CURRENTS
4 min readFrom 10 to 12 September 2026, a new festival spread across Berlin. CURRENTS, initiated by the journalists Laura Ewert and Jasmin Jouhar, who see themselves less as curators than as facilitators, brought together brands, studios, schools and off-spaces in showrooms, workshops, empty shopfronts and factory halls. Funded mainly through participation fees, it set out to sharpen Berlin’s identity as a design city.
Hansaviertel
Two buildings from the Interbau of 1957 sat at the centre of the programme. Paul Baumgarten’s Eternithaus hosted the talks and the evening bar. In the Eiermann-Bau on Bartningallee, Richard Lampert showed what has become of a table frame its architect drew more than seventy years ago.
Egon Eiermann designed the frame in 1953 at the Technische Hochschule Karlsruhe: thin steel tubes, an off-centre cross brace, nothing more than the table needs. It was built in the school’s workshop and used there for years, and in 1965 his office added a knock-down version with vertical cross braces. Neither went into regular production until Richard Lampert took them on in the 1990s as Eiermann 1 and Eiermann 2.
The next step came from a student. During his master’s at UdK Berlin, Tim Schütze took the height adjustment of a 3D printer as his starting point and worked it out with Richard Lampert over almost three years. A belt turns spindles in the legs and moves the top steplessly from 71 to 113 centimetres, for sitting or standing. The tubes grew from 20 to 28 millimetres so that the proportions stay those of the original. Eiermann 1 M came out in 2025, Eiermann 2 M followed in 2026, and an electric version now does the same at the push of a button.
On Saturday the Eternithaus also housed an Imbiss. For the Mono x UdK summer residency, Garance Pröbsting and Jan Cichon from Ineke Hans’s Design & Social Context group built a site-specific snack bar with Mono Studio Berlin, serving fries and ice cream. It launched Compagno, a pocket-sized stainless steel tool by Oskar Poetsch, developed in the same group in 2024: fry fork, ice cream spoon and bottle opener in one piece, with a carabiner for the keyring. Mono, a family business in its sixth generation, still makes its cutlery in its own manufactory in Mettmann.
KPM
At the Royal Porcelain Manufactory, KPM Berlin, the historic ring kiln hall showed Re:Lokal: glass objects by fourteen students from KHB and HBK Saar, made with glassmakers at CIAV Meisenthal and led by Barbara Schmidt and Mark Braun, with the KPM Foundation as partner.
In the same building, KPM’s permanent exhibition on Enzo Mari shows his sketches and prototypes. In the early 1990s the manufactory invited the Milanese designer to rethink its production. His first step was not an object but a team: the Meisterwerkstatt, a design studio of Mari and four KPM employees, set up so that the changes would outlast his stay. Out of it came a teapot whose body and spout are cast in one piece, the Berlin tableware of 1996, and the Mari vase of 1994.
Hansaviertel
Two buildings from the Interbau of 1957 sat at the centre of the programme. Paul Baumgarten’s Eternithaus hosted the talks and the evening bar. In the Eiermann-Bau on Bartningallee, Richard Lampert showed what has become of a table frame its architect drew more than seventy years ago.
Egon Eiermann designed the frame in 1953 at the Technische Hochschule Karlsruhe: thin steel tubes, an off-centre cross brace, nothing more than the table needs. It was built in the school’s workshop and used there for years, and in 1965 his office added a knock-down version with vertical cross braces. Neither went into regular production until Richard Lampert took them on in the 1990s as Eiermann 1 and Eiermann 2.
The next step came from a student. During his master’s at UdK Berlin, Tim Schütze took the height adjustment of a 3D printer as his starting point and worked it out with Richard Lampert over almost three years. A belt turns spindles in the legs and moves the top steplessly from 71 to 113 centimetres, for sitting or standing. The tubes grew from 20 to 28 millimetres so that the proportions stay those of the original. Eiermann 1 M came out in 2025, Eiermann 2 M followed in 2026, and an electric version now does the same at the push of a button.
On Saturday the Eternithaus also housed an Imbiss. For the Mono x UdK summer residency, Garance Pröbsting and Jan Cichon from Ineke Hans’s Design & Social Context group built a site-specific snack bar with Mono Studio Berlin, serving fries and ice cream. It launched Compagno, a pocket-sized stainless steel tool by Oskar Poetsch, developed in the same group in 2024: fry fork, ice cream spoon and bottle opener in one piece, with a carabiner for the keyring. Mono, a family business in its sixth generation, still makes its cutlery in its own manufactory in Mettmann.
KPM
At the Royal Porcelain Manufactory, KPM Berlin, the historic ring kiln hall showed Re:Lokal: glass objects by fourteen students from KHB and HBK Saar, made with glassmakers at CIAV Meisenthal and led by Barbara Schmidt and Mark Braun, with the KPM Foundation as partner.
In the same building, KPM’s permanent exhibition on Enzo Mari shows his sketches and prototypes. In the early 1990s the manufactory invited the Milanese designer to rethink its production. His first step was not an object but a team: the Meisterwerkstatt, a design studio of Mari and four KPM employees, set up so that the changes would outlast his stay. Out of it came a teapot whose body and spout are cast in one piece, the Berlin tableware of 1996, and the Mari vase of 1994.
#currentsberlin#designinberlin#kpmberlin#hansaviertel#eiermann
September 2026
