Spot On the Vitra Schaudepot
Today, museums are fittingly encouraged to reevaluate the focus of their work, given it is also their collections that shape relevance, status, and success of artists and designers. With the new collection presentation at the Vitra Schaudepot, the museum is exploring the role of women in furniture design while also questioning the museum’s own practice. “Spot On: Women Designers in the Collection” seeks to strengthen awareness of female designers’ works and to give them an equal voice in public discourse. Featured designers are Inga Sempé, Reiko Tanabe, Matali Crasset, and Gunjan Gupta among others.
All That is Light
Alessia Pegorin and Antonia Insunza are As A Ceremony. Both architects by trade, they design interiors, luminaires, and light itself. Practicing extensive research and considering the users’ well-being as much as the potential impact on the environment, the designers implement their holistic approach into all their projects. Unique objects and interiors, reflecting on design conventions and the meaning of light within urban life, are one of the results.
Revitalising Work Spaces: Hospitality Meets the Office
Although now is not the first time that we need to reinvent our work environment, we might find ourselves asking what it is we expect and need from our offices today. Vitra’s answer is the Club Office. Usually, clubs are formed by like-minded people who get together to collaborate, exchange knowledge, and create. The Club Office shares the same spirit: it is a place of social belonging and identification, inviting people (back) to the heart of the organisation and once again bringing them together. By combining office elements with a hospitable atmosphere, the club fosters moments of serendipity and helps shape collective knowledge, while still offering flexible workspaces and meeting areas.
An Amplifier of Public Space
Amplifier, a site specific work by Bettina Pousttchi, draws on Karl Friedrich Schinkel’s 19th century architecture of the Berlin Concert Hall. A frontal view of the portico reveals five photographically printed columns between the six familiar Ionic columns. Unlike the historic ones, Bettina Pousttchi’s columns extend beyond the first pediment, leading directly to the portico’s higher second pediment. By altering the familiar dimensions, the installation changes the real perception of the building, creating a new experience of its own.
Cinema dates in Siemensstadt with Hans Scharoun
How can motion picture best present a discourse on labour? Set against the architectural backdrop of Berlin’s reform settlement Siemensstadt, the online film series, KINO SIEMENSSTADT – The complex of Labour, explores this very question through a ten-week online series. Together with the accompanying exhibition Anette Rose, Techno Textiles at Scharaun Project Space for Art and Architecture invites artists to reflect on the subject of ‘work’ through film and video set in the local context of Siemensstadt as a working-class neighbourhood.
2038, ENTERING A NEW SERENITY
The German contribution to the 17th Architecture Biennale tunes in from the year 2038 to tell the story of a world, in which everything, though imperfect, has been made better in a profound way. Based on the collective knowledge from international experts across the fields of architecture, art, ecology, economy, philosophy, politics, science and technology, 2038 illustrates, through a series of films, an emergence from crises into a world of radical democracy and viable solutions for co-existence.
HYBRID GALLERY WEEKEND
On the occasion of the 17th Gallery Weekend, 49 Berlin galleries presented high-calibre exhibitions, featuring both established and up and coming artists to a local and international public. Despite all odds, the presentation was accessible both on-site and online through an all-encompassing digital format, which allowed Gallery Weekend exhibitions to be fully explored remotely for the very first time. Bureau N was involved in the realisation of the online double including a web journal, commissioned features with galleries and art-world persona, Instagram TV exhibition previews and the moderation of live tours across all participating galleries.
LIFE IN CONTINUOUS TRANSFORMATION
In times of social distancing and spatial boundaries, can we give up human control and embrace a biocentric perspective in its place? LIFE by Olafur Eliasson entangles the Fondation Beyeler with everything that is usually kept outside: microorganisms, non-human species, the weather, the climate. Space has been made for others as bright green water, infused with uranine, now floods the exhibition halls. Inside, delicate floating plants coexist with the park’s insects, bats and birds. Emerging in March and fading away in July, the artwork can be experienced from sunrise to sunset, for there are no fixed opening or closing hours.
TWO COUNTRIES, ONE (DESIGN) HISTORY
More than thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Vitra Design Museum presents the first overview of post-war design in the two Germanies. “German Design 1949–1989: Two Countries, One History” offers a comparative selection of design from East and West Germany and explores ideological and aesthetic differences as well as parallels and interrelations between East and West. Exhibits range from iconic pieces of furniture and lamps to graphic, industrial, and interior design to fashions, textiles, and personal ornaments.
ANYTHING GOES?
Berlin boasts a unique concentration of noteworthy buildings from the 1980s. At the time, radical new concepts, colourful diversity and a certain aesthetic randomness challenged previous ideas of living in the modern city. Widely labelled “postmodern”, it drew on structural typologies and stylistic devices from the past and tested alternative urban lifestyles. The exhibition ANYTHING GOES? BERLIN ARCHITECTURE IN THE 1980s at Berlinische Galerie explores what and who shaped these buildings and visions developed for the divided city in the last decade before the fall of the Wall.
BRIEF BUT INTENSE: THE ERA OF THE MEMPHIS GROUP
DANCE TILI YOU POPO
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
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
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.