• Preview of the Kölner Passagen 2007
• The Ciba-Module Box at the Kolner Passagen
• Passagen Cologne Furniture Fair 2007
• Preview of Passagen 2008
• Invitation to the XYMARA.com Passagen Interviews
• Ciba and XYMARA.com at the Passagen 2008

By Le Vin Chin

What a Passagen it was ths year! How high in quality, how diverse, how hectic! When I had the opportunity, I left our stand to have a walk around and get a feel for what was in the air. What were the interesting pieces, the fresh perspectives, the up-and-coming trends? Truly, Cologne is a city which lives and breathes design, and there was a lot to see ... and here's my distilled selection.

(Note: we'll be publishing your impressions on the Passagen over the next few weeks - watch out for them in our Interviews section!)

Design Post

My first stop was the Design Post, right next to the Kölner Messe. High-end furniture design treasures were on full display here, in airy halls, including - of course! -at Moroso.

Seen from overhead: the Moroso stand's selection of chairs

Aretè by Franco Poli at Matteo Grassi

Designs for sitting together by Extremis

Rheinauhafen

Then I took a trip down to the Rheinauhafen area, the harbor area on the banks of the Rhein, where the re-development work continues apace. Just before getting to the river proper, I stopped by at the Köln International School of Design, where they were presenting their WG 2.0 the media home installation.

The students worked for 3 months on this project, researching ways that people really live with technology today and then creating a "real" high-tech home as an installation - in pointed contrast to the idealized showrooms that technology suppliers might show.

At the Silos space, soon to be a restaurant, students from the FH Wiesbaden demonstrated their designs for the restaurant's interior. You can see the actual space in the main picture at top-left.

At a joint presentation at the KAP Forum, Glunz and Swarovski showed off glossy luxury surfaces speckled with glittering crystals in an installation designed by Katrin Neelsen. The surfaces were Topan® colour MDF, produced by Glunz's Sonae Indústria company, and the crystals were CRYSTALLIZED™ - Swarovski Elements by Swarovski.

In the city

But, for me, the best came last. On the way back to the Spichern-Höfe, I stopped over at the Museum für Verwandte Kunst, where Joachim Römer and Petra Supplie had created a stunning installation out of flotsam run aground on the banks of the Rhein.

Hölle ("Hell") by Joachin Römer and Petra Supplie: The arrangement of the pieces on the walls of the "red room" is suggestive of layers of detritus or sediment, of lost civilizations under our feet; or of the ripples and flows of the "romantic" Rhein itself. Only pieces which were red - the color of warning and revolution - were used.

Detail from Hölle. Joachim Römer specializes in creating art from "junk".