As we always say one of the joys of visiting design festivals is the chance they offer to explore different parts of the host city.

Normally it is the visitors who travel.

In Leipzig, it’s Designers’ Open that travels.

The true minstrel under the European design festivals, Designers’ Open has been annually packing its kit bag and moving on ever since leaving its, figurative, family home in the Grassi Museum in 2006.

Designers Open 2012 will be held from October 25th to 28th in the Ernst-Grube-Halle of the Leipzig University Sport Science Campus.

A location that is grander than it sounds.

The more commercial, product, part of the festival DO/Market features new for 2012 three special foci; “Off/Spring” with design for children, “Open/Air”  for garden/balcony/outdoor products and “Spin/Off”  which promises to present current diploma and masters projects. In addition to a, hopefully, sizable collection of international designers with their latest projects.

The more technological component DO/Industry meanwhile features, in addition to innovative design solutions, a conference under the title “smart technology – new design”

Designers’ Open 2012 also features the exhibition and award ceremony for the “Sachsen Design Prize 2012″. Here’s hoping the 2012 jury do better than the 2009 jury who inexplicably decided to award 2 second prizes and no winner rather than doing the decent thing and proclaiming one entry as being better than all the others

We’ll keep you updated.

And will indeed bring you all the highlights of Designers’ Open 2012.

The obvious question of course now that we all know where Designers’ Open 2012 is being held is where will Designers’ Open 2013 be held.

If you follow Designers’ Open’s tour through Leipzig in recent years from the Merkurhaus in 2009 over Hôtel de Pologne and onto the Spinnerei prior to this years hard right back towards the city center, then for us there is only one geographically logical location for 2013.

Leipzig Zoo.

And then hopefully 2014 they will finally make it to Halle.

For us the better, and much more obvious, natural location for the show…..

Designers’ Open Leipzig 2012 takes place at the Ernst-Grube-Halle, Leipzig University Sport Science Campus from October 25th – 28th 2012.

W1 by Nicolai Gulliksen @ Designers' Open Leipzig 2011. Let's see what 2012 brings....

The “Product Design” category of the 2009 Sachsen Design Prize, as announced in Dresden Wednesday evening, produced a somewhat curious result: no winner but two second places.

Which aside from being ridiculous is a real slap in the face for the product design community in Sachsen.

For those who don’t know we live in Sachsen,; learned our trade here; took the knocks, got back up and tried again here.

The region is branded on every part of our bodies and our souls.
And we now where the weaknesses in terms of design in Sachsen are.

But it isn’t the designers – and the judges don’t do the designers any favours with such an appalling decision.

A competition needs a winner; otherwise it’s a simple PR exercise.

And not a particularly well organised one and that.
Sachsen is a county rich in design tradition – from the wood carvers in the Erzgebirge, over the ceramic makers in Meissen and on to the book printers in Leipzig: Sachsen understands and appreciates good design. And good design involves, indeed lives from, trying, failing, trying again, failing again, trying again, failing again, self-doubt, self-doubt, trying again, failing again, trying again….succeeding.

It’s like being a war photographer – your either in it for the long run or you go and get a job with an insurance firm.

We also weren’t that impressed with this years nominations. But that’s not the point.

Some years will be stronger than others; it is in the nature of design. The point is that the best must be chosen from the nominations; hard decisions must be made….

We’re at a loss.
Sadly no one in Dresden was.

Giorgio by Peter Horn for Lampert

Giorgio by Peter Horn is the chair that almost never was. Having commissioned Horn to create a stackable multi-function chair, the finished design lay for two years in the archive of Stuttgart based designer furniture producer Richard Lampert – in short, although convinced of the quality of the chair, Lampert saw that particular market segment as too crowded. After all how many chair designs does the world need?

And so the story would have ended had not one day a request for help not been received from an architect partner of Lampert’s. They needed stackable chairs for a project, but everything they found was either cheap, and looked it, or excellent but too expensive for the project. Lampert produced a few test versions of Giorgio, and the chair turned out to be just what was required – an excellent, stackable, multi-function chair at an affordable price.
And so some four years after the initial commission and nearly two since the completion of the project, Peter Horn’s Giorgio finally proved its advantages over the competition and was included in the Lampert catalogue.

And so the smow catalogue. Which pleases us.

Fits wonderfully to an Eiermann Table...

For not only is Giorgio, with its wide seat and stable backrest, an excellent chair for home or office, but Peter Horn is also responsible for the Seesaw office chair, the Turtle children’s chair and the Fixx Roll Container. Making it possible to furnish your complete home/office and/or child’s bedroom in his chairs and storage units. But much more important he’s from Dresden, where, together with his partner Michael Majewski, he runs his studio Horn Majewski Design.

Making them all but a home designers for smow. And among the most successful from round our way at that.

Peter Horn and Michael Majewski: Quality design from Sachsen

Horn and Majeski were awarded the bi-annual Sachsen Design Prize in 2001, 2003 and 2007 – were not sure what happened in 2005 – and so, arithmetically at least, 2009 should be their year again. The deadline for entries closes on 14th of August, for all of those who’ve not yet applied. We will keep you updated here of all the  news once the nominations have closed.

Until now Giorgio, however, hasn’t won any prizes, but it has demonstrated that regardless how many chair designs you think there are out there … there is always room for one more.

Which is just as impressive.