The Aram Gallery is mounting its own exhibition on the Bauhaus to coincide with the Barbican Art Gallery‘s current exhibition on the subject. With a clear focus on contemporary design, this complementary exhibition expands on both the enduring influence and the prolonged inspiration the school has, and continues to have, on the work of contemporary working architects and designers.

BAUHAUS LIVE, 18th May – 17th July 2012

THE ARAM GALLERY

110 Drury Lane, London WC2B 5SG (020 7557 7526)

Open: Mon – Sat 10am – 6pm (Thurs until 7pm)

Interested in the way designers think and work, this exhibition shows how the essence of this hugely influential period in design history is manifest. In some cases that essence dominates an entire project – a building for example looks ‘of the period’, in others it is more subtle – through the use of colour, form or proportion.

The result is an exhibition which shows how the ethos of the Bauhaus has filtered down into the work of contemporary designers, but still remains a current source of inspiration.

Works shown span architecture, product, graphics and furniture design.

Participants include: Stanton Williams, Eric Parry Architects, Max Lamb, Pia Wüstenberg, Michael Anastassiades, David Chipperfield Architects, Piercy & Company, Tony Fretton Architects, BCXSY, Jasper Morrison, Allies & Morrison, David Kohn Architects, Eva Jiricna Architects, John Miller + Partners, Sebastian Bergne, Martino Gamper, Sophie Smallhorn, Tomas Kral and Konstantin Grcic.

Images – from top: Tube Light by Michael Anastassiades (2006); Constrast Stool and Table by BCXSY (2012); Belgrade Theatre by Stanton Williams (2007); Sit Together Bench by Martino Gamper (2003); Thinking Man’s Chair by Jasper Morrison for Cappellini (1986); La Coleccion Jumex by David Chipperfield Architects (2013). Below: Lemonade Building by Allford Hall Monaghan Morris (2010).

In 2008, Polaroid announced that it would stop making analogue film products. Ten former Polaroid employees decided to save the last production plant left in the Netherlands and The Impossible Project was born. Islington design store Aria is hosting the first UK Impossible Project exhibition.

THE IMPOSSIBLE PROJECT, 18th May-15th June 2012

ARIA

Barnsbury Hall, Barnsbury Street, London N1 1PN (020 7704 6222)

By engaging a team of film experts from around the world, Impossible developed a new range of films and in doing so, have prevented 3 million Polaroid cameras from becoming obsolete.

Aria has commissioned photographers Ruvan Wijesooriya (New York) and Kasia Bobula (London) to complete a project with the Polaroid camera and films, which is exhibited in the Islington store.

Reconditioned stock of original Polaroid cameras, plus the new range of compatible films are available to buy from Aria.

COLLECT: the international art fair for contemporary objects, returns to the Saatchi Gallery in 2012, presented by the Crafts Council. A top line-up of artists are represented here by 31 galleries from 11 countries around the world, including Japan, the Netherlands, Germany, Norway, Sweden and China.

COLLECT 2012, 11th-14th May 2012

SAATCHI GALLERY

Duke of York’s HQ, King’s Road, London SW3 4RY

Tickets: £15 on the door or £10 in advance

The galleries occupy the ground and first floor of the grand Saatchi Gallery with the Project Space area on the second floor featuring ten large-scale installations by individual artists with a focus on textiles and furniture.

Museum-quality contemporary crafts are displayed throughout COLLECT, showcasing the best ceramic, glass, jewellery, textiles, wood, furniture, silver and fine metalwork by both new talent and established artists.

Artists at COLLECT 2012 include; Italian master craftsman Giovanni Corvaja (Clare Beck at Adrian Sassoon), whose exquisite jewellery pieces can take several months to complete, Steffen Dam (Joanna Bird Pottery) showing his hand-engraved glass pieces evoking scientific specimen jars, bold ceramic sculptures by Wouter Dam, and jewellery by both Olympic medal designer David Watkins (Contemporary Applied Arts) and Paralympic medal designer Lin Cheung (Galerie Sofie Lachaert).

Alongside national galleries and museums, COLLECT gives private collectors access to buy new work from leading artists from around the world.

A new Crafts Council touring exhibition ‘Raw Craft‘ is previewing at COLLECT, exploring the renewed contemporary interest in raw craft process inspired by real life material and small workshop culture.

LONDON DESIGN GUIDE editor, Max Fraser, is chairing a talk with the curators of Raw Craft and some of the participating makers at 2:30pm on Friday 11th May.

Images – from top: Blue sculpture by Wouter Dam (represented by Joanna Bird); Circle I by Ptolemy Mann, 2011 (represented at COLLECT by Contemporary Applied Arts); Restoration I (Aung San Suu Kyi) by Stephen Dixon, 2011 (represented at COLLECT by Bluecoat Display Centre); Pin Bowl by Tavs Jorgenson, 2011 (represented at COLLECT by The Wills Lane Gallery);  Landscape Box by Nan Nan Liu, 2009 (Photo: Bill Burnett, represented at COLLECT by Bishopsland); Untitled by Noon Passama (represented by Galerir Ra); Blue and white monumental vase by Felicity Aylieff (represented by Clare Beck at Adrian Sassoon).

Gallery Libby Sellers presents ‘Pyramids of Makkum’, a collection of sculptural tulip pyramids designed by Hella Jongerius, Jurgen Bey, Studio Job and Alexander van Slobbe and produced by ceramics company Royal Tichelaar Makkum. The exhibition is timed to coincide with the COLLECT Contemporary Craft Fair and the Chelsea Flower Show.

PYRAMIDS OF MAKKUM, 10th May – 16th June 2012

GALLERY LIBBY SELLERS

41-42 Berners Street, London W1T 3NB (020 3384 8785)

Having restored original 17th century flower pyramids at Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, Royal Tichelaar Makkum challenged four leading contemporary Dutch designers to create their own modern interpretations, using a replica of the restored flower pyramid as their inspiration.

The original flower pyramids were inspired by porcelain imported from China by The Dutch East India Company, and were considered the finest example of Delftware of the period.

Royal Tichelaar Makkum’s contemporary interpretations are all made in the original Faience technique, while hinting at the surrealism and changing perception of the object’s purpose.

Images – from top: Pyramid by Hella Jongerius, 2008, Pyramid by Alexander van Slobbe, 2008, Pyramid by Jurgen Bey, 2008, Pyramid by Studio Job, 2008, Replica of a traditional pyramid. All photography Royal Tichelaar Makkum. Courtesy Gallery Libby Sellers.

In a collaboration between the contemporary rug producer Christopher Farr and The Courtauld Gallery, five hand-crafted rugs based on original designs by the Omega Workshops are unveiled at Somerset House.

AFTER BLOOMSBURY: RUGS FROM THE OMEGA WORKSHOP, 1913-1916

3rd May-24th June 2012

SOMERSET HOUSE (open daily, 10-6)

Great Arch Hall, South Wing, Strand, London WC2R 1LA

Visitors to the Great Arch Hall encounter ‘After Bloomsbury: Rugs from the Omega Workshops, 1913-1916′, extraordinarily contemporary-looking rugs displayed alongside their original designs of nearly 100 years ago.

The short-lived Omega Workshops marked one of the most creative moments in the history of modernist craft and design in Britain. Founded by the artist and influential critic Roger Fry in 1913, the Omega Workshops was a laboratory of radical design ideas involving many of the most avant-garde artists of the day, notably Fry’s young friends from the Bloomsbury Group Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell who became co-directors of the company.

Inspired in part by contemporary art in Europe, especially Fauvism and Cubism and the work of such artists as Picasso, Braque and Matisse, as well as African art, the Omega Workshops created a range of objects for the home: from rugs and linens to ceramics, furniture and clothing – all boldly coloured and patterned with dynamic abstract designs.

The Workshops managed to stay open during the First World War but closed in 1919. These six years saw the creation of an impressive sequence of designs of wonderful inventiveness and originality which were well ahead of their time and still look fresh and exciting today.

The best of the Omega rug designs are bold and lyrical with a strong use of black, often in the form of hatching, and saturated blocks of colour thus creating an organic geometrical pattern. Designs are often cut across by strong, gestural diagonals and lines are left deliberately uneven and irregular.

The Courtauld Gallery (located in Somerset House) owns the largest surviving group of Omega drawings, about a hundred, bequeathed by Fry’s daughter Pamela Diamand in 1958. The majority of these are for rugs and reveal much about working practices at Omega. However, only a handful of Omega rugs was ever made.

Christopher Farr and his business partner Matthew Bourne selected five of the most vibrant and challenging of the Omega designs which were translated into working drawings as cartoons for the rug makers. As some of the drawings had faded and others were incomplete, they examined the Omega palette and, after consulting conservators, established the colour scheme to be used for these new textiles.

Based in London and Los Angeles, Christopher Farr has been at the forefront of contemporary rug design for over twenty years and he and Bourne have brought a new vitality to textile art.

See a review of their London showroom on page 19 of LONDON DESIGN GUIDE 2012-2013 edition.

All images courtesy of Christopher Farr.

Having spent several years selling into the British market without retail premises, independent Japanese bike brand Tokyobike has now opened a dedicated cycle shop in Shoreditch from which to sell its clean-lined, timeless bicycles.

TOKYOBIKE

87-89 Tabernacle Street, London EC2A 4BA (020 7251 6842)

Open: Tuesday-Saturday 11am-7pm

Cycling has become incredibly popular in London over the past 5-10 years. The Mayor’s Office has supported the introduction of dedicated cycle lanes zig-zagging across the city, making cycling much safer amid the frenzy of London motor traffic.

Cycling has also become rather cultish. Few cyclists are prepared to settle for ‘any old bike’. Performance and style go hand-in-hand for many bike owners, which is why Tokyobike has become so popular. In a truly Japanese way, no design details are added without a functional reason which gives these bikes a no-nonsense, clean-lined aesthetic.

For those who like to add to or customise their bike, the new shop sells a carefully curated selection of accessories, displayed with museum-like precision in cases under glass.

In addition to the shop element, Tokyobike offers a repair and alterations service from its onsite workshop.

This Tokyobike store is located in Shoreditch – the heartland of super-cool London cyclists and a hub for creative businesses and design stores. Why not take a tour of the area by bicycle and follow the route specified on page 138 of LONDON DESIGN GUIDE 2012-2013 edition? Buy your copy here.

Exploring the world’s most famous modern art and design school, Bauhaus: Art as Life, at the Barbican Art Gallery is the biggest Bauhaus exhibition in the UK in over 40 years.

Bauhaus: Art as Life, 3rd May – 12th August 2012

Barbican Centre

Silk Street, London EC2Y 8DS (020 7638 4141)

From its avant-garde arts and crafts beginnings, the Bauhaus shifted towards a more radical model of learning uniting art and technology. A driving force behind Modernism, it further sought to change society in the aftermath of World War I, to find a new way of living.

This major new Barbican Art Gallery show presents the pioneering and diverse artistic production that make up the school’s turbulent fourteen-year history from 1919 to 1933 and delves into the subjects at the heart of the Bauhaus – art, design, people, society and culture.

Bringing together more than 400 works, the show features a rich array of painting, sculpture, architecture, film, photography, furniture, graphics, product design, textiles, ceramics and theatre by such Bauhaus masters as Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and students including Kurt Kranz, Xanti Schawinsky and Alma Siedhoff-Buscher.

Bauhaus: Art as Life is produced in co-operation with Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin / Museum für Gestaltung, Stiftung Bauhaus Dessau and Klassik Stiftung Weimar, and supported by tp bennett, The Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, The Stanley Thomas Johnson Foundation and The Henry Moore Foundation.

Images – from top: Farkas Molnar Entwurf fur ein Einfamilien haus 1922, Josef Albers Club Chair, Laszlo Moholy Nagy Typographie 1928, Bauhaus Walter Gropius and masters on the roof, Eugen Batz Exercise for colour theory course taught by Kandinsky 1929-30, Gropius Graphic school plan. 

Following the success of her pop-up vintage boutique Lulu Bright in September 2010, the owner Eva Coppens is opening a permanent shop in Clerkenwell, Førest London.

FØREST LONDON

115 Clerkenwell Rd, London EC1R 5BY

Its home on Clerkenwell Road is just a few doors away from the pop-up’s original location – Coppens was keen to stay in the area due to its burgeoning local design scene.

The shop specialises in original mid-century furniture and lighting, whilst also providing a platform for exhibitions and collaborations with contemporary and emerging artists. The first collaboration is with print designer Tamasyn Gambell.

As an avid collector of Scandinavian and Northern European design, Coppens has travelled extensively in the last couple of years acquiring pieces by Nordic design legends such as Jacobsen, Hvidt and Vodder.

She has also discovered lesser-known but just as inspiring artists, and hopes she can help young talents claim their space among the big names.

The new shop has undergone a complete revamp (it was previously a jewellers), to create a clean, minimalist backdrop – giving the furniture space to breathe.

The official launch is on 25th April 2012, after which the shop will be open Monday to Friday 11am – 7pm and two Saturdays a month – check the website to see which two.

To buy a copy of the LONDON DESIGN GUIDE, complete with reviews of over 130 other London design stores and galleries, click here.

Gallery FUMI has moved from Tabernacle Street to a new space at 16 Hoxton Square, a spot that will be familiar to FUMI fans, as it has previously been used as an alternative location for pioneering design shows.

GALLERY FUMI

16 Hoxton Square, London N1 6NT (020 7490 2366)

FUMI was the first design gallery in Shoreditch when it opened in 2008. In its new location, 2012 will see a series of intimate invitation-only shows. Gallery FUMI will return to its summer location of Porto Cervo in Sardinia and then in the Autumn will relocate again, this time to Mayfair.

Tokyobike is hot on Gallery FUMI’s heels and has moved into the Tabernacle Street location – watch this space for more details.

Gallery FUMI is open 10am – 6pm Tuesday – Friday and 11am – 7pm Saturday by appointment only.

Images, from top: 16 Hoxton Square, photograph by by Petr Krejci; next two images both Corncraft at 16 Hoxton Square, final image Thomas Lemut at 16 Hoxton Square.

We’ve teamed up with Conran Octopus to give away five copies of ‘Eat London 2′ by Peter Prescott and Terence Conran. More than just a cookbook or restaurant guide, this is a book that eats, sleeps and breathes food. Entry details below – competition closes on 27th April 2012.

Each chapter covers a different area of London with recommendations not only for restaurants, cafes, food markets and delis, (all with full address details) but also for fun things to do while you’re there.

The book is peppered with quotes from foodie greats like this one from Priscilla Carluccio, Carluccio’s; ”I love Pimlico Farmers’ Market because they sell anything from courgette flowers to garden roses.”

It also contains more than 60 recipes from the likes of John Torode (Smiths of Smithfield) and Rose Grey and Ruth Rogers (The River Cafe) alongside dishes from London restaurants like Fifteen, Bibendum and Le Gavroche to name but a few.

With 29 restaurants to his name, co-author Terence Conran is no stranger to the world of food. As the father of British design (he founded Habitat and the Conran empire and is one of the world’s leading designers), his aesthetic comes across too; both in the places featured and in the layout of this beautiful book.

Peter Prescott, co-author, comes from Grosvenor House, Claridges, Anton Mossimann’s UK restaurants, Bluebird Gastrodome and of course Conran restaurants, and is now a restaurant consultant with clients in London and Russia.

THIS COMPETITION IS NOW CLOSED.

Congratulations to our five winners: Rachel Esinger, Pete Savage, Matthew Croft, Charlotte Whiting, Robert Sugden.

Stay informed of future competitions by signing up to our monthly newsletter.

All featured images are taken from ‘Eat London 2’ by Terence Conran and Peter Prescott, published at £18.99 by Conran Octopus.