Design is not always pretty. Sometimes it is blunt and aggressive, especially when it is meant to deliver a clear message or depart from tradition and express new ideas.

Death is omnipresent in the media and in our leisure distractions. Yet we avoid direct contact with those lifeless corpses which confront us with our own fragility. Our diversionary tactics vary: over-elaborate ritualisation or, on the contrary, an aseptic and depersonalised relationship. The funerary urn, an object made to preserve the deceased ashes and dissimulating them in a neutral container, belongs to these tactics. Its aesthetics are usually solemn if not morbid. How to remediate this?

Ten leading designers have been commissioned to develop new uses for sustainably grown and harvested materials in order to tell a unique story about the life-cycle of materials and the power of conservation and design.

This display features highlights from the Royal College of Art (RCA) fashion MA graduates' final collections and reveals aspects of the design process. For the past 60 years, the RCA has prepared aspiring designers for fashion careers leading to graduates working in fashion houses such as Galliano, Vivienne Westwood, Chloé, Dior and Burberry. Others such as Ossie Clark, Boudicca, Julien Macdonald and, more recently, Erdem Moralioglu and Carolyn Massey have developed their own labels.

At a time of heightened interest in works of so-called 'design art', made in small editions for the collector's market, Telling Tales will feature work by a generation of internationally regarded designers. The exhibition will focus on work by designers who explore the narrative potential of objects, connecting the past with the present. 

Fabrica has been invited by the cultural space CarréRotondes in Luxemburg to present Colors of Money, an exhibition exploring the approaches, uses and understandings of money.

This installation, drawn from the Museum’s permanent collection, brings together objects employed in the service and consumption of alcoholic beverages.

Over the last fifty years, David Goldblatt has documented the complexities and contradictions of South African society. His photographs capture the social and moral value systems that governed the tumultuous history of his country’s segregationist policies and continue to influence its changing political landscape. Goldblatt began photographing professionally in the early 1960s, focusing on the effects of the National Party’s legislation of apartheid.

Ninety years ago, Walter Gropius founded the Bauhaus in Weimar. It existed for only 14 years, but it became the most important school of modernity. With Josef Albers, Herbert Bayer, Marcel Breuer, Lyonel Feininger, Johannes Itten, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Gerhard Marcks, Adolf Meyer, Georg Muche, László Moholy-Nagy, Hinnerk Scheper, Oskar Schlemmer, Joost Schmidt, Lothar Schreyer and Gunta Stölzl, a faculty with an international reputation worked under the direction of Walter Gropius (1919-1928), Hannes Meyer (1928-1930) and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1930-1933) at the Bauhaus.

Among the most influential designers of our time, Ron Arad (Israeli, b. 1951) stands out for his daredevil curiosity about technology and materials and for the versatile nature of his work. Trained at the Jerusalem Academy of Art and at London's Architectural Association, Arad has produced an outstanding array of innovative objects over the past twenty-five years, from almost unlimited series of objects to carbon fiber armchairs and polyurethane bottle racks.

In the context of the State of Rhineland-Palatinate’s summer culture program Kunsthalle Mainz is featuring the first comprehensive solo show by Scottish artist David Shrigley (born 1968) in Germany. The artist, who lives in Glasgow, is known above all for his comic-like drawings; many of them are included in a series of publications but also in artist and postcard books. 

Michel Comte is among the most sought-after contemporary photographers. Working together with actors and models, musicians and artists of world renown, Comte − who was born in Zurich in 1954 − has created major icons of portrait and fashion photography.

Fashion designers use their talent and vision to interpret the current mood and aesthetic, finding inspiration in a variety of sources. The exploration of an artistic movement, a reinterpretation of historic clothing, or the transformation of street styles or utilitarian clothes may be the springboard for innovative statements.Some designers begin with geometry or shape, while others’ imagination is sparked by color, by the design or characteristics of a fabric, or by the possibilities offered by materials or techniques handled by skilled artisans of the industry.

Gwangju (South Korea) - Under the theme "The Clue", Icsid Promotional Member the Gwangju Biennale Foundation will open its 3rd edition of the Gwangju Design Biennale on 18 September 2009. Taking place until 4 November 2009 in the Gwangju Biennale Hall and all around the city of Gwangju, South Korea, this event sets out to reevaluate the concept "think globally and act locally" by examining five examples of traditional Korean culture.

This display presents the work of eleven internationally renowned contemporary comics artists from Europe, Iran, Japan and the USA, all with very different styles and techniques of execution. Artists represented include Jim Woodring, Chris Ware, OsamuTezuka and Stéphane Heuet. The work has been selected by the V&A's comics artist resident Karen Rubins from the comics collection in the V&A's National Art Library. Karen's work is also on display and there is an opportunity to contribute to a comic strip inspired by the Museum and its collections.