Archive

This year's Art Basel would seem to be an indication that the financial crisis has been overcome, as gallery owners were pleasantly surprised by the visitors' unexpected spending spree.

U.S. American artist Mike Bouchet is showing a dismantled prefabricated house, model "Sir Walter Scott" in Frankfurt's Schirn Kunsthalle. The sculptural exhibit was developed from the installation "Watershed" that Mike Bouchet erected in the harbor of the Arsenale in Venice as part of the Biennial.

Once again, with his "Innen Stadt Außen" (Inner City Outside) exhibition Olafur Eliasson proves that he is able to achieve great effects with relatively modest means.

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.