Under the title “Poetry Happens – Made in Berlin” a mix of established and establishing Berlin designers staged a joint exhibition as part of Ventura Lambrate in Milan.
Among the highlights were the venue, Chinabrenner. And of course the work.
To paraphrase the English poet W.H. Auden “A designer is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with materials”
And that was clearly evident at “Poetry Happens” where a wonderful range of novel materials, novel material usage and novel approaches to thinking about materials were on display.
Set in a disused, but respectfully maintained, former factory building in east Milan the Poetry Happens participants certainly couldn’t complain about lacking the appropriate space to let their narrative flow.
For all the light in the room could only inspire.
Werner Aisslinger’s “Hemp Chair” and “Hemp House”, for example, provided a couple of interesting examples of how regenerative materials could be used in stable and useful forms, even if we can’t claim to have been especially won over by shape of Hemp Chair.
Similarly with Kami, Ett la benn tackled the question of the resources we use to construct objects with a series of lamps and vases made from biodegradable cellulose. A further look at resources was the old minimumblog favourite Fortune by Mark Braun; now wonderfully extended into a global exploration of our relationship to our water resources.
But it wasn’t all about making us feel bad for taking up space on the planet.
Marre Moerel, for example, presented a wonderful new series of ceramic objects cast from animal organs.
OK bad example!
However, as a complete package Poetry Happens certainly provided a good mix of ideas, styles and approaches and did justice to design in Berlin and Berlin design.
And, proved our point, and biggest gripe with the exhibition name, poetry doesn’t “happen” ….
More information on Poetry Happens and the participants can be found at www.poetry-happens.com
And further photos in our Facebook gallery: http://www.facebook.com/minimum.berlin
Poetry happens - Made in Berlin
"Poetry is ... " more "design poetry" on the minimum Facebook. Click here for the gallery