For the last issue of Esprit magazine we have prepared another text and illustration. This time on hidden organic architecture from the 1950s and 1960s featuring 8 unique houses from all round the world.

Last month on Salone del Mobile we have exhibited our Mollino book in the installation of Fulvio and Napoleone Ferrari at 10 Corso Como concept store.

Small presentation of the curators from Casa Mollino, who also had collaborated on our book, has included some of the publications on Carlo Mollino as well as shelve with some objects referring to the designer and his work. The installation was a brief invitation for exhibition called Carlo Mollino, Mollino Pharmacy which is now on show at Nottingham Contemporary museum in UK. It includes our book as well. More info soon.

Thanks for the opportunity to exhibit in the legendary concept store and mainly thanks to Fulvio Ferrari (pictured above) for his kind collaboration during our architecture and design adventurous in Italy.

Commissioned by Depot Basel from Basel, Switzerland, Radical Sitting, Hidden Experiments in Seating Furniture 1900 - 1990

 is an illustrated curated book including timeline of some of the lesser known, but really interesting experiments in the seating furniture designed during the 20th century. The project was created for SEATS 05 exhibition at Depot Basel.

For its photo-shooting we have teamed up with photographer Jaroslav Moravec and Prague-based Vitra showroom, where we have shot this series of pictures including beautiful Vitra chairs miniatures. The result are "surrealistic" still lives where miniature chairs create compositional background for lesser known icons of the 20th century design, this time in the form of our publication only. Maybe sometimes, they will have their own miniatures too.


Text from the publication:

Presented in the context of the SEATS 05 exhibition project by the Depot Basel gallery, which focuses on unusual forms of contemporary seating furniture, this concise publication deals with various principles of lesser known experimental seating furniture made from 1900 to 1990. We search for hidden icons from the history of design over the last century that still offer a fresh perspective on the theme of sitting in its diverse forms. 



Radical Sitting, Hidden Experiments in Seating Furniture 1900 – 1990 brings together a time axis of 25 various pieces of seating furniture from the whole world. Chairs, armchairs, stools, chaise longues, and sofas tell stories of designers and artists and their perpetual urge to experiment and make formal or functional innovations in the field of sitting. Thus, our selection introduces clear historical contexts into the current exhibition project by the Depot Basel gallery and strives to present lesser known designer works, which not only enrich our knowledge in the field of applied arts, but also stir inspiration in contemporary designers who look for the new, undiscovered, unconventional, and experimental as their predecessors did. Our selection could certainly include a myriad of other brilliant designs that are probably more famous than the ones presented here. However, our selection deliberately concentrates on less commonplace designs. Apart from other things, we wish to demonstrate the fact that designer innovation has not always been in the hands of the most renowned iconic designers, as one might conclude from the current interpretation of the development of design.


The following pages show a conceptually created selection of experimental seating furniture, which strives to set up a continuous historical line and highlight essential innovations in the field of sitting in various periods, as well as reveal genuine unique pieces that were without parallel in their time. All the examples depicted herein are characterized by visual or functional distinctiveness or uniqueness no matter what issue is tackled – whether a chair should have eight legs or just one is addressed, or whether it features an innovative functional solution. Each style is represented by the most interesting unique pieces found during the course of our research. We also attempt to provide an even geographical representation in order to create an overall global perspective of the given issue. 



Last but not least, our brochure should serve the designers themselves – they could use it as a “source book” for their production and find, with a little help, the right path to set out on. The rear part contains several empty pages that function as a notepad. If you take interest in something from our selection or find inspiration in it, you can immediately make notes. Radical Sitting, Hidden Experiments in Seating Furniture 1900 – 1990 is far from aspiring to create a comprehensive study on radical seating furniture. On the contrary, it outlines an unknown history to current professionals and laypersons, creates contexts, and at the very least, presents truly unique designer works that deserve our attention.

Thanks Matylda Krzykowski, Depot Basel, Vitra and Jaroslav Moravec.

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 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!

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

Our Light Sculptures exhibition at DOX presenting Czech table lamps from the period of 1950 - 1990 is open until 26th April.

Today we bring you some pictures from the preparing of the exhibition and its graphic design which is very strong part of the whole exhibition concept. All the lamps standing on the glass tables have captions with illustrations hanging on the walls beside. Captions are durable paper cards with simple iconography of lamps on them. Again we have to thank Atelier Činčera for its paper production mastery.

Stay tuned and see the whole installation next week!

Photos by Matěj Činčera

We were commissioned by Depot Basel exhibition project from Basel, Switzerland to create a small publication for their next design project SEATS 05.

Starting this friday, the project includes some smaller installations and exhibitions including workshop with designers Sibylle Stoeckli and Christian Horisberger re-interpreting Enzo Mari`s Do it Yourself chairs from 1974, Take a Seat exhibition as well as launch of our new book called Radical Sitting, Hidden Experiments in Seating Furniture 1900 - 1990. Our book explores experimental seating furniture from the 20th century in the special curated selection and pure illustrations.

Supported by Roser, Magazin and Vitra Design Museum as well as OKOLO as media partner, the project explores new possibilities of seating design and its forms and functions.

Thanks Matylda for very nice collaboration.

Stay tune and see our book soon!

Some time ago I have prepared curated slideshow of my Italian architectural adventurous for New York-based blog Sight Unseen. Thanks editor Monica Khemsurov very much for editing it and very nice story which prepared on our activities.

All the houses you will see in the future here as well or in one of our upcoming publications.