BRIEF BUT INTENSE: THE ERA OF THE MEMPHIS GROUP

Sottsass Associati, Interior for an exhibition on Italian Design in Tokyo, 1984 © Photo: Marirosa Ballo © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2021 for all designs by Ettore Sottsass

Karl Lagerfeld’s Monte Carlo Apartment with designs by Memphis, Monaco, 1982 © Jacques Schumacher © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2021 for all designs by Ettore Sottsass

Nathalie du Pasquier, drawing of an interior, 1982 © Nathalie du Pasquier

With the exhibition MEMPHIS: 40 YEARS OF KITSCH AND ELEGANCE the Vitra Design Museum Gallery celebrates the fortieth anniversary of the group’s foundation through its creations. Interior objects, drawings, and further archival material give insight into the world of Memphis, whose design, seemingly having walked straight off the pages of a comic book, gave rise to a completely new look in which popular culture, advertising aesthetics, and post-modernism merged in a crazy medley. The exhibition is a homage to the brief but intense era of the Memphis group, whose energy and creative drive has lost none of its fascinations.

DANCE TILI YOU POPO

© Saeed Kakavand

© Saeed Kakavand

© Saeed Kakavand

© Saeed Kakavand

The exhibition TIEFSCHWARZ shows the influence the DJ duo, composed by the brothers Ali and Basti Schwarz, had on the electronic music scene of Stuttgart and beyond. Shaping the nightlife of the 1990s, their clubs On-U and Red Dog became the epicentres of the creative, art and gallery scene. More than two decades later, StadtPalais – Museum für Stuttgart welcomes them back home and revisits their influence on the city’s subcultural history.

AN ECLECTIC SEASIDE STAY

eclectic interior of ammos hotel

© Tom Parker

greek food on a table

© Tom Parker

© James Bedford 

© James Bedford 

On the shoreline just outside Chania, Crete, Ammos is home to a cheerful blend of bold fabrics, sweeping marble bookshelves, contemporary seating objects and anyone who comes to stay. The owner-operated boutique hotel reflects the energetic personality of the host and his team, eager to flaunt the island’s multifaceted appeal. The onsite taverna serves up an impressive spread of Greek specialities in close collaboration with a familiar network of local producers.

SERIAL HOUSING RELOADED: LION FEUCHTWANGER 61

© Filippo Bolognese für Euroboden

rendering of courtyard

© Filippo Bolognese für Euroboden

rendering of balconies

© Filippo Bolognese für Euroboden

Critically acclaimed for their “Wohnregal” in Berlin, architects FAR frohn&rojas are now advancing their take on prefabricated building on a larger scale: together with Euroboden, they are planning an exciting urban building structure comprised of 124 flexible apartments and outdoor communal spaces. Surrounded by a GDR housing estate and the lush greenery of Berlin’s Kaulsdorf district, the project gives way to a highly contemporary reinterpretation of serial building – providing a wide range in residential layouts for its occupancy.

RODIN/ARP: ECHOS OF EVERLASTINGNESS

Installation view “Rodin/Arp” at Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, 2020. Hans Arp: © 2020, ProLitteris, Zürich; Photo: Mark Niedermann

Installation view “Rodin/Arp” at Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, 2020. Hans Arp: © 2020, ProLitteris, Zürich; Photo: Mark Niedermann

Very few know that Arp repeatedly paid tribute to Rodin by means of relief, sculpture and even poetry for over 30 years. In their first museum encounter ever, the Rodin/Arp exhibition at Fondation Beyeler enquires the timeless dialogue between Hans Arp (1886-1966) and the pioneer of modern sculpture Auguste Rodin (1840-1917), marking the beginning of a new era of sculpture.

JUST FRIDAYS, ROLF SACHS

© Max von Treu

Cosmopolitan and artist Rolf Sachs is European. He commutes between Rome and St. Moritz, as an artist always looking for variety in impressions and areas of tension. Visits to either house make apparent that his curiosity and view of the world and people as a whole are reflected in all the works of art, installations and design objects that will have you wandering through a chamber of curiosities. However, it is above all his incredible, open nature as a host that gathers together a diverse group of individuals around his table – open-minded, ready for discussions. Read our interview with the artist here. 

REMEMBERING TEGEL—A STORY IN PHOTOGRAPHS

© Rober Rieger and Felix Brüggemann

© Rober Rieger and Felix Brüggemann

© Rober Rieger and Felix Brüggemann

© Rober Rieger and Felix Brüggemann

Last spring, at the height of a global pandemic and just months before the long-awaited opening of the new Berlin airport BER, TXL, which had been reduced to minimum operation, resembled much less an airport as it did a stranded spaceship. The sudden calm and desertedness revealed the iconic architecture of the building with countless hidden details, captured by the photographers Robert Rieger and Felix Brüggemann in their 88-page illustrated book. The result is a personal homage to Tegel, to the architecture of the sixties and the unmistakable design logic of this airport, cherished by so many.

BUILDING FOR TOMORROW—EXPLORING NEW WORK

© Klawe Rzeczy (Getty Images)
 

How do we plan to work during and after the pandemic? How can architecture inspire creativity and communication, as well as support the current social upheavals? To answer these questions, AD Architectural Digest and Euroboden have launched the platform TRANSFORMATIONAL BUILDINGS. Experts from various fields examine the topic of the architecture needed for New Work in the future.

BEYOND THE NAKED EYE

© HGEsch

© HGEsch© HGEsch

© HGEsch

For the internationally renowned architectural photographer, HGEsch, a construction site is a promise: it is the physical transition from concept to built structure. His exhibition PROCESS ARCHITECTURE—A PHOTOGRAPHIC RESEARCH OF GLOBAL BUILDING SITES at Euroboden Architekturkultur in Berlin depicts the in-between moments of architecture—the structures and details that will ultimately be hidden, vanished and forgotten within the building.

FALLING WALLS AND SCIENCE BREAKTHROUGHS

The Other Nefertiti, Studio shot of life-size 3D print by Nora Al-Badri (Science in the Arts), Credit: Nelles/Al-Badri

Disruptive Innovation Agency, Rafael de Laguna Vera (Science and Innovation Management), Credit: Sprin-D, Bundesagentur für Sprungonnovationen

Can data be used as pigment? If the deadly pathology of COVID-19 could be translated into music, how would it sound? What does machine learning have to do with colonial heritage? Or architecture with decay? The Falling Walls Foundation refutes the false binary between art and science—and many more. This year the Falling Walls Conference was reshaping its model to offer a digital stage for researchers and create a global forum for scientific breakthroughs and their initiators. Rather than simply broadcasting the conference, an international call for the most innovative minds has been launched, showing 100 winners in the programme and over 600 finalists in the media library. 

PULLING BACK THE CURTAIN ON TALINN AND BUCHAREST

Kinetic sculptures (2013) by Kaarel Kurismaa, Installation view at Spike Berlin, Photo: Joe Clark

Installation view at Spike Berlin, Photo: Joe Clark

Works by Tobias Kaspar (2018), Installation view at Spike Berlin, Photo: Joe ClarkInstallation view at Spike Berlin, Photo: Joe Clark

Upon meeting Marian Ivan from Ivan Gallery in Bucharest and Olga Temnikova from Temnikova & Kasela Gallery in Tallinn, we couldn’t resist picking their brains on their perspectives of the art world in their home cities. Read the interview on their exhibition project ON ADORNMENTS here.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, VITRAHAUS

© Clemens Poloczek

© Clemens Poloczek

© Clemens Poloczek

The VitraHaus exemplifies the diversity of the Vitra Campus in Weil am Rhein. The striking building, designed by Basel architects Herzog & de Meuron, is both an experimental laboratory and flagship store for the Swiss furniture manufacturer. In celebration of the building’s tenth anniversary, Vitra has refurbished all levels, including café and shop. New is the so-called Interior Studio, which offers visitors a hands-on approach to the design of their own interiors.
 
For the top floor, Vitra worked with the young US-based architecture office Charlap Hyman & Herrero, who turned the loft into a fictional film director’s apartment. The result is bold and playful, yet rigorously curated, drawing inspiration from the surrounding countryside, including the newly created perennial garden by Piet Oudolf.  

JUST FRIDAYS, KHUSHNU HOOF

© Jessica Nair

Architect Khushnu Panthaki Hoof is the Director of the Vastushilpa Foundation for Studies and Research in Environmental Design based in Ahmedabad, India. She has worked for many years alongside Balkrishna Doshi and is a partner at Sangath. In this issue of our JUST FRIDAYS interview series, she reflects on the limits and opportunities of architecture and the challenge of social proximity at a time of physical distance. Read the full interview here.

ALGORITHM GENERATED FORESTS BY ANDREAS GREINER

ai generated image of forest, by andreas greiner

Andreas Greiner, Lost in The Woods II, 2019 
Courtesy DITTRICH&SCHLECHTRIEM

ai generated forests by andreas greiner, installation view

© Robert Schittko, Art/Beats

© Robert Schittko, Art/Beats

Probing the relationship between ecology and technology, Andreas Greiner charts concerns of climate change and mass extinction through works emerging from artificial intelligence technologies. For Jungle Memory, a dataset comprising of several thousand photographs, shot by Greiner at the ancient Hambacher Forst and the Polish Białowieża, was fed into a digital calculus to derive the idea of a forest. Andreas aims to challenge the narration of ecological issues, whilst urgently acknowledging the fundamental dependency we have on non-industrialized functioning ecosystems.

CHEZWEITZ FOR JEWISH MUSEUM BERLIN

© Alexander Butz

© Alexander Butz

© Alexander Butz

In August, after several years of renovation, the Jewish Museum Berlin opened its new core exhibition in the Libeskind Building. Unfolding in 3,500 square meters, the exhibition portrays the past and present of Jewish life in Germany with new points of emphasis. The exhibition architecture, designed from the ground up by chezweitz, allows the contents to be experienced in intuitive, tangible fashion and manages to reintegrate the iconic Daniel Libeskind building into the exhibition.