calendario eventi  :: 

X

13/1/2008

Passagen 2008

Different venues, Koln

The time is approaching: From 14 to 20 January 2008 Germany’s biggest design event will take place in Cologne. The PASSAGEN festival opens the international design season and provides a platform for current trends in design, lifestyle and home living. For an entire week, Cologne becomes a temporary design metropolis –a Mecca for design-hungry and design tourists and a meeting place for design professionals and the international design scene.

The programme with over 150 shows by international designers and manufacturers, densely arranged along a trail encompassing the entire city of Cologne – a veritable “Who’s Who” of the design scene. There will be thrilling moments, brand-new concepts, designers “up close and personal”, inspiration and ideas for home and office, top-flight trends and stylistic tendencies – it’s all about design, one hundred percent. The focus is on evocative exhibits, presented both by premium high-end manufacturers and by young designers and networks, using experimental concepts in that electrifying place where design and architecture meet.

In addition to furniture, the topics of architecture, accessories, light and materials will be addressed in a programme that includes many private viewings and events where the latest interior design themes are presented and discussed. Cultural offerings by international cultural institutes and museums such as the Istituto Italiano, the Institut Français and the Museum für Angewandte Kunst Köln are also scheduled.

The exhibition trail includes addresses throughout the centre of Cologne, including entire neighbourhoods and blocks, including the “furniture mile” on the Ring, the Belgisches Viertel and the Spichern Höfe, the harbour area at Rheinauhafen, the Vulkan complex, the neighbourhoods of Südstadt and Deutz and the Ehrenfeld Design Zone, a very special feature of this year’s festival. For the first time, the entire district of Ehrenfeld will be transformed into a stage for young designers.

Many exhibits are once again concentrated in the Belgisches Viertel, with its many attractive locations and funky venues: ETEL Interiores, Wohnkultur66, Floor To Heaven and for the first time the ESPRIT Home Collection. We will also welcome international newcomers: ünal&böler from Istanbul in a joint exhibit with DanielRohr.com, DIX HEURES DIX from Paris with MAGAZIN.COM, as well as the Canadian duo Lumolar. In the Spichern Höfe visitors will find the flagship stores of Boffi with the k14 kitchen module by Norbert Wangen, Tobias Grau with his latest designs, and B&B Italia in their newly opened showroom. Other guests in the Höfe include Tai Ping Carpets with a presentation by Arik Levy, iGuzzini showing the PizzaKobra lamp by Ron Arad, Ciba® XYMARA™ showing Effect Pigments, Tisettanta, the daab publishing house, and Walter Knoll, who has created a very special “environment”in collaboration with Jil Sander and Skoda.

Just around the corner, on Bismarckstrasse, the internationally renowned magazine Architektur & Wohnen will present the 12th annual A&W Designer of the Year with a special exhibit. The 2008 Designer of the Year is Tom Dixon, born in 1959 in Tunisia and currently living and working in London, who was selected in honour of his creative efforts to make design, style and aesthetics more accessible to a broad audience. (This information may not be published before 15 December 2007.)

Contemporary design is at the forefront of the PASSAGEN festival, complemented by retrospectives about influential designers and companies. In January, “the stool as the most flexible form of seating” is the focus of the Markanto exhibit in the Gabriele Heidtmann gallery, with selected vintage classics from the likes of Ray Eames, Herzog & de Meuron, Naoto Fukasawa, Jean Prouvé and Carlo Mollino. Mollino is also the subject of an exhibit in the Istituto Italiano with original furnishings and detailed photographs and drawings of his designs for the interior of the Casa del Sole, a nine-storey apartment building constructed in the early 1950s. The Ulrich Fiedler gallery is presenting an installation of classic lighting fixtures called “ON/OFF –A FEW GOOD LIGHTS”.

The Rheinauhafen is also expected to attract a large audience. Already an established forum for architecture, technology and design, the KAP Forum is presenting new exhibits by BASF, Glunz and CRYSTALLIZED™ Swarovski elements. At Kontor 19, under the “Rheinstyle”label, Quirrenbach Natural Stone and Remagen Lighting and Room Design have opened a joint planning office. And VitrA is opening its new, 700-square-metre showroom for premium bathroom design with the design preview of Ross Lovegrove’s MOD collection. The Werft 11 gallery is showing an exhibit called “Shape and Colour”, while interior architecture students from the Wiesbaden University of Applied Sciences have created festive architecture of a special kind in the former silo of the Rheinauhafen river port – visions by designers and internationally renowned celebrity chef Simon Tress. Also in the Südstadt neighbourhood just south of the city centre: the Köln International School of Design invites you to visit “WG 2.0 –The Media Home”, a collaborative project with Telekom Laboratories where new technologies can be tested under real-life conditions. For the second time, a multi-space exhibit called “unter Wasser” unites the work of designers, artists and artisans. And gabrielle ammann // designer’s gallery is presenting new illuminated artworks by American architect and designer Johanna Grawunder.

PASSAGEN has always placed a special priority on kitchens. Again this year, numerous international and national manufacturers and planning offices such as Arclinea, Boffi, Bulthaup, Cucina, eggersmann, Kambium, La Cornue, Paxmann, Poggenpohl and Varia are on hand.

Design Zone Ehrenfeld. For the first time, PASSAGEN 2008 presents the Ehrenfeld Design Trail: a tour of discovery through a creative neighbourhood with tremendous potential. The participants include design agencies, workshops, artists’ studios, businesses, young labels and start-ups –an entire city district has been transformed into a stage and invites an international audience to explore and discover new talent. Ehrenfeld: a unique creative centre with international flair and multi-cultural charm. The project was conceived, curated and implemented by the PASSAGEN office of Sabine Voggenreiter in cooperation with the City of Cologne and the KULTUR KÖLN 30 organisation, with additional support by traditional PASSAGEN participants such as Vulkan, Balloni and Factory.

The industrial-plant-turned-office-park Vulkan.Köln, in collaboration with worldrenowned materials library MaterialConneXion, presents a special exhibit featuring innovative materials by leading manufacturers such as Twentinox and Royal Mosa. Also in the Vulkan complex: Royal Family, Dyson and Design Schneider. Not far away, Dornbracht Culture Projects is staging “Noises for Ritual Architecture” by Mike Meiré –the first collection of sounds for ritual architecture in the bathroom.

The Design Post is home to several international manufacturers of interior products, many of whom are introducing new pieces during the PASSAGEN, including Alcantara, Arper, Brand van Egmond, Extremis and Matteograssi. On the Furniture Mile on the Ring boulevard, Pesch is showing highlights by Cappellini, daff, Foscarini, Poltrona Frau and Team by Wellis. Also on display: Frigerio in the Pesch Wohnshop as well as Conde House and Cor + interlübke by Pesch. Among the many other design greats to be found on the furniture mile are Giorgetti, J.H. Becker, Limited Edition, Natuzzi and Sahco Hesslein. Following the trend toward establishing permanent showrooms here, several additional companies will be represented with branches opening in January, including ROLF BENZ HAUS Cologne, La Cornue/Le Grand Chef and Lightnet/Architectural Lighting.

And just around the corner, the SIDI Group –Selección Internacional de Diseño – has a permanent exhibit of Spanish design that covers 1,600 square metres. This year, for the first time, JAS, an organisation promoting architectural education and urban awareness among children and youth (JAS e.V., www.jugendarchitektur- stadt.de) is participating in the PASSAGEN festival with a programme for young people on the subject of design.

The PASSAGEN Interior Design Week will turn Cologne into a centre of design. No matter which door you open, be it a gallery, a museum, a furniture store or a cultural institute, you will find real live designers –the crème de la crème of the international design scene –meeting and greeting, networking with manufacturers and young talent, architects and retailers, sole traders and multipliers.

For many newcomers, the PASSAGEN are a springboard, and for many established designers, they are a fountain of youth. The PASSAGEN festival has made a major contribution to the trend, observable for several years now, toward the establishment in Cologne of permanent, premium showrooms of leading designers and manufacturers. This has helped secure Cologne’s reputation as an international design city. Once again, around 130,000 visitors to the PASSAGEN are expected.

The PASSAGEN festival was founded in 1990 by Sabine Voggenreiter and is taking place for the 19th time in 2008.

The information provided here represents the current status of planning. The catalogue and website will be available in the final weeks of 2007.

Press contact: Office Sabine Voggenreiter
Sabine Junker
Press and Public Relations T: +49 (0)221 2584723 F: +49 (0)221 2584722 E: presse@voggenreiter.com

stampa

permanent link