This year Design Tide returned to Tokyo Midtown Hall in Akasaka, Minato-ku. It’s smaller than Tokyo Designers Week, and I think more focussed. Both events run at about the same time, and their promotional aims are roughly the same—so I’m working on the inevitable comparison… which should be the next post.

Above and below:
Prototype objects by Foodwork, a group of 8 Norwegian designers.

Foodwork’s table.
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Above and below:
Student works.

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Above and below:
Around a dinner table
Works by Israeli designers and artists based on the Jewish Friday meal and curated by Design Museum Holon.
(Above: Tomer Spector from Design Museum Holon)

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The 20 slides x 20-seconds-a-slide show and tell format for designers, artists and anyone with something to say began at Tokyo’s Super Deluxe, the bar/club/live venue that’s ‘open most nights for thinking and drinking’. Now it happens in about 500 places around the world. In October one was held in a bubble structure at TDW.

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Tokyo Designers’ Week 2012 was at Meiji Jingu Gaien in Aoyama. The themes house and play were explored over a range of events and exhibitions. Highlights, for me, were (just) a few pieces in the professional exhibition, an exhibition of often exquisitely beautiful architectural models and an exhibition of design and artworks inspired by the Edo period painter, Ito Jakucho.

From the professional exhibition

Hotei Chair and Otei Stool
Toshiyuki Kita
IDK Design Laboratory

Kita worked with a Thai producer using water hyacinth: the aquatic plant that infests many rivers and lakes around the world.

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Laptop computer carrying bag
Hikaru Yamaguchi
Cultural and creative arts, Yamaguchi Prefectural University

From the exhibition object label: The bag ‘utilises the same hand-made aluminium sheet metal technology as that used to manufacture the Shinkansen bullet train. The Hagi glass [below] is hand-blown hard glass made with melted quartz basalt produced from the volcano in Hagi.’

The combination of timber and glass and the way they are finished is particularly beautiful.

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Kids’ Nest
Kaori Shikichi
Kaori Shikichi Architect Office

Prototype desk and chair for children with a half tatami mat footprint.

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From the models exhibition

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From the Ito Jakuchu inspired exhibition

Soul Mosaic
Yukio Hashimoto

The combination of colours and form and patterns
Masaaki Hiromura

White Phoenix
Tamae Hirokawa

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An image becomes energy
Katsuhiko Hibino

Jakuchu 2012
Kenjiro Sano

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Lifelog_mobile
Kosei Komatsu

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Red&Black&White: 2D<->3D
(film)
Kazuma Morino

The Shinki of Chairs
Zhang Ke

1000 Jakuchu Ito
(book)
Gento

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Transmission
(film)
WOW Inc

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Connecting Polarity for Andaz Amsterdam
Marcel Wanders

Bernhard and Claudia from Kühn Keramik took over a 19th century pharmacy for their new ceramics showroom and workshop. Generations of the same family of pharmacists had been operating there for many years—right up until 2012. The original joinery was retained for displaying the work. A spiral staircase in a back room takes you down to an airy workshop—windowed to the street and well ventilated for their three kilns.

Bernhard likens his workspace to a bakery, and it does have that feel.

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Kathi Käppel is an animation director / illustrator who shares this simply set out studio in Kreuzberg with an architect and an eyewear designer. Much of her work is in character design—in flat colours and geometric shapes.

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Anna Sykora’s shopfront atelier, Anna Sykora Porzellan. Although almost everything she does is sold through distribution it’s nice to be able to walk in straight off the street—into a working studio.

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Tierlein
Volker Pfüller

Named as one of the most beautiful German books, 2009, by Stiftung Buchkunst.
Printed as tricolour linocuts.

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Lubok in Mexiko
Various artists

Released at the same named exhibition at Museo National de la Estampa, Mexico City, 2012.
Designed by Andrej Loll.
Four colour offset with black and white linocut-printed pages. I particularly like this juxtaposition.

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Trapped in White Tiger Sanctum
Christoph Ruckhäberle

Text by Helmut A Müller.
Released in association with the same named exhibition, Hospitalhof, Stuttgart, 2010.
Printed from polymer plates.

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Sag einfach Ja oder Nein!
Katja Schwalenberg

Printed as linocuts, 2009.

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Kombi
Franziska Holstein

Released with the same named solo show, Galerie Christian Ehrentraut, Berlin, 2012.
Printed offset. Folded sheets held by an elastic band.

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f/stop – The History of Now

Catalogue for the 5th f/stop Festival for Photography, Leipzig, 2012.
Designed by IG Grafik / Altevers / Detlefson / Fiedler / Koehn, Berlin with texts by Stephanie Siegel, Christin Krause, Thilo Scheffler, a.o.
Four colour offset.

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Lubok is an independent Leipzig publisher of (mainly) artists’ books. Particularly beautiful — in look, feel, even their smell — is their series of original linocut books printed by Thomas Siemon of the print workshop, carpe plumbum.

Henriette Weber at Lubok Verlag’s office in Leipzig.

Lubok 9
Christoph Ruckhäberle (Ed)

Linocuts by painting students at the Academy of Visual Arts, Leipzig, 2010.
Printed from the original linocut plates by Thomas Siemon on a Präsident-cylinder letterpress.

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Taken from the introductory text for the exhibition by Aanant & Zoo:
‘The gallery Aanant & Zoo dedicates the exhibition From the Age of the Poets to the interplay between the wonder of language, truth, the possibility of mis- or not understanding and poetry as a legitimate access to the world.’

Artist listing from Aanant & Zoo:
Johanna Calle, Luis Camnitzer, Hanne Darboven, Michael Dreyer, Friederike Feldmann, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Dora García, Simryn Gill, Peter Greenaway, Channa Horwitz, Bethan Huws, Vlado Martek, Henri Michaux, Edwin Moes, Robert Montgomery, Michael Müller, Aribert von Ostrowski, Kasper Pincis, Falke Pisano, Gerhard Rühm, Mike Ruiz, Max Schaffer, Carl Trahan, Cy Twombly, Geerten Verheus

From the Age of the Poets
Aanant & Zoo, Berlin
07.09.2012 – 20.10.2012

Above and below:
Entry treatment for the exhibition

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Neue Berliner Räume closed the Robert Montgomery exhibition, Echoes of Voices in the High Towers, with a dinner and book launch at Stattbad — a former public pool building in Wedding.

Large format book (50x34cm) on the exhibition by the publisher, Mono Kultur — those people from Berlin who do that very small format magazine of the same name that a surprising number of Australians seem to be familiar with.

Cooking up a risotto in the Schwimmenmeister’s office.

Manuel Wischnewski from Neue Berliner Räume.

 

Arrived in Berlin on 15 September at the end of  Berlin Art Week and decided to catch Art Berlin Contemporary on its second to last day and was too jet lagged to take much in, but I liked the simplicity of their display and signing system — bootprints and all.

Not so great for display systems and signage was the artist book festival attached to it called Miss Read. Most publishers literally had to be interrogated to find out who they were and what they did —but it was worth it, and the real reason for my visit on the day. More on independent publishers later.