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Yes We Can: debating the future of American design
A recent panel discussion at Washington DC’s International Design Festival got to grips with the somewhat provocative question, “What Happened to American Design?”, the implication being it doesn't enjoy the singular, coherent identity of other national design cultures. Here, journalist and panel moderator David Sokol outlines and extends the debate.
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Non Plus Ultra: the Interior Innovation Award 2013's 'Best of Best'
The biggest, the fastest, the smartest. When it comes to marketing-speak, there's nothing like a superlative to liven things up. Best of Best – the annual exhibition held at imm cologne of the category winners from the Interior Innovation Award 2013, a scheme organised by the German Design Council and voted for by a jury of big names from the design industry – is no exaggeration, however.
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stilhaus: 'Bringing together what belongs together'
stilhaus – the new design destination in Switzerland – doesn't do things by halves. 20,000 square metres of retail and exhibition space next to one of the country's busiest motorway intersections offers architects, planners and end consumers an edit of some of the top international design brands. stilhaus is in the house.
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Clear Vision: Zumtobel sheds light on the OperAlp/SALEWA Group’s new headquarters
More often than not, office architecture can be, well, a little inward-looking. Shut out the outside world and focus staffers' attention on their building's interior spaces and you'll keep them focused on their work. Right? Wrong. The OperAlp/SALEWA Group's new headquarters in Bolzano, Italy, bring the outside in and, thanks to a collaboration with lighting manufacturer Zumtobel, never leave their workers in the dark.
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Urushi - Japanese Lacquer in modern Design
An important component of the Japanese art of lacquerwork is the special technique known as "urushi", which uses many layers of wafer-thin, semi-transparent lacquer to create a surface of almost mystical radiance and sensual depth...
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Werner Aisslinger – Home of the Future
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Size Doesn’t Matter: contemporary Nordic architects who cross boundaries
Head north and you'll find a thriving design culture where the level of consideration given to the way things look, feel and work isn't determined by their scale. Be they housing projects, chairs or taps, the Scandinavian approach to design continues to be a more democratic one, driven in no small part by the number of Nordic architects who design beyond buildings.
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Same but Different: classic design and the design of change
Everything changes, so they say. But should it? What about decades-old, often iconic designs? Should they be preserved, as it were, their contemporary production remaining ‘true’ in every respect to the ‘original’? Or ought manufacturers be free to modify them – materially, technically, even formally – in the name of contemporary market appeal. And what about the thorny issue of authorship? Architonic investigates.
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Going Underground: Zumtobel sheds light on the Städel Museum's new subterranean extension
Lighting always has to work harder when it's deployed in underground spaces. But when the space in question is a museum one, where the considered illumination of its exhibits is key – not to mention their protection against the potentially damaging effects of lighting – you've got a real challenge on your hands. Here's how leading lighting manufacturer Zumtobel responded to such a brief...
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Celebrating a Scandinavian icon: 100 years Finn Juhl
On 30 January 2012, the internationally recognised Danish furniture designer and architect Finn Juhl who died in 1989 would have turned 100.
Events all over the world – from Tokyo via Cologne to Milan as well as in his native Copenhagen – celebrate his lifetime achievement.
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Easily LED: the charms (and challenges) of a developing technology
Many hands make light work, goes the old saying. Many new LED producers also make the creative possibilities of working with such a fast-changing technology exciting, thanks to the proliferation of products they bring to the market. But, for lighting design manufacturers, an expansion of supplier choice brings with it a number of challenges. Architonic sheds some light.
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Systematic: furniture that grows on you
System furniture did what it's wont to do at this year's imm cologne: expand. A number of new and innovative furniture programmes, modular in nature, were shown alongside augmented and reworked old favourites. It's all about joined-up thinking.
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The In-Betweeners: the rise of a new office-furniture typology
In the grand, teleological narrative of design, things are developed to make our lives increasingly better. New forms, materials and technological innovations are introduced, self-justifying, attended by a clarity of function and value. But what happens when a new design typology comes into being for which there isn’t even a consensus on how to describe it? We give you the ‘In-Betweeners’ – a new series of office-furniture systems that are neither fish nor fowl.
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Still Waters: Laufen's newly extended Palomba range takes restraint to a higher level
When it came to launching their latest family of products, high-end Swiss bathroom manufacturer decided to buck the trend for the ultra-rational and focus on building on the softer, timeless design language of its earlier Palomba collection. The result: the striking Palomba Collection 2012.
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Picture Perfect: Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec at Weil am Rhein's Vitra Design Museum
While the fifteen years of their prolific careers are being celebrated across 1000 square meters in Parisian Centre Pompidou-Metz, the recently-opened 'Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec – Album' exhibition gives a rare, behind-the-scenes glimpse into creative process of France's famous design duo.
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The Gold Standard: iF International Forum Design celebrates 60 years
Three score old and in rude health: the iF design gold awards, handed out to a painstakingly selected, international cohort of companies at the recent Munich Creative Business Week for their outstanding products, is looking to the future.
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![Coming Up: [D3] Design Talents at imm cologne is 10](http://image.architonic.com/imgTre/01_13/pressed-chair-stille-wasser-frontal-2-01-b-teaser.jpg)
Coming Up: [D3] Design Talents at imm cologne is 10
More than 500 young and emerging designers have taken to the [D3] Design Talents stage at the Cologne Furniture Fair over the past ten years, presenting their ideas in prototype form to both an industry and a general audience. Architonic takes a look at the show's success stories and considers why exhibitors and visitors alike keep coming back for more
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Ventura - the avant-garde brand of Swiss watches
Ventura, the avant-garde brand of Swiss watches, is back. The first "manufacture électronique" for high quality digital watches has recently presented, in the shape of the SPARC MGS, a timepiece which once more sets a new benchmark in chronometer design...
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The Making of Architonic Concept Space IV
The Milan fair provides the ideal setting for the premiere of Architonic Concept Space IV. And this will be a global first because never before has the FluidSolids® material, developed over many years and patented by the prestigious Swiss designer Beat Karrer, been processed at into a product.
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Marquetry in modern design
We associate it with Louis XVI, art nouveau furniture and the wall decorations of clubhouses, but when we talk about it we are generally referring to something quite different. Marquetry, otherwise known as inlay work, does not generate a positive response with people who like to surround themselves with modern design, but in what follows Architonic will do its best to rehabilitate its image.
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