This will be the first part of my review of the DMY intenational design festival 2009 in Berlin. The second part will take care of the conferences.

I must say I was in general rather dissapointed with the expositions. It is sad to find out that desing and styling are still so often confused even within the so called design comunity.

A lot of hand made furniture, loads of lamps, but very little of nice really creative design proposals. Since we all have enough expamples of boring/usesless design, I am going to focus on the things I liked.

Shelves:

Wooden shelf and Piegato metal shelf

A metal one from the Matthias Ries design office. When you order this shelf you receive it already precut and lacked, and you fold it yourself. I liked the fact that the more you load this shelf, the more stable it gets.

A wooden one from the École Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs de Strasbourg. To fix the books on this shelf you’d just pull up the loose plank and the tension created held the books. The system got unstable when the weigh of the books was too high, but it is a quite new approach.

Waschhaus presented their concept Colo, a dishwasher reduced to its very basics.

All you need to have in your kitchen is a second tap (for the water supply), a connection for the water waste and a power supply . The dishwasher itself consists of a transparent cover with the conventional washing mechanism inside. It fits into the sink and seals so that the water doesn’t come out. once the washing is finished the cover is pulled and it hangs somewhere up where it doesn’t disturb. It could be a good product now that apartments get smaller an kitchens even more. I particularly like the multisize-fitting tray.

dishwasher Colo

The Hochschule für Kunst und Design Halle had set up probably the nicest stand in the exposition and it had mostly very creative furniture in it. The best pieces were probably form the collection "7 für die ecke". Since I have no good fotos from it have al look at the designer’s website.

Last but not least a new lemon juicer form the Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weißensee. It is always interesting to see how we find new solutions to hte verey basic design problems. This is a very aesthetical attempt that also plays with the gravity force. We didn’have the chance to see it working, though.

 Lemontile