DMY – International Design Festival Berlin

Back to the DMY International Design Festival Berlin which kicked off on Wednesday evening in Berlin and closed on Sunday. Starting with the absolute star of the festival: Tempelhof Airport. I’ll never get tired of saying how much i loved this airport. The architectural masterpiece retired from its function of iconic pre-World-War-II airport three years ago and has since been hosting a number of fairs and cultural events.

Planes used to land and park here:

Now it’s currywurst paradise:

Couple of inside views.

Isn’t this a beauty?
But to get in, you had to queue under the sun:

Once inside, the first designers that visitors noticed were Dirk vander Kooij and his yellow robot, both busy making a model of the ‘Endless’ chair. The machine is a reengineered old Fanuc robot that draws and shapes furniture, layer after layer, out of one endlessly long plastic string.

Dirk van der Kooij, Endless

Marre Moerel was showing a collection of ceramic tableware and lamps cast directly from pig intestines, sheep brains, cow hearts, bull testicles. I had the feeling i’d seen that sort of gutsy objects before but the pieces were nevertheless elegantly crafted.

Marre Moerel, Food on the Table

There was some curious action going on in the RCA corner but by the time i arrived there, my brained was completely knocked out by the lamp galore, the vaguely quirky armchairs and the furniture made from recycled materials that should have been left in peace. My attention nevertheless got caught by:

1. An ingenious photobooth that involved no technology but a lot of intimacy between two people. I thought that the project (as well as The Scanner and the others in the Human Error series) was a great example of the many ‘high-tech gets back to no-tech’ / ‘digital gets back to analog’ projects i’ve seen around.

Household, HUMAN ERROR, The Photobooth

2. A Sausage Machine that extrudes fake meat into sausage casings and functions as a tool to create a new world made out of meat.
Meat-phobic little me remains speechless.

Marjan van Aubel, Ola Mirecka and Hilda Hellström, The Sausage Machine

Inspiration for Alexey Petrov and Alexandra Goloborodko‘s Baba Valja is the traditional Russian felt boot. Like the boots, the lamps is made by hand from natural sheep’s wool.

Alexey Petrov and Alexandra Goloborodko, The Light Object Baba Valja

Mark Braun collaborated with Austrian company J. & L. Lobmeyr on the installation FORTUNE, 21 glass carafes engraved in traditional techniques by Lobmeyr with the outlines of existing lakes, rivers and glaciers.

Mark Braun + J. & L. Lobmeyr, Fortune: 21 carafes showing international waters

One of David Hanauer’s Worldwide Carpets

Helga Schmid and Kika Espejo, Whimsical Cloud

That’s it for today, i’ll get back to you with a story or two about DMY’s MakerLab workshops which were by far the most interesting part of the festival.

Previously: Open Design Now – book launch at the Berlin Design Festival.

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