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Are you interested in picking up the latest in innovative products and services, inspirational design ideas, renovation tips and cost saving solutions for the home? Then look no further! The Homebuilding & Renovating Show, the UK’s only dedicated self-build and home improvement show, is at the Bath & West Showground, Shepton Mallet on 21^st & 22^nd November.

The South West Homebuilding & Renovating Show features over 120 exhibitors, 36 free seminars and masterclasses as well as the unique opportunity to get advice from the Experts. This really is a must-visit event.

Whether you are looking for land to build your own home, want to extend your property to create an open plan kitchen or are thinking about converting your loft or basement to create extra space, you will find the products, services, advice and information to help create your perfect home.

Want to find out more about how you can improve your home? Then attend How to Successfully Add Space and Value to your Home’, a free seminar at 11.30am on both days. Concerned about your impact on the environment and want to do more? Learn more about reducing your carbon footprint by attending ‘How to Heat Your Home for Nothing: Dream or Reality?’ a free seminar at 1.30pm on both days.

If you’re still at the planning stage of your building project, then take along your drawings, plans or just your ideas and speak to one of the many experts at the Show and get some great advice.

For more information and tickets, visit www.homebuildingshow.co.uk. Tickets are £5 in advance by calling 0844 5811377 or £8 on the door (children under 16 go free).

Are you interested in picking up the latest in innovative products and services, inspirational design ideas, renovation tips and cost saving solutions for the home? Then look no further! The Homebuilding & Renovating Show, the UK’s only dedicated self-build and home improvement show, is coming to Harrogate from 6^th to 8^th November.

On at Harrogate International Centre, The Northern Homebuilding & Renovating Show features over 210 exhibitors, 54 free seminars and masterclasses as well as the unique opportunity to get advice from the Experts. This really is a must-visit event.

Whether you are looking for land to build your own home, want to extend your property to create an open plan kitchen or are thinking about converting your loft or basement to create extra space, you will find the products, services, advice and information to help create your perfect home.

Want to find out more about how you can improve your home? Then attend ‘How to Successfully Add Space and Value to your Home’, a free seminar at 11.30am every day. Concerned about your impact on the environment and want to do more? Learn more about reducing your carbon footprint by attending ‘How to Heat Your Home for Nothing: Dream or Reality?’ a free seminar at 1.30pm every day. Visit www.homebuildingshow.co.uk to find out more about the other free seminars and the masterclasses that run on the three days of the Show.

If you’re still at the planning stage of your building project, then bring along your drawings, plans or just your ideas and speak to one of the many experts at the Show and get some great advice. Visit the Homebuilding & Renovating magazine stand where Michael Holmes, TV presenter and Editor-in-Chief of Real Homes and Homebuilding & Renovating magazines, will be heading up a team of experts specialising in renovating, design, planning, self-building and greener living.

The Northern Homebuilding & Renovating Show is on at Harrogate International Centre from 6^th to 8^th November. The Show features over 210 exhibitors, 54 free seminars and masterclasses and the chance to Ask the Experts. For more information and tickets, visit www.homebuildingshow.co.uk. Tickets are £5 in advance by calling 0844 5811377 or £8 on the door (children under 16 go free).

Photographer Gavin Evans has worked with charity Action Aid to promote the organisation’s Hunger Free campaign, which launches on World Food Day on 16^th October.

At a time when the global economic crisis dominates the news, the world needs to be reminded that not everyone works in offices and factories. The crisis is stalking the small-scale farms and rural areas of the world, where 70 percent of the world’s hungry live and work.

With an estimated increase of 105 million hungry people in 2009, there are now 1.02 billion malnourished people in the world, meaning that almost one sixth of all humanity is suffering from hunger.

Both public and private investments are needed, more specifically through targeted public investment to encourage and facilitate private investment, especially by farmers themselves.

On the occasion of World Food Week and World Food Day 2009, let us reflect on those numbers and the human suffering behind them. Crisis or no crisis, we have the know-how to do something about hunger. We also have the ability to find money to solve problems when we consider them important. Let us work together to make sure hunger is recognized as a critical problem, and solve it. The World Summit on Food Security proposed by FAO for November 2009 could be fundamental for eradicating hunger.

Get involved! Click for more information or to make a donation.

Pieces by artist Eduardo Paolozzi, including work for Ambit magazine, will feature in The Jet Age Compendium, an exhibition at Raven Row Gallery, London E1, from 4 September to 1 November 2009.

Lighthouse Brighton are organising a project called 30 Seconds of Fortune: a user-generated video project with content created by the public on the theme of Fortune. Submissions to YouTube, and the best will be shown in Lighthouse on 24 October.

Have you got 30 Seconds of Fortune in you? Want to make a video to be exhibited in a gallery for White Night Brighton and Hove 2009? 30 Seconds of Fortune is an open submission video competition, which will result in 30 of the best and most original videos being selected for exhibition at Lighthouse as part of the White Night celebrations between 6pm and 2am on the 24 October 2009.

The theme is FORTUNE. A broad and inspiring theme, entrants are given the opportunity to interpret and represent this in their own unique way, perhaps ranging from the very obvious physical wealth of riches or a lottery win to the more abstract images and sounds that portray a sense of ‘fortune’. It is completely up to the creators/makers to decide, but the more original, thought provoking and exciting the better. Anyone is invited to create and submit a video to the project. Videos must be no longer than 30 seconds and must have been made by an individual, a group or an organisation. Video taken from television, film or internet made by another film-maker, artist or company will not be eligible or shown.

Videos that best respond to the theme of Fortune and are considered to be the most original will be shown in Lighthouse’s gallery space on a projection screen throughout White Night. The evening will run from 6pm until 2am and selected videos will be shown on a loop repeatedly through the night – 30 films at 30 seconds, which means the loop will be a maximum of 15 minutes long, hence 15 minutes of fame!! Videos will also be linked to the 30 Seconds of Fortune playlist on the Lighthouse YouTube channel. And finally, to calm any nerves, there will be a bar during the evening between 6pm and 12am!

Works by Atelier Van Lieshout and Gabriella Crespi will be on show at the Pavilion of Arts & Design London, which is being held in Berkeley Square, London W1 from 14-18 October.

Design Museum, London, 18 November 2009 – 14 March 2010

For 40 years, from 1955 until 1995, Dieter Rams designed or oversaw the design of over 500 products for the German electronics manufacturer Braun, as well as furniture for Vitsœ. Audio equipment, calculators, shavers and shelving systems are just some of the products created by Dieter Rams. Each item holds a special place in the history of industrial and furniture design and has established Dieter Rams as one of the most influential designers of the late 20^th century.

This exhibition is the first UK definitive retrospective of Dieter Rams’ career in over 12 years. Showcasing landmark designs for both Braun and Vitsœ, this exhibition will examine how Dieter Rams’ design ethos inspired and challenged perceptions of domestic design and assesses his lasting influence on today’s design landscape. Archive film footage, models, sketches and prototypes will be displayed alongside specially commissioned interviews with Dieter Rams’ contemporaries, which include Jonathon Ive, Jasper Morrision, Sam Hecht and Naoto Fukasawa.

Dieter Rams’ elegant products challenged original concepts of design thought by reducing electrical switches to a minimum and arranging them in an orderly manner. Transparent plastics and wooden veneers were mixed and colour schemes were limited to tones of pure whites and greys, the only splash of colour being allocated to switches and dials.

Dieter Rams defined an elegant, legible, yet rigorous visual design language, identified through his ‘Ten Principles’ of good design, which, amongst others stated that good design should be innovative, aesthetic, durable and useful. Heavily influenced by the Bauhaus and Ulm School of Art in Germany, Dieter Rams pioneered a design spirit which embraced modernity and placed functionality above everything else, resulting in designs that were free of decoration, simple in function and embodied a cohesive sense of order. Born in Germany in 1932, Dieter Rams trained in architecture and interior design before joining Braun in 1955 where he took advantage of electronic and engineering advances made during the Second World War to realise a sophisticated re-interpretation of domestic appliances.

Sculpture pieces by designer Eric Gill, including Mother and Child and A Roland for an Oliver, will be on show as part of the Royal Academy’s Wild Thing exhibition, London, from 24 October to 24 January.

Eric Gill was one of the most colourful figures in early 20^th century art, despite the majority of his prints being in black and white. Sculptor, typographer, and writer, it was the unequalled clarity of line of his engravings that have made his work so sought after.

Gill’s subject matter swung between the deeply religious and the highly erotic, a direct echo of his eccentric life.

His prints first appeared invariably in tiny editions or as illustrations in limited edition books, such as those he illustrated for the Golden Cockerel Press.

We are fortunate that in 1929 his friend and publisher, Douglas Cleverdon, produced a book of his prints, all printed from the original blocks. This was followed 5 years later by a second similar book, this time published by Faber.

Furniture company Touch By will launch seven works from its Be What You Create collection at 100% Design in September. Each piece is signed by the designer, including Mico table (pictured) by Silka Barrio.

100% Design, Earls Court, London
24-27 September 2009

Design Museum London

One of the most important architects working today, David Chipperfield produces subtle and sophisticated buildings with an acute sensitivity for materials and a powerful awareness of their environment. This major exhibition celebrates his work for the first time in the UK and spans his entire career to date, including such acclaimed projects as the River and Rowing Museum in Henley-on-Thames, and the Museum of Modern Literature in Marbach, Germany, winner of the RIBA Stirling Prize for Architecture 2007. The exhibition also illustrates important public commissions including the reconstruction of the Neues Museum in Berlin, and The Hepworth Wakefield gallery.

This detailed survey examines a range of projects through new and archive models, sketches, drawings, photographs and film. A major component of the exhibition focuses on Chipperfield’s most complex project to date, the ten year reconstruction of the Neues Museum in Berlin, which was bombed during the Second World War and subjected to decades of neglect. The project is like nothing previously undertaken in its attitude to history, and its attempt to make something new out of the old has succeeded in producing a landmark building, not only for Berlin but for museum architecture as a whole.

After studying at Kingston University and the Architectural Association, and working at the practices of both Richard Rogers and Norman Foster, David Chipperfield established his own practice – David Chipperfield Architects – in 1984. Unprepared to compromise with the commercial developers of the 80s, Chipperfield looked beyond Britain to mainland Europe, where he could see himself as part of a group of architects who brought a seriousness and intellectual ambition to their work that went beyond stylistics or mannerism. David Chipperfield Architects is today a substantial international practice with projects across Europe, as well as in China, Japan, the USA and Mexico.

As David Chipperfield’s practice has grown and matured, he has developed his own distinctive voice. His buildings often combine a variety of materials to create beauty and meaning with appealing clarity. Buildings that subtly inspire without spectacle or fanfare.

DESIGN MUSEUM, SHAD THAMES, LONDON SE1 2YD
21 October 2009 – 31 January 2010