Berlin Post-War Modernism – New Book!

Would you like it modern? Author Nicola von Albrecht charts ideas and initiatives of the German Werkbund for modern living in the aftermath of WWII. Alongside historic documents the book presents works from the D.I.Y. Home Advice Centre which was part of the successful exhibition of the same name at the Werkbundarchiv – Museum of Things in 2017.

gern modern? Wohnkonzepte für Berlin nach 1945 (in German only)
Schaukasten # 5 (publication series of the museum)
Concept / Author: Nicola von Albrecht
Editors: Werkbundarchiv – Museum of Things and Nicola von Albrecht
Book Design (based on the series design by Simone Schöler): Rose Apple

Find out more about the exhibition (that I co-designed) and the DIY Home Advice Centre (that I co-curated) here! The book is available via the shop of the Museum of Things or their website.

Photos of the book by Rose Apple

Organizing Things

Keeping on top of your possessions is hard enough at home, so how does a museum with over 65,000 items organize, structure, store and show its things? Find out about the underlying order (or disorder) of things in the Museum of Things in their new exhibition!

Organizing Things

19.05. – 31.10.2022 Werkbundarchiv – Museum of Things

Oranienstraße 25 · 10999 Berlin Kreuzberg
Thur–Mon 12-7 p.m.
Curator: Renate Flagmeier
Exhibition design and production:  Studio Alex Valder
Visual identity and exhibition graphics: Rose Apple with Wolfgang Schneider (animation / image editing)
All photos by Rose Apple unless credited otherwise 

Find the Thinglings!

Kids’ museum activity and booklet
Concept, text and graphic design: Rose Apple
Free entry every first Sunday of the month at the
Museum of Things, Oranienstr. 25, 10999 Berlin.
Book your free ticket here!
See more of my design of the Museums Sunday here.
All photos by Rose Apple, unless otherwise credited. A big thanks to Oscar and Agata for finding the Thinglings and for letting me take photos of the search.  

Museum Sunday

Every first Sunday in the month the Museum of Things is getting ready for a party. Put up the bunting, wave your flags and roll out the green carpet – everybody welcome!

Museum Sunday
Pop-up event decoration
toolbox for museum activities
kids activity workbook – more about it  here
Concept, surface pattern, product and graphic design: Rose Apple
Bag design: Sara Wendt
Every first Sunday in the month at the
Museum of Things, Oranienstr. 25, 10999 Berlin
Book your free ticket here
All photos by Rose Apple, unless otherwise credited. 

Birds of All Feathers Celebrate Together

Inspired by a Walter Gropius quote, the Bauhaus-Archiv invited visitors, passersby and followers to contribute to a Christmas installation. The collective artwork brought birds of all feathers together to celebrate – despite the pandemic.

Photo: Juliane Bethge

Birds of all feathers celebrate together
Christmas workshop with the Bauhaus-Archiv
in the display window of the temporary bauhaus-archiv
28.11.2020 – 06.01.2021
Concept and design: Rose Apple

The Bauhaus Was a School

What is the opposite of a Wagenfeld lamp? Enrol now for the famous Bauhaus ‘Vorkurs’ in our interactive exhibition in the temporary bauhaus-archiv and exercise your creativity.

The Bauhaus was a school of art and design that did many things differently. An important innovation was the VORKURS  – a preliminary course which all students were required to complete. The experience students gained in exercises was deemed far more important than the material results.
Now it is your turn to learn by doing. For the interactive trail we reinterpreted historic exercises by Johannes Itten, László Moholy-Nagy and Josef Albers and paired them with contemporary tools and notions. Hopefully you will not only take away an impression of what it was like to be a Bauhaus student, but leave something behind as well.

the bauhaus was a school
27.11.2019 – 09.05.2020
the temporary bauhaus-archiv / museum für gestaltung
Knesebeckstraße 1-2 | Berlin-Charlottenburg
Mo–Sat, 10–18 hrs | Free entry
A project by the bauhaus-archiv / museum für gestaltung
Project idea: Friederike Holländer, Nina Wiedemeyer
Concept: Rose Apple, Friederike Holländer
Exhibition design and production: Alex Valder
Exhibition graphics: Rose Apple
Organisation: Juliane Bethge
with students of the Nelson-Mandela-Schule, Berlin  
 

Erotic Things

What makes things erotic? An exhibition in the Museum of Things, Berlin, presents a wide range of objects with an erotic dimension – some intentionally, others due to our vivid imagination.  Continue reading “Erotic Things”

Beyond Paper

Proud to announce that BEYOND PAPER, the digital reading room designed by Alex Valder and myself, won a DigiVis award. The competition rewards projects that increase visibility of digital products. We proposed ways to show digital books in the real world – be it at a trade fair, in a bookshop or at literary events.

In recent years e-book sales have flat-lined and there seems to be a big nostalgia for the printed matter all around. As much as I love paper myself, I am aware that it is a finite resource and that we cannot keep on producing books in these quantities.
Also as a creative person, I am naturally excited about the possibilities digital books might offer to an experimental book designer. So I was curious to know what was happening in the digital book arena.

To visit the biggest book fair in the world in Frankfurt seemed a good idea for that – if only there had been any e-books to be seen. The books around me were exclusively made of paper. When I asked, “excuse me, could I have a look at your e-books?”, publishers would give me a surprised look and reply, “but they are digital!”.
Wait a minute – is it really not possible to show digital books at a trade fair or in bookshops? How can staunch paper readers (and there are lots of them, especially in Germany) warm to the e-book, when it stays practically invisible in the analogue world?

We asked ourselves, what possibilities open up when “book” does not necessarily mean ink on paper anymore? Beyond paper, texts can take on new forms and new materials. Can you build a room with them? How could a spatial interface between the analogue and the digital world work?
BEYOND PAPER, the result of our collaboration, is a proposal for a group stand at a book fair. It is a digital reading room that presents e-books from different publishers and gives them a presence at the fair.

The reading room is enveloped in a curtain of soft book spines that acts as an acoustic shield against the noisy fair. The midst of the space is taken up by sitting cubes that have e-readers attached to them. Upright monitors that can be connected to these e-readers enlarge the digital book content and transmit it to the outside.

The thing most missed with e-books is the haptic experience. BEYOND PAPER allows visitors to browse physically through the soft spine curtain and the cubes, as well as digitally on the installed e-readers. Each book that is presented at the stand can be accessed on each e-reader.

Educated Germans love to hate digital books – even when they have never actually seen one. BEYOND PAPER would like to build a bridge for these readers, not only by creating an agreeable space to experience an e-book but also by showing them how to purchase, open, browse and navigate one in explainer videos.

Publishers can promote select books in the curtain or on the cubes. QR Codes printed on curtain and cubes invite visitors to download reading samples directly to their mobiles.

BEYOND PAPER could also be used for digital book presentations. The audience literally looks over the shoulder of the author, while he skips through his or her book.

All modules can be scaled and adapted to different situations, such as shop-in-shop or even for outdoor events.

What is next? We are ready to go and are looking for partners such as a trade fair, publishing house or bookshop to make BEYOND PAPER happen!

Concept and design by Rose Epple and Alex Valder
The DigiVis Competition was initiated by the German Publishers and Booksellers Association (Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels) and the Berlin Senate – Project Future

 

 

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Private Photography

The exhibition FOTO | ALBUM in the Werkbundarchiv – Museum der Dinge, Berlin shows private and anonymous photography from the vast collection of the museum. Do not miss it – it is great fun and runs till February 26th, 2018. Poster and exhibition graphics by Rose Apple.  Continue reading “Private Photography”

Cabinet of the Unknown

The Werkbundarchiv – Museum of Things and guest curator Ece Pazarbaşı invited its neighbours to select “unknown” objects in their vast collection and collectively assemble this exhibition of 65 enigmatic things. They serve as talking points to participants and visitors alike, with the aim to collectively generate a pool of knowledge that goes beyond the conventional museum wisdom. Come and share your knowledge as well until September 25, 2017. Continue reading “Cabinet of the Unknown”

Would You Like It Modern?

The exhibition gern modern? Living concepts for Berlin after 1945 at the Museum der Dinge charted ideas and initiatives of the German Werkbund in the aftermath of WWII.

Continue reading “Would You Like It Modern?”

Hausbesuch

Hausbesuch – home visit – is the name of an European project initiated by the Goethe-Institut. Over a period of 7 months, 10 renowned authors from 10 European countries travelled to 17 European cities and visited 40 private homes. The writers came to eat, drink, read and enter into discussions with their hosts and subsequently reflect on their experiences. Their accounts have now been published by Berlin based e-book publishers Frohmann Verlag. Continue reading “Hausbesuch”

We-Traders E-Book

We-Traders – Swapping Crisis for City is an exhibition project of the Goethe-Institut that gathered 30 activists promoting urban change in Madrid, Lisbon, Turin, Toulouse, Berlin and Brussels from 2012 until 2015. You can read more about the We-Traders platform, that I co-curated with Angelika Fitz in this post.

To mark the end of the process, we teamed up with Vienna urban research publishers dérive and produced this e-book. It combines theory and practice of collaborative place-making and asks questions about this current urban culture’s potential for the future. You can download the free e-book We-Traders. Swapping Crisis for City from the website of the Goethe-Institut Brussels.

 

We-Traders. Swapping Crisis for City.
Learning from urban practice.
Publisher: Goethe-Institut e.V.
Co-publisher: Angelika Fitz and dérive – urban research
Concept, editing, production: Christoph Laimer, Elke Rauth / dérive
Design: Rose Apple
Programming: Scott Alexander, ringebooks.
With texts by: Julia Albani, Leonie Baumann, Sonja Beeck, Santiago Eraso Beloki, Charlotte Bonduel, Javier Duero, Rose Epple, Angelika Fitz, Julia Förster, Alain Gatti, Stéphane Gruet, Frauke Hehl, Susanne Höhn, Rolf Novy-Huy, Common Josaphat, Elke Krasny, Jessica Kratz Magri, Christoph Laimer, Andreas Novy, Lisa Parola, Luisa Perlo, Elke Rauth, Marco Revelli, Matteo Robiglio, Stavros Stavrides, Chloé Viénot

We Want to See Everybody!

“We are starting an initiative to bring actors with disabilities into German film and television and we need a visual identity. Are you up for it?”– “Yes of course, I said, but only if I get to work with these actors in the process.”

Continue reading “We Want to See Everybody!”