FAIRS & EVENTS Boomerangs whizz overhead5/19/2015Exhibiting has a lot to do with space. At the 56th Venice Art Biennale you can see how art become theatrical and architecture becomes a stage.
FAIRS & EVENTS The latest from the image factory5/12/2015Last Saturday saw the opening of the 56th Venice Art Biennale. Aspects of a first tour of the Giardini and the Arsenale.
INTERVIEWS Industry is not a dinosaur5/11/2015On irony, provocative designs, Chair One as a grill, finding treasure troves, the necessity of securing contracts and the fun of advancing existing designs. Konstantin Grcic in conversation with Thomas Wagner – part 3
INTERVIEWS Work where you have the freedom do to so5/4/2015On art and design as a way of life, public places, the designer’s responsibility, the culture of Italian manufacturers, taste and breather Marcel Duchamp. Konstantin Grcic in conversation with Thomas Wagner – part 2
STYLEPARK-SPECIAL: RETROSPECTIVE Hieronymus at the airport4/27/2015Konstantin Grcic in conversation with Thomas Wagner – part 1: On "Panorama", the airport as a residential location, glancing sideways, digital tools, physical models, how to design a chair, and why designers cannot simply be replaced by programs.
ARCHITECTURE Propaganda and change 4/24/2015An expo is not just a spectacle, an event, where everything gets torn down afterwards. Since the very first World Exposition in London key milestones in architecture have been created specially for such great occasions – and many were indeed great in size and stature. Some of them are still standing. Others mere ruins.
FAIRS & EVENTS Gender-sensitive design4/9/2015In Hamburg, after years of preparation, in 2014 a new platform for presentations and debates relating to design opened in the form of designxport. Currently on show: an exhibition on the gender influence in design and possible alternatives.
ARCHITECTURE Ressource Africa3/24/2015Vitra Design Museum is devoting not just one, but two exhibitions to Africa. While the one suggests the "re-maker culture" is a blueprint for design in the Global North, the other explores how to achieve architectural independence.
FAIRS & EVENTS Where are all the thinking caps?3/21/2015Coinciding with this year’s CeBIT exhibition, Kunstverein Hannover is examining “Digital Conditions” – and contemplating whether the user in front of the screen will soon be redundant.
FAIRS & EVENTS Kitchen not cooking2/3/2015Students’ designs and high-tech products turn their back on cooking and instead celebrate either networking and technologization or the rejection of the same. Cooking as a process, minus the process.
FAIRS & EVENTS Cologne and the system1/13/2015It’s that time of year again: From January 19 – 25, the furniture industry will be meeting up in Cologne at the imm cologne and the Passagen. And the Makk will be busy trying to identify the one or other system in a world without systems.
FAIRS & EVENTS Seat creatures and clouds of cuttings1/8/2015For the third time the “Featured Editions” at imm cologne will be curated by Stylepark. It boasts 14 high-caliber installations by designers such as Werner Aisslinger, Sebastian Herkner and Studio Hannes Wettstein.
ARCHITECTURE Top-drawer time bombs 11/25/2014In the 1960s they designed ambitious utopias with cheeky irony. Today they build shopping malls. The exhibition “Haus-Rucker-Co – Architectural Utopia Reloaded” at Berlin’s “Haus am Waldsee” tells fairytales from a long since obsolete future.
FAIRS & EVENTS The Rasch Brother’s universe11/14/2014An exhibition at Marta Herford juxtaposes the lifework of Heinz and Bodo Rasch to built and dreamed utopias of the 1960s and artistic projects of today. The show attempts too much, but is still well worth a visit.
FAIRS & EVENTS Buffaloes in the Swiss underground11/4/2014Flying parquet floorboards, a Colombian high-speed knitter and wooden buffaloes peacefully grazing: At the 15th Designers’ Saturday in Langenthal, Switzerland, the designers and manufacturers once again opted for unusual means to stage their products.
FAIRS & EVENTS Mirror, mirror on the wall9/26/2014Split cobs with Sebastian Cox Holz, admire yourself in Barber Osgerby’s huge ceiling mirrors, and watch the future of mobility through stained glass. And in addition to these attractions, this year’s London Design Festival also served up many interesting team line-ups and countless cool results.
DESIGN Ata, applied?9/12/2014“Give Love Back. Ata Macias and Partners” in Museum Angewandte Kunst is an attempt to devote a show to a man who shaped Frankfurt’s nightlife with his club, Robert Johnson, and who also transformed the restaurant scene, too.
ARCHITECTURE Hot Spots: The ideal summer for architects8/29/2014Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam presents architects’ drawings of summer dreams – and escorts us sweetly into the balmy late summer.
ARCHITECTURE Hot spots: The Bridal Veil of Sancy8/22/2014Architect Louis Sicard has installed a shower in the Auvergne for elves, fairies, dwarves and hikers.
ARCHITECTURE Hot spots: A pool in the desert7/30/2014Life is pretty hot in the desert, at least during the day. So what could be more handy than a pool to cool off in. Or to lie in pondering life, the universe. Just be sure to remember the key.
DESIGN A new Nordic perspective7/21/2014And we continue our explorations at "3DaysofDesign" in Copenhagen to find out if it's really true the Danes produce their wares sustainably and in their own country.
DESIGN In the good-life lab7/16/2014As regards design, Denmark certainly has its finger on the pulse of things. Is this anything more than a re-edition of Danish Modernism? Are objects being made sustainably inside Denmark? A trip to “3DaysofDesign” in Copenhagen provides the answers.
ARCHITECTURE Lively, spontaneous, Brazilian6/30/2014The “Lina Bo Bardi: Together” exhibition at Deutsches Architektur Zentrum (DAZ) in Berlin focuses on an architect who came to fame as a passionate champion of subsidized building in Brazil. Yet she remained an outsider at the “Escola Paulista”.
ART Voulez vous Prouvé?6/27/2014At Design Miami, which took place in parallel to Art Basel, the French galleries presented an awful lot of Jean Prouvé originals. The icing on the cake: Konstantin Grcic transformed an Audi TT into a mobile living machine.
FAIRS & EVENTS Charles Brooking’s world of windows6/25/2014So have we simply accepted the fact that nowadays one window looks just like any other?This wonderful collection from England demonstrates just how much variety in window shapes and materials there once was.
FAIRS & EVENTS The dream of an open society6/20/2014The Dutch pavilion celebrates Jaap Bakema and with him the achievements of a form of post-War Modernism whose architecture is shaped by the institutions of the welfare state.
FAIRS & EVENTS Import – Export6/18/2014Modernist architecture as a symbol of emancipation or occupation? Freedom or disenfranchisement? The country contributions from and about African countries provide many an idea in this regard.
FAIRS & EVENTS Modernism and its uncle6/17/2014A fun-loving uncle resides in the French pavilion. He’s called Hulot, was invented by Jacques Tati, and shows in an amusing way all the things that can go wrong in the world of Modernism.
FAIRS & EVENTS A Clockwork Modernism6/17/2014What course did Modernism take in Britain? “Clockwork Jerusalem” takes a glance at William Blake to paint a surprising picture.
FAIRS & EVENTS Please touch6/16/2014A new pragmatism has changed Japanese architecture as if it has bid farewell to dreams – as can be discovered in the Japanese pavilion: “The Real World” is an unusually cluttered exhibition.
FAIRS & EVENTS Germany’s Ex-Top Models6/15/2014In the form of “Bungalow Germania” Alex Lehnerer and Savvas Ciriacidis have created one of the best exhibits in the Biennale and realized an unsettlingly instructive piece on the political instrumentalization of architecture.
FAIRS & EVENTS Architecture Know-How in Museum and Archive6/13/2014A great deal of hard work went into the 14th International Architecture Exhibition at the Venice Biennale. The curators of the national pavilions kindly searched the archives and Rem Koolhaas had all manner of architectural elements brought to the Giardini. A tour of a surprisingly didactic exhibition.
FAIRS & EVENTS Italian affairs6/11/2014For the exhibition “Monditalia” 41 teams were asked to design a piece about the country of Italy. The result: a show that is diverse, chaotic and at times pure kitsch.
FAIRS & EVENTS If you want to understand Modernity you need to have fun with it6/10/2014“Fair Enough” reads the lettering heading the pavilion of the Russian Federation. In other words: Very well! Or could it indeed imply that someone is fed-up with economization? In any case, this pavilion is great fun – while smart and critical at the same time.
FAIRS & EVENTS Rem Koolhaas’ foundations6/10/2014Rem Koolhaas has assembled a marvelous architecture biennial that mines Modernism to uncover its foundations in a bid to address the urgent issues of building in the 21st century.