian Holl sets out to find out why.

Invariably everyone looks happy

Luxurious apartment buildings and residential high-rises are very much in vogue. Long before the start of construction, real-estate developers and architects begin advertising them in short videos. Welcome to the brave new world of real estate.

Industrial design in the postindustrial age

We asked Stefan Diez to give us his personal take on the advantages and disadvantages and the consequences of digital fabrication for the everyday work of industrial designers. An outline.

Foresight in Hindsight

Things always work out differently. Not that it stops people from loving future predictions. So who does a better job predicting things: pundits or fortune tellers?

Trade off

May 28-30, 2014: Attending the third “Global Infrastructure Initiative” in Rio de Janeiro, organized by McKinsey & Co. The gathering is dominated by an almost limitless optimism about the blessings of technology and the belief that innovation by the infrastructure sector (coupled to extravagant funds) will eventually cure all the contemporary city’s ails…

Cosmopoverty

Urban hurrah or unhappy rural exodus? People who live in the city are considered cosmopolitan. And yet: The flipside of this humungous influx to the cities reveals quite a different kind of international living: poor cosmopolitans, deprived of urban benefits.

Architecture’s creative struggle

Architecture as a non-artistic discipline struggles between being a creative process and functional parameters. How could architecture transcend its eternal dilemma: the obligation to be critical in the face of inescapable submission?

London's change of things

London engages modernity on its own terms: hosting modern architecture without ever really entering into the obligation to modernize as a city.

NAUKOGRAD

A mysterious client in Kazakhstan, a well-known architectural firm named OMA and a so-called science campus are the protagonists in "Naukograd" - a piece in seven acts on the experiences of an international architectural firm.

On hold – The intangible legacy of the past decade

The 2008 crisis resulted in a large number of planning operations being suspended. Will the pre-crisis boom go down in the annals of history as an aberration, or prove only to be a precursor of things to come?

MEGALOPOLI(TIC)S

Cities are the main arena in which globalization takes physical form. So far the city has failed to register as a political entity in its own right. A pleading for the world as an archipelago of city-states.

Escape to the country?

Architects, urban planners, hipsters and geeks, all speak of the city and indeed megacities as a place that will prove decisive for the fate of humanity. But a countermovement has been emerging for some time now. Publications such as the German magazine “Landlust” show us “the beautiful side of country life” and depict a fictive rural paradise.

What can design do? Response to a banana critic

Evidently Friedrich von Borries has the one or other problem with bananas. That being so it cannot harm to read exactly what the fruit has to do with design, low sensations and art – and which concept of design will pop out of the banana skin in the end.

Why are bananas curved? or “What is design?”

"Is design becoming the auxiliary of art?" Thomas Edelmann asked in an article in the Stylepark Magazine where he debated the practice of design training at art academies. Among other things, he specifically addressed current changes at the Hamburg Academy of Fine Arts. Friedrich von Borries was prompted by the article to outline his ideas on design.

Design because a sub-discipline of art

New trends in teaching and curricula are influencing future design. In Hamburg design is now only part of art courses. At other art academies, it is becoming a marginal subject. But there's no sign of designers putting up a fight.

New formats? Yes please!

Are teachers who are themselves barely able to lay claim to noteworthy practical experience in design in a position to train others? This is a question that has been raised by Egon Chemaitis, retired Professor of Design Foundations at Universität der Künste Berlin. He cites four reasons, which from his point of view have contributed to the shift in design education in the direction of art.

Ways out of “voluntary self-restriction”

Design education at HfbK Hamburg has been reorganized, and we reported on the implications. In the highly diversified event entitled "Warum gestalten?" (Why design?) the Design department explored various perspectives from radical urban criticism through to multi-perspective developing.

It’s obviously just too complicated for some people

Georg-Christof Bertsch, Honorary Professor for Intercultural Design at the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Offenbach, warns designers against making a laughing stock of themselves by striving to be auxiliary artists. It is in fact the increasing complexity of industrial design as a profession itself that is presenting the challenges facing this sector today.

Thought comes first

For Helmut Staubach, Professor of Product and Transportation Design at Universität Berlin Weißensee the ambiguity of the boundaries between art and design constitutes an opportunity for both disciplines.

Design as a social force?

Encouraged by this teaching experiences at European design academies, Harald Gründl of Eoos Design Studio contributes four hypotheses on design to the debate on design training

Plagues by the idea of rebellion

Art has a problem with design, proposes Michael Erlhoff, Professor of Design Theory and History at Cologne's International School of Design. He focuses on the social perception of design and hopes that the technocrats will get worn down.

Design as a pauper’s art?

If the content is art it should not be labeled design, says Oliver Schweizer. The product designer is head of Schweizer Design Consulting and regularly teaches at design colleges, believes that everyday work calls for a sound knowledge of the tools.

Proximity and distance to social circumstances

Jesko Fezer has been Professor of Experimental Design at the University of Fine Arts of Hamburg since the winter semester 2011-2. In his opinion design is no more and no less than the projective exploration of the world in creative terms, and a university of art the right place for teaching it.

Let’s become more sophisticated!

Volker Albus, who teaches Product Design at HfG Karlsruhe, makes the case for offering a range of subjects with an extremely broad focus. In his opinion, this is the only way to cope with the diversity of social, technical, ecological and economic circumstances, which nowadays present a challenge to design. In his opinion, merely calling for greater artistic freedom does notachieve anything.