From June, Systems Studio will be hosting seminars in Braun Design run by our longstanding partner, Das Programm. The seminars are built around Das Programm’s significant collection, and led by Dr Peter Kapos, Das Programm's director and one of Systems’ founding partners.
This morning we paid client Richard Learoyd a visit in his studio to select cloth and image for the cover of the monograph we're preparing for him. The book launch in June will coincide with an exhibition of Learoyd’s work at the Mapfre Foundation, Barcelona. We're looking forward to the opening!
Work has begun on ‘Francesco Lo Savio’, an artist’s monograph for MART (Museo d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto) . The book will present views of the recent exhibition of Lo Savio's work at the museum, accompanied by critical essays on the artists that radically reframe his practice in light of recently discovered sketches and plans, also presented. Considering the book as an object, we're exploring approaches appropriate to this revised understanding of the artist as a quasi-romantic scientist.
We collaborated with our longtime partner, Das Programm, to produce an exhibition of Braun and Vitsoe as part of the London Festival of Architecture. Exhibition guide and post cards presented an opportunity for extending and testing our previous identity design.
We’re pleased to introduce new collaborators, Humboldt Books. The Italian publishing house specialises in travel literature, drawing inspiration from scientific explorations of the 18th and 19th centuries. Its travelogues combine knowledge and practices derived from a breadth of disciplines, recounting travel experiences with a watchful and unconventional eye. 'Via Roma 398. Palermo', now being designed by Systems Studio, will make a natural addition to Humboldt’s list. Issued in conjunction with the exhibition, Raymond, curated by Luca Trevisani and Olaf Nicolai, the book assembles artists writings and images connected through the exhibition to the 19th century writer, traveller and proto-surrealist Raymound Roussel.
We are excited to announce a new collaboration with artists Luca Trevisani and Olaf Nicolai.
On 14th of July 1933 the visionary writer and proto-surrealist Raymond Roussel died at the Grand Hotel et Des Palmes, Palermo. Trevisani and Nicolai’s project, Raymond, will unfold at the hotel this May. An international group of twenty-nine authors, amongst them Tacita Dean, Rodney Graham, Gianfranco Baruchello and Angela Bulloch, will contribute to a series of events, happenings and artworks that will occupy and test the hotel’s spaces.
Systems Studio have been appointed to design a visual identity for the project, along side exhibition graphics and an accompanying publication, to be published by Humboldt Books.
Old friends of the studio, Stanton Williams Architects, invited us to contribute to their programme of inspiration talks. Some great conversation was had about design, constraint and the point of exhibitions.
Systems Studio is pleased to announce our appointment to curate and produce the Reinhold Weiss Design Archive.
Weiss served a three-year apprenticeship as a joiner, and two years as an intern at an architectural office before receiving a training in industrial design at the HfG Ulm, 1955 – 1959. In the summer before his graduation, he practiced in the architectural department at Braun, and was subsequently invited by Artur Braun to join the company.
From his graduation in 1959, Weiss worked as the firm’s first formally trained industrial designer. In 1962 the Braun Design Department was established, and from that date until his resignation in 1967 Weiss served as its Deputy Head with particular responsibility for household appliances and personal care products. Later, in 1964, the New Products division was formed, for which Weiss supplied the first concepts and preliminary designs.
Weiss' contribution to Braun Design has been immense. According to his distinctive approach, shaped in large part by his training at Ulm, each solution was rigorously worked out entirely on its own terms, without reliance on generic or pre-established forms. This resulted in a number of ground-breaking and now iconic designs, amongst them: desk fans HL 1/11 (1959); toasters HT 1 (1960) and HT 2 (1961); kettle HE 1 (1960); hair dryers HLD 2/21 and HLD 5 (both 1963); coffee grinders KMM 1 and KSM 1/11 (both 1964); table lighter TFG 1 (1965); head phones KH 1000 (1965); hand mixer M140 (1966). Weiss also undertook a number of development studies that continued to shape the Braun Programme years after his departure.
Following his tenure at Braun, Weiss served for four years as Executive Designer and Vice President of Unimark International, working from the corporation’s Chicago headquarters. In 1971 Weiss formed his own design consultancy, reinhold weiss design incorporated, also based in Chicago, which he directed as President until 2006. The greater part of his work was undertaken in the area of consumer electronics, particularly audio and video products, for companies such as Proton, NAD, Panasonic, Blaupunkt, AMC and AR (Acoustic Research).
Systems will curate, design, build and maintain the online archive in consultation with Reinhold Weiss. This unique resource will provide a comprehensive survey of Weiss' work. In addition to documenting his crucial contribution to Braun Design, the archive will make available a wealth of important and hitherto unpublished materials, amongst them Weiss' HfG student work, Braun studies and prototypes, and designs undertaken for over 30 clients in the USA, Germany, France, England, Japan and Taiwan.
Our creative director, Peter Kapos, will be in conversation with Dietrich Lubs, Benjamin Wilson and the V&A’s Johanna Agermann Ross. This event, Collections: meaning, relevance, value, is an element of the Global Design Forum programme, hosted by the V&A.
Wednesday 20 September, 11.45 - 12.45
Our project to design a new website for the Luigi Ghirri Archive began with a research visit. We were pleased to have had a reason to return to Roncocesi recently to supervise photography of the Archive’s collection of Ghirri monographs. This set of pictures will appear on the new website, now entering its development phase and on course for launch in October 2017.
Everything Solid, the book we designed for Louis De Belle and Nicolo Ornaghi, launched at MEGA Gallery, Milan, last night. See the Everything Solid website, also designed by Systems, for further information about the project.
We’re pleased to introduce new collaborators artist Louis De Belle (pictured) and curator Nicolo Ornaghi. Louis is a fine art photographer whose detached pictures record objects that appear to have become separated from their familiar meanings. Nicolo is an architect, writer, curator and member of the collective, Raumplan.
We are working together on a book project conceived around the destruction of a primary coloured Joe Colombo Bobby Trolley. More news to follow soon.
We are pleased to announce our appointment by the Estate of Luigi Ghirri to design a website for its archive. Literary, formalist, conceptual and generously anthropological, Ghirri is a giant of twentieth century photography. We consider it an honour to contribute towards increasing the accessibility of Ghirri’s already very widely appreciated work.
Photograph: Luigi Ghirri, Riviera Romagnola, 1985. Copyright Eredi di Luigi Ghirri
We are pleased announce our appointment by curator Luca Lo Pinto to design his contribution for online fine art project space, Liaux. Lo Pinto has conceived of a virtual exhibition formed as a series of responses to the work of artist Luca Vitone. We're excited to explore ways of expressing this dialogue of images.
Photographs
Systems is pleased to introduce a new client and collaborator, Francesca Verga. Francesca is Coordinator for Manifesta 12, to be held in Palermo in 2018, and founder of Liaux, an online contemporary art project space. Systems has been appointed to design the Liaux website, which will serve as a portal to projects created for Liaux by invited artists and curators.