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Furniture with growth potential: extendable tables
Accommodating one or two people only or a group, extendable tables can be adapted to a romantic tète-a-tète, a family with children or even a large festive gathering. Here we present the various types and systems which are available.
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Same But Different: furniture that repeats on you
In his analysis of how pleasure works, Freud argued that repetition – the act of doing or experiencing something over and over again – can, in its compulsiveness, be highly enjoyable. The grandaddy of psychoanalysis might, in that case, have enjoyed a number of designs presented at last month's Interieur 2010 design biennale, which play with the idea of repetition, both formally and in terms of the notion of play itself.
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Fair Preview: Design Biennale INTERIEUR 2010, Kortrijk, Belgium
If any fair is going to give Milan a run for its money in terms of a passion for high-end design and downright coolness, it's Belgian Design Biennale INTERIEUR. Since its first edition in 1968, the Kortrijk-based show has consistently upped the ante in the design-exhibition world and INTERIEUR 2010 is no different. Here's a taste of what's in store.
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Fancy a Joint?: innovative joinery in new furniture design
Screws? Glue? Who needs them? With a number of designers developing intriguing new ways of constructing furniture, Architonic takes a look at some examples of recent innovative joinery methods.
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From Start to Finnish: Architonic surveys Scandinavian design hero Tapio Wirkkala's remarkable oeuvre
With leading Finnish design brand Artek reissuing two of its fellow countryman Tapio Wirkkala's striking designs from the late 1960s and early 70s, as well as first-time-round, 'vintage' pieces of his being shown at international design fairs such as Design Miami Basel, now is the time to look back at the work of this highly productive designer, whose contribution to postwar Scandinavian design was as major as it was diverse.
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Déjà Vu All Over Again: two design shows look back
Another year over. But don't get all misty-eyed. Apply that retrospection to some engaging design instead. Two exhibitions currently running, one at Les Arts Décoratifs in Paris, the other at the offices of MariniPandolfi/Comet in Florence, look back at the rapid expansion in design production and consumption in post-war France and the lighting designs of Italian design hero Vico Magistretti respectively. And retrospectively.
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Modernes Besteck-Design
Dem Werkzeug moderner, westlicher Esskultur und der Vielfalt seiner gestalterischen Ausprägungen geht Susanne Junker, Professorin an der BHT Berlin, auf den Grund. Dabei entdeckte sie, dass die Form der Funktion folgen sollte und nicht umgekehrt.
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We Can Work It Out: design and mobile working
October sees the 2010 installment of Orgatec in Cologne, the leading international design fair for office and work environments. In spite of the death knell being sounded some time ago for the traditional, fixed-location office, it's still with us. Nonetheless, increasing numbers of people, thanks to rapid advances in wireless technology, are breaking free from their desks and taking to the road, working wherever they happen to pitch up. Architonic takes a look at a number of environments and products that respond – and further – this social trend.
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Design Israel
The completion of Ron Arad's small-scale masterpiece that is Israel's new Design Museum Holon signals a kind of design coming-of-age for the country. With its current design scene set to grow even further, Architonic talks to a number of established and emerging designers, curators and educators about the significance of Israeli design and where it's heading.
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Rezension: 'Andrée Putman – Ihr Gesamtwerk' von Donald Albrecht
„Der Künstler blickt immer in die Vergangenheit zurück, während er über die Zukunft nachdenkt,“ sagt Andrée Putman. Anlässlich ihres 85 Geburtstages erscheint eine Monografie, die Einblick in das immense Werk der Künstlerin und ihr aufregendes Leben als Mitglied der Pariser Haute Voleé gibt.
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This Product Can Change Your Life: the d.light story
Imagine, as a manufacturer, that your potential market is two billion consumers worldwide. This almost inconceivable figure is the ultimate scale of d.light's ambition, a consumer-products company set up by a pair of social entrepreneurs in 2007 to design and product lighting solutions for the one in four people on this planet who live without electricity. With two million lives already positively affected by d.light's innovative solar-powered lamps and counting, the company's story is only just beginning. Architonic spoke to co-founder and CEO Sam Goldman about this life-changing project.
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'It's all about surprising yourself': Matthew Hilton at the London Design Festival
British furniture designer Matthew Hilton's work manages to walk that very fine line between restraint and expressiveness. It's probably why his designs, offering as they do a kind of reassurance, are so respected by so many. But the path hasn't always been a smooth one, as Architonic discovered when we met up with Hilton at this year's London Design Festival...
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California Calls You!: Californian Design
California, and in particular Los Angeles, has been home to numerous Hollywood stars and other glamorous figures of the burgeoning jet-set since the 1930s. The City of Angels was the ideal place for many architects to develop their ideas. The spectacular landscape, the sophisticated clientele, the climate, the wealth of the film industry, and, above all, the free-thinking that transcended all con-
vention offered architects then, as well as now, the opportunity to realise their visionary projects.
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DMY 2010: Architonic reports from the Berlin design festival
Ernst Sagebiel's architectural matsterpiece Tempelhof Airport was the venue for this year's DMY design festival in Berlin. Architonic was needless to say there, ready for take-off.
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Slovenian Design
The "ISKRA: NON-ALIGNED DESIGN 1946–1990" exhibition held at the Architecture Museum Ljubljana (AML) came to an end in February. The exhibition provided an insight into the golden age of Slovenian product design, which lasted from the 1960s to the 1990s. Recently, a new generation of young Slovenian designers is creating a stir...
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Design Week in Jerusalem: Israeli creative talent on show
Ancient city. Contemporary design practice. Jerusalem's inaugural week-long design festival foregrounds once more Israel's conceptually confident and steadily growing design scene.
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DIY Design: the art and value of creative self-promotion
As the academic wheels of design creak into a new term, thoughts of the most recent graduates striving to avoid a professional-scrap-heap scenario fall to the back of the mind as the hunt for the latest bright young creatives begins again. But, with an increase in applicants and graduates in design subjects (around 60,000 this year in the UK) aiming to fit through what seems to be a shrinking net of professional opportunity in an already competitive field, how do designers react and evolve to ride out financial and employment turbulence?
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'It's hard, hard, hard work': One Year On at New Designers 2010
Left brain. Right brain. If we're to believe all that pop-neurology, you're either a creative type or someone who just loves solving maths problems. Design manufacturer and retailer Thorsten van Elten, curator of One Year On, the show for entrepreneurial designers, explains how it's all about firing on both cerebral cylinders...
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Medium Rare: Architonic at Design Miami Basel 2010
Described by its organisers as 'the pre-eminent global forum for collecting, exhibiting, discussing and creating design', Design Miami Basel, the annual European get-together for those who like their design a touch on the exclusive side, put on a robust show this year. With the love-it-or-hate-it market for limited-edition design and one-off pieces clearly here to stay, Architonic spent some serious fair time with three of the scene's leading international design gallerists...
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Heavy/Light
They say good things come in threes. Here, Architonic brings you five of the best concrete lamps on the market. It's all about contradiction.
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