The marble shines in noble red, warm beige, sober gray. If you are just close enough, you can be reflected in the booth of the American company Knoll. It looks a bit as if someone had cut out a piece of Mies van der Rohe's Barcelona pavilion and thrown it off again here in the convention halls in Cologne-Deutz, which otherwise had no glamor. There are good reasons why Knoll feels so bad: It is the first time that the furniture manufacturer is represented at IMM Cologne. The marble room designed by Rem Koolhaas' creative agency OMA appropriately dresses the noble designs of the Americans; and he does it at the right time: 100 years after the founding of the Staatliche Bauhaus in Weimar, the interest in the furniture of the Classical Modern Age is greater than ever.
At Knoll, they are celebrating the Bauhaus opulently, but, as far as the product range is concerned, restrained; it's more about adjusting screws than reinventing the wheel. The most beautiful: designed in 1929 for the aforementioned pavilion, the Barcelona armchair comes in a special edition with black-tinted runners and a dark green leather cover.
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Photo gallery: A reinterpretation of the Bauhaus classicWhy should one also specify? The companies that produce the great designs of the Bauhaus era are in a very comfortable situation anyway. Where others have to reinvent themselves collection by collection, their furniture has already passed the evidence in terms of timelessness: Anyone who wants to buy a cantilever chair or another traditional furniture from Knoll, Thonet or Tecta, so consciously buys year after year postulated trends over.
Room for experiments
In the 100th year of the Bauhaus, there remains enough room for experiments, true to the principle formulated in 1993 by Lucius Burckhardt, founding dean of the Bauhaus University Weimar "Learning from the Bauhaus means not to repeat the Bauhaus": Tecta, for example, had the motto "BauhausNowhaus" Two Designers Rethink Marcel Breuer's D4 Folding Chair: Kerstin Bruchhäuser combines vintage materials with a Korean patchwork technique, with a butterfly in the center. Esther Wilson embroidered a graphic version of the Bauhaus Manifesto on the fabric.
The most interesting redesign of the chair, which has probably kept everyone in mind, who once visited the Bauhaus University in Weimar: The F51 can be seen there in Walter Gropius' director's room and in contrast to the tubular steel furniture a rather museum piece. The designer Katrin Greiling divides the actually monochrome chair into various design surfaces, not only playing with colors but also with materials. It is amazing how this change of surface takes away the power of the chair, making it a very contemporary piece of furniture.
At Thonet the Bauhaus anniversary falls on a second, for the company probably more important: The traditional Hessian company celebrates its 200th birthday - and gives at its stand almost something like history lessons. "Café Thonet" is the name of the installation, with large neon letters pointing the way to a round counter, around which various areas gather. Once the classics; started with bentwood furniture such as the Viennese coffee house chair up to the steel tube designs of Mart Stam, Marcel Breuer or Mies van der Rohe. Then the younger models, such as Sebastian Herkner's "118 chair". And finally, the reinterpretations, which at Thonet run under the term "re-lakes".
The Hamburg-based design studio Besau Marguerre translated product number 14, Thonet's classic coffee house chair, into a completely modern-looking piece of furniture: they play with the varnish, alter its thickness and not only change the color of the bentwood, but also bring out its grain. They also took on two Mies Van Der Rohe classics: The side table MR 515 is based on a model for the houses Esters and Lange in Krefeld; Last year, they equipped the cantilever chair S 533 F with new materials.
The fiberglass comes back
Beyond the Bauhaus, it is still the market of re-editions, which stretches. The Stuttgart-based furniture company Richard Lampert has reissued two pieces by Herbert Hirche, one of the greatest German designers of the postwar period. This also fits the anniversary, Hirche studied at the Bauhaus in Dessau and Berlin and later worked in the office of Mies van der Rohe. In the 1960s, Hirches dressed in ladder shelves, veneered in the finest mahogany, the walls of the better company. Today they are now available in cool as well as cool light gray. Also the chair program 350 is back; the retro-futuristic forms seem to have been imported directly from a 1970s business crime.
The Swiss from Vitra also remember a successful piece of furniture from the post-war era: The iconic side chair, made last of polypropylene, is now available again in fiberglass. Actually a step backwards, fiberglass is more difficult to process than plastic - and not recyclable. At a time when all companies are committed to sustainability, it is certainly an issue that should be discussed.