October 27, 2022

Moderated by Stephen Todd, Creative director of Sydney Design Week 2022 and design editor of The Australian Financial Review

The edited volume Bauhaus x IKEA - Legacies of Modernism explores the far-reaching influence of two 20th-century design icons: the Bauhaus art school and the furniture company IKEA.

Panel discussion with Andrew Benjamin, Emeritus Professor, Philosophy, Monash University Melbourne; Thea Brejzek, Professor of Spatial Theory at UTS Sydney; Lawrence Wallen, Professor in the School of Architecture at UTS Sydney; Stefanie Bürkle, Artist and Professor for Visual Art at Technische Universität Berlin and Rochus Urban Hinkel, Associate Professor for Architecture & Design at University of Melbourne and a’finiti

Goethe Institute Sydney

September 29-30, 2022

Co-host and Co-moderator of the Future Design Research Symposium at Federation Square, Melbourne.

Two days with presentations and discussions, including in-person keynotes by Treseder Fellow Jenny Wu (SciArc) and Theodore Spyropoulos (AA) at the Future Design Research symposium 2022.

Across the two days we have a range of presentations, followed by panel discussions, featuring more than 40 local and international speakers from across industry, creative practice and educational institutions.

The first in-person symposium since 2019, presented by the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning and the Melbourne Graduate School of Education. Hosted by the ADD+F Research Hub.

Chairing the panel discussion on: What are the promises and opportunities, threats and challenges for our daily lives and our design practices? What new opportunities arise for the design disciplines in expanding our creative toolbox? What new formats and practices will emerge? This panel presents experimental projects that explore new applications of augmented, virtual and mixed reality projects in design research and practice.

Panelists:

Dr Anna Davis, Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; curator of Ultra Unreal

Associate Professor Use RIeger, lead of arc/sec, University of Auckland, New Zealand

July 1 - 23, 2022

Decorative Arts in the Digital Age – Exhibition of Archetypes, Cyber Crafts and Collectibles @ The David Roche Foundation, Adelaide

The exhibition Doppelgänger and Zombies presents new artworks that are created based on 3D scans of masterpieces from David Roche’s 18th and 19th century collection of decorative arts objects. The works are based on processes that critically and artistically explore and test the promises and potentials as well as the limitations and handicaps of digital technologies. Exquisite physical and digital artefacts are developed and fabricated, using 3D scanning and printing, CNC milling, 360 degrees photography, photogrammetry, digital modelling, rendering and image manipulation software, algorithms as well as augmented and virtual reality.

March 17-26, 2022

Music and Architecture collide in the Sounding Grainger exhibition during the Melbourne Design Week.

Through a multidisciplinary collaboration that brings together a composer and an architect, this project reimagines the foundational bricks-and-mortar of the eponymous founder Percy Grainger’s legacy. Composer Sydney Miller (Interactive Composition), has created a multi-channel soundscape which responds to the resonances of the physical architecture itself. A unique multi-screen visualisation of the architecture, created by Dr Rochus Hinkel, uses static, dynamic and animated point clouds. The triptych re-imagines the atmospheric and spatial readings of the museum, its interiors and its urban context.

The sonic and visual installations recalibrate the Grainger Museum, creating a unique immersive and temporal experience of sonic and visual re-compositions of the architecture of the Grainger Museum.

“The collaboration began with ideas shared, back and forth, on their individual pieces: the architect providing test images and short video sequences; the composer sharing sound bites and structure. This is the genesis for the exhibition, Sounding Grainger: Re-tuning and re-imagining a museum, currently at the Grainger Museum.”

Mem Capp, March 22, 2022 in ArtsHub Australia

‘Objets d’art are replicated and reincarnated – although not always adhering to their original form or purpose…’

Patrick McDonald, July 9, SA WEEKEND, ARTS Section

“Zombies are the undead in Haitian mythology, so we might ask then are the beautifully crafted objects of the past to be re-animated for an audience of the future? It seems that is already happening.”

Stephen Richardson, July 4, 2022 in ArtsHub Australia

Editors: Thea Brejzek, Rochus Urban Hinkel, Lawrence Wallen

This edited volume explores the far-reaching influence of two 20th-century design icons: the Bauhaus art school and the furniture company IKEA. 

The Bauhaus was founded in 1919 and disbanded in 1933, but in its short existence it served as a crucible for much of what came to be known as modernist design. It set out to transform daily life for the better by incorporating mass manufacturing techniques into the design of everything from single objects to buildings, putting in motion the democratisation of design. Just 10 years after the Bauhaus’ closure, this principle would become the theoretical and functional foundation for IKEA. 

‘Design for everyone’, IKEA’s guiding principle, is both the embodiment of Bauhaus ideals and a business plan that has seen modernism repackaged in the form of a global consumer goods empire. Considered together, the Bauhaus and IKEA could be said to have profoundly transformed how our societies relate to and understand design and its artefacts. But as we grapple with climate change and the wreckage brought about by the consumer-driven, mass manufacturing models promulgated by the Bauhaus, and then perfected by IKEA, how might we reckon with this legacy, and what can we learn from it?

Through a carefully curated selection of essays and photography, Bauhaus × IKEA traces the profound but not always benign influence of these global design icons across history, politics, pedagogy, art and society.

Contributors: 

Claudia Perren, Axel Kufus, Stefanie Bürkle, Rebecca Carrai, Christof Mayer, Andrew Benjamin, Adam Jasper; and Thea Brejzek, Lawrence Wallen, Rochus Hinkel (editors).

URO Publisher ISBN: 9781922601209; Format: Softback, 297mm(H) x 210mm(W); Year: 2022