Henny van Nistelrooy and his new Myltada screen in the interview and in the La Scala opera house. Illustration by Jana Trávníčková.


Describe briefly your project featuring at The Front Room?
Myltada is a double-panel space divider which is the latest edition to the “Shelter” collection.
Shelter is a collection of space dividers composed of specially selected fabrics, meticulously unthreaded in to new geometrical patterns. In reaction to the machine woven structures Henny has been unthreading the fabrics by hand in order to create new geometrical designs within the fabric. By doing this the tightly woven, opaque textile become translucent and the relation between the different threads that make up the fabrics becomes clear. The project has been inspired by a recent journeys to China. Here the beautiful architectural features appearing in many Ming/Qing imperial palaces and gardens have been of influence in the use of color and shape.

What do you visit in Milan every year?
I know, its a cliche but I am going to say Bar Basso. This bar has become a very special gathering place in the fair history. I love it how there are all these different versions about how it became this hotspot. Who were the first designers that started going there etc… Its was being tweeted about long before Twitter existed.

Do you have any every year ritual in Milan?
Hoping the weather will be good! I've experienced cold, rain, and the nicest spring days during the Salone. Being constantly on the move from one place toy the other those days its always a great thing when the sun is out and meet people on the streets. Though the worst must have been though the year the vulcano ashes kept all air planes on the ground. That year I couldn't even go there.

Do you know some good places for nice lunch or dinner in Milan?
I am planning to try a seafood restaurant this year highly recommended by a Milanese friend. Though I have to update you on the details.

What are you looking forward to see in Milan this year?
Seeing the work that is really pushing it into a new direction. The exhibition that really captivates me and make think of things all over again.

Do you have some recommendations to visit something else in Milan this year?
La Scala opera house is pretty impressive.

Where else we can see your exhibited products in Milan this year?
For Revolver Shelving System Im happy to be working with PianoPrimo. Expect a seven meter wall display of this system in their gem of a traditional town house, just down from Via Tortona.

Visit The Front Room at Ca' Laghetto space, Via Laghetto 11, Milan, 17 - 22 April. We will be there!

We have here the second interview with The Front Room designers. This time with Oskar Peet from OS ∆ OOS studio who has created collection of lamps called SYZYGY. Our illustrator Jana Trávníčková has composed this photo montage of the lamp with famous Michelangelo theme from Sistine Chapel in Rome again corresponding with Oskar`s answers.


Describe briefly your project featuring at The Front Room?
In astronomy, a syzygy is a straight line configuration of three celestial bodies in a gravitational system. The word is often used in reference to the Sun, the Earth and either the Moon or a planet, where the latter is in conjunction or opposition. Solar and lunar eclipses occur at times of syzygy, as do transits and occultations. Everyday the sun ‘rises and sets’ making life on earth possible. The sun was our first and only light source, in contradiction to the light sources we have today the sun is a continuously never ending burning ball of fire. We experience night only when a part of the earth is cast into shadow from itself as it rotates around the sun. These new lights are inspired on the same principle, the light source is constant, remaining always on. The light is adjusted by a subtle rotation of three light filtering discs places in front of the light source. The rotational combinations of these three discs mimic the effects of a syzygy. This physical blocking of the light was an important aspect in our concept, where a total of three different lights demonstrate the three different aspects of a syzygy; transit, occultation and eclipse. The end result is atmospheric light inspired by the sun and its surrounding celestial bodies, where the light quality can be adjust but this time on the human scale.

What do you visit in Milan every year?
We are not avid visitors of the Salone, but when we are there we try to see as much as we can. The smaller presentations from younger designers are always a treat, but not always good.

Do you have any every year ritual in Milan?
We both have only been twice to Milan for the Salone, so it's difficult to say what we would define as a ritual, but a good proper hangover is a sure thing! Who said rituals have to be positive.

Do you know some good places for nice lunch or dinner in Milan?
I would like to be able to give up a name or address, but I only know where these restaurants are when I see them, I mostly bump into these spots by accident.

What are you looking forward to see in Milan this year?
Well were presenting our own work for the first time... so I'm defiantly looking forward to seeing that! I also worked on an exciting project with Studio Scholten & Baijings which will be great to see finished and on display.

Do you have some recommendations to visit something else in Milan this year?
I would like to see the workshop of famous bicycle builder Alberto Masi which is situated under a velodrome in Milan, but culturally I don't think there is very much, best jump on a train to Florence or Rome.

Where else we can see your exhibited products in Milan this year?
The Front Room is where we present the SYZYGY lamp series, and Sophie Mensen has her COLUMN project in production with furniture producer MOGG (mogg.it) that will be presented at the Salone Del Mobile, Pad 06, Stand F56.

We pay homage to Brazilian-born painter, sculptor and graphic designer Almir da Silva Mavignier (born 1925) who is a brilliant master of color, geometry and optical illusion.

Active in Europe (Paris, Hamburg, Ulm) from the early 1950s, Mavignier is one the members of the highly influential Brazilian group of artist interested in abstract and kinetic art during the 1950s and 1960s. Mavignier connected his native tropical passion with European concrete art and created his own version the the op-art which he applied for fine art as well as graphic design.

Here is our second editorial for Prague-based lifestyle magazine Esprit. This time about flying adventures of the 1920s and 1930s.

We have select four important airplanes of the era and their stories about long distance or expedition flights. The result is the illustration of the sky full of beautiful flying machines of the first half of 20th century.

We have here first interview from our The Front Room series. This time with Lex Pott. Photo collage of True Colours project (above) was exclusively made by Jana Trávníčková for us. It is based on the designer`s answers below.

Describe briefly your project featuring at The Front Room?
The project Transience is a research on the oxidazation of silver. This natural procces is controlled an designed as a series of three mirrors. Besides that I show the Miniature version of my True Colours panels in a new collaboration with Found by James.The True Colours Miniatures is a research on material and their relation to their own oxide and patina colours.

What do you visit in Milan every year?
I feel like a virgin in Milan. I visited the fair only once before. Frankly i am very excited to get to learn Milan better and harvest from all the hard work that we present this year!

Do you have any every year ritual in Milan?
Hopefully ashclouds from Iceland do not become rituals.

Do you know some good places for nice lunch or dinner in Milan?
I cannot remember the names but what comes up first in my mind is to drink a good espresso while you are standing in a bar.

What are you looking forward to see in Milan this year?
People and visions. I actually dont care so much about the polished product but i always enjoy experiments and new visions.

Do you have some recommendations to visit something else in Milan this year?
Most by Tom Dixon, Mini by Scholten & Baijings and Spring the exhibition by Premsela.

Where else we can see your exhibited products in Milan this year?
1. Tuttobene, The New Glint of Things exhibition, 2. Spring - Excellence, Talent and Inspiration in Design, 3. Vitra stand at the fair, 4. MOST

Visit The Front Room at Ca' Laghetto space, Via Laghetto 11, Milan, 17 - 22 April. We will be there!

We are media partners of The Front Room: Geometry and Color exhibition in Milan next week. Curated by our friend Matylda Krzykowski and Marco Gabriele Lorusso, the exhibition is the group show of experimental designers whose work is all about geometry and colors.

The event will take place at Ca' Laghetto - Via Laghetto 11 right in the heart of Milan. Come and have a look at the wonderful objects and enjoy the moment with the designers. We are looking forward to seeing you there! Opening at 18th April 2012.

For the upcoming series of interviews with some of participating designers here on OKOLO, we have teamed up with Matylda Krzykowski and illustrator and artist Jana Trávníčková who presents designers works on collages in the context of designers answers on their Milan visit.

Stay tuned and see personal recommendations and experiences for visiting places and events in Milan from Daphna Isaacs, Lex Pott, Dana Cannam,
OS ∆ OOS and others. Our personal Milan preview is here!

Norwegian designer Daniel Rybakken has presented his new Single Flower vase this week. The design will be officially launched at Salone del Mobile in Milan.

Despite we love simple and deeply conceptual design of Daniel Rybakken, we could not forget our favorite mid-century designer Carl Auböck who designed many similar vases in the 1950s. As a reaction for after-war financial crisis in austria, Auböck has designed these vases for everyone who could not buy expensive pack of flowers, but only just one piece. Very precise brass objects are small table sculptures. Has Rybakken designed his vase also as a reaction for global economical crisis today?

More on Carl Auböck in our Vienna Only magazine.

Mobile phones by Tokujin Yoshioka or Naoto Fukasawa. It is the Japanese brand iida.

Some times ago we came up to their nice catalogues presenting various phone models. Every piece is unique work of technology and design. Robust, colorful, sensational, flashy, rather than minimalist as last global trends lead, iida products are different and represents "disco" in the world of design of mobile phones.

Our Light Sculptures exhibition at DOX by Qubus concept store was created in collaboration with designer Jakub Berdych from Qubus studio who created free form installation using glass tables and visual abstraction of the cables. As a whole it resembles large lightning space object.

The installation starts chronologically in the 1950s, when the Czechoslovak industrial and interior design had an advantage because it was not forced to conform strictly to the period’s socialist realism and historicism in such areas as fine arts. In the field of lighting design, Czech designers tended towards the style of international modernism, which dominated throughout the architecture and design of almost entire civilized world. Lighting design, in this context, is often reminiscent of principles typical of modern visual arts, primarily of abstractionism and the upcoming kinetic art, which was suppressed by socialist realism in the former Czechoslovakia. Thus, lamps – like the period’s glass production – became one of few possible materializations of modernist ideas, which had been fully repressed for some time in the field of fine arts. Lights are delicate statues with a luminous function. This holds true for both the production in the newly established producer cooperatives, such as Napako, Drupol, Lidokov, and Zukov, and the hand-crafted lights by Alena Nováková, Antonín Hepnar, and others. Their aesthetics and designing methods approximated modernist designs of European and American designers in many aspects. Although the forms are similar, the quality of workmanship often lags behind the brilliant works of French and Italian designers such as Angelo Lelli, Gino Sarfatti, Boris Lacroix, Michel Buffet, and Jacques Biny. Refined metals and detailed workmanship were substituted with imitations and substandard quality of socialist production. The unique table lamp designed by Jaroslav Anýž, a descendant of the famous pre-war lighting brand, also displayed at this exhibition, serves as an exception to these average works. This lamp, designed for the national enterprise of Lustry in Kamenický Šenov, is a technically and aesthetically artful combination of three materials: the base is made from Ditmar Urbach porcelain, the body from metal, and the shade from glass. Other lamps designed by Josef Hůrka, Pavel Grus, and others are very elegant and feature great visual aspects despite some workmanship flaws. Czech design, for that matter, struggled with the confrontation of great design and imperfect workmanship throughout the communist regime.

The organic decorative aesthetics of the so-called Brussels style, named in Czechoslovakia in relation to the world exhibition in Brussels in 1958, dominated until the late 1960s, with table lamps of various elegant delicate shapes made in the above-mentioned producer cooperatives serving as the best example. It was in the 1970s when new impulses arrived – the simplification and monumentalization of new forms. The works of designers/artists/artisans Růžena Žertová and Antonín Hepnar stood out most in that period and continued to do so into the 1980s. The unique lights, which they made themselves in very limited editions, correspond with the period’s interest in space-age design and minimalism. One could easily find links with the decorative design of European designers Michel Boyer, Maria Pergay, Kim Moltzer, and Boris Tabakoff, whose works were also related to small-lot production and limited means. The impact of the futurist Italian designs by Joe Colombo and others, or their period presence, is also evident. Antonín Hepnar’s work – later, he started to experiment with halogen and very minimalist shapes – focuses on wooden lathed shapes, whereas the work of Brno-based architect Růžena Žertová specialized in metal.

Thus, the exhibition presents several fundamental works of Czech design from the second half of the twentieth century and partially documents its stylistic development on the single typological example. Most objects on display are presented in such a curatorial selection for the first time. Through their joint context, we strive to rediscover a neglected chapter in the history of Czech design and typology of table lamps.

Photos by Jaroslav Moravec

In Rotterdam we have visited legendary VIVID gallery.

Established in 1999 by Saskia Copper and Aad Krol, VIVID was one of the first galleries to exhibit contemporary limited design. Important creative hub for Dutch conceptual design of the last 10 years, VIVID inhabitants the iconic Red Apple Building designed by KCAP Architects&Planners.

Airy and fresh space on the ground floor always occupies exhibitions of unique conceptual design by many important creators such as Ettore Sottsass, Hella Jongerius, Studio Job, Atelier van Lieshout, Slothouber & Graatsma and Jaime Hayon, among many others.

We have looked behind the scene of the gallery and in its storeroom we have found some pieces by young as well as established Dutch and international designers. Chairs by Dirk Vander Kooij or Maarten Baas, porcelain and glass objects by Japanese designer Hisakazu Shimizu and other artistic objects documents cult status of this exhibition space.