Search results for ""Author Renate Menzi""

ow many cubic metres does the little Michelin man actually take up? What insurance value does the potato peeler Rex have and how fragile is Sophie Taeuber-Arp's Dr. Komplex? The designer pack of cards The Happy Collector shows 52 objects from the design and decorative arts collection at the Museum of Design Zurich. Playfully - as a classical card game or top trumps - it presents not only the favourite objects and collection highlights of the museum, but also conveys important aspects of the collection procedure: from purchase, storage and handling to insurance and documentation. The Museum of Design Zurich is the leading museum for design and visual communication in Switzerland. The collection of international importance comprises around 500,000 objects from the areas of decorative arts, textiles, graphics, typography, as well as poster, furniture and product design. Sabine Flaschberger and Renate Menzi are its curators.

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As a pioneer of modern design, Willy Guhl created world-famous furniture such as the Eternit garden chair or Europe’s first plastic shell chair. In the tradition of modernism and against the traditional Heimatstil, after 1945 he developed a holistic design approach oriented to human beings and their needs; functionality and reduction to the essential characterize his everyday objects. In collaboration with Swiss companies such as Dietiker, Eternit and Aebi, Willy Guhl designed seating furniture, planters and mowing machines. Willy Guhl’s designs, his teaching methods and his image archive bear witness to the innovations of the booming design industry of the post-war period and the changing professional image of the industrial designer. As a teacher and later head of the class for interior and product design at the Zurich School of Arts and Crafts from 1941 to 1980, Willy Guhl influenced generations of Swiss designers, including Robert Haussmann, Kurt Thut and Andreas Christen. The trained carpenter and interior designer passed on his design knowledge “hands-on,” with illustrative objects, by model making and storytelling. This first comprehensive monograph illuminates Willy Guhl’s legacy in the context of this design and teaching practice as well as current theories of the design discipline. As a thematically structured catalog of works, it offers a complete index of all design projects, and illustrates in sketches, plans and photographs his exploratory working method and his passion for material and technology, which is equally evident in the selection of exemplary student works.

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