As if diving into green air: upon entering the VELTINS Design Lounge visitors were absorbed by the green light that virtually coated everything and everyone inside Contain Gallery. For one week’s time during Kölner Passagen it hosted the installation by product and interior designers Mathias Witte and Fabian von Spreckelsen – winners of the VELTINS Design Lounge contest.

About 100,000 visitors and a plus in exhibitors!

The imm cologne ended on Sunday, 24th January 2010 with a positive closing balance. Despite being shortened by a day, the fair managed to equal the previous year’s result with around 100,000 visitors. The number of exhibitors even slightly exceeded last year’s level. From Koelnmesse’s perspective, the high expectations of the imm cologne as one of the most important fairs for the international furniture and interior design sector have thus been met.

Touch it, feel it, paste and taste it:
Be part of the art in the VELTINS Design Lounge


While during Kölner Passagen week designers and design aficionados will be all over Cologne, watching, VELTINS in cooperation with Contain Gallery invites them to literally take part in the art: from January 18th til Sunday 24th Contain Gallery will transform into the VELTINS Design Lounge where visitors can actively participate in working the exhibition space. They can paste crown caps dyed silver and green to a magnetic wall and concertedly generate a distinctive pattern – play it, change it, tune it in the course of the week. The extra: VELTINS for free throughout opening hours.

CONTAIN Gallery selected design editions is Cologne’s first gallery focused on young international design. From now on there is a place in the heart of Cologne’s creative Belgian Quarter for exhibitions from the progressive world of young design.

The opening exhibition “Utopie jetzt! / utopia now!“ deals with the utopian idea of an allegedly refined society – contradicted by a cross-section of modern urban lifestyle.

The "Ocean-Cookbook" by Berlin based Nadine Freischlad and Nina Eggemann won the 5GUM Vision Lab Award, priced with 10.000 Euro. Kai Panholzer, CEO of Wrigley Germany presented the proudly winners on June 25, 2009 in Berlin.

Kicked off in June, the seventh edition of DMY International Design Festival Berlin presented more than 550 international designers within over 100 different events. Capturing contemporary product design the festival invited professionals as well as the wide public to a varied program of exhibitions, lectures, panel talks, workshops, performances and parties.

Where does design end and art begin?

Charles Eames, the most influential designer of the mid-twentieth century, said that ‘design is an expression of purpose. It may (if it is good enough) later be judged as art.’ Contemporary young designers see the matter more pragmatically. According to the Spanish designer Jaime Hayon, ‘there is no longer a clear border between product design and art.’ The most recent answer to this question is inherent in the new phrase ‘design-art’.