With more than twenty million inhabitants in its Metropolitan area, São Paulo is a South American megacity with complex problems like extreme traffic, air pollution, water shortage, and informal settlements. At the same time, the city has invested in architectural infrastructures for decades, creating inclusive places for urban society. The exhibition presents these buildings and projects, showing their possibilities and potentials. The selected examples have been built from the 1960s to the present, and range from a canopy in a public park to large multifunctional buildings. The most ambitious examples have collective programs that include sports, culture, health and gastronomical facilities. What all the selected projects share is their ability to create places of cooperation far beyond their functionality.
From a one-man business to a global enterprise: We reflect on 200 years of furniture design as illustrated by the history of family company Thonet. The groundbreaking achievements of the early period – new technologies, new design methods, new distribution and marketing channels – are juxtaposed to developments in the 20th and early 21st century. The firm founded in 1819 by Michael Thonet, a master cabinet-maker from Boppart, evolved down through the decades into one of the most important makers of bentwood furniture. Its “No. 14” continues to be one of the most popular chairs to this day and is still produced in large numbers. In the late 1920s, Thonet turned its attention to tubular steel furniture and teamed up with several Bauhaus designers who created chairs in what was then an innovative technology. As these tubular steel furniture items and the early bentwood furniture have long been part of the permanent exhibition at Die Neue Sammlung, the focus of the current presentation is on the pioneering creations by modern designers from Eddie Harlis via Verner Panton through to Norman Foster, Stefan Diez, Konstantin Grcic and – most recently – Sebastian Herkner. For the design of the exhibition we were […]
The concept of pendulums – be they suspended lamps or swinging metal ellipsoids – is a central feature of Ingo Maurer’s oeuvre that enables him to mobilize light using simple means. Since time immemorial people have been fascinated by the archaic shape of the egg and its perfect design. The swinging pendulum is one of nature’s physical phenomena that already provided orientation to the Ancient Egyptians. Watching a pendulum is one of the kinetic experiences with a positive impact on our well-being thanks to its regular and calming motion. It is this combination of the egg’s harmonious shape and the comforting quality of the “Pendulum” that informed Ingo Maurer’s pendulum – it offers us a new spatial experience whether it is in motion or not.