Looking for the latest furniture design trends? Magazines and websites can never deliver the best. You need to go out and see all the colors, shapes and curves with your own eyes and there are no better opportunities than design festivals. One of the biggest and most famous in the world, The London Design Festival starts in three weeks from the 19th to the 27th of September.
You would need hundreds of hours to visit and enjoy all the events, so unfortunately you have to choose carefully. As a Toronto furniture specialist I have made a list of 10 events that I consider the most interesting for anybody who is into furniture and interior design.
Contemporary furniture
The New Modernists
Viaduct, the sole UK agent for the leading top European furniture making companies, celebrates their 20th birthday with this unique exhibition. The list of designers involved is huge, including Maarten Van Severen, Bertjan Pot, Studio Job, Stefan Diez, Arik Levy and many others. If you want to know something about modern furniture, you can learn it here. It’s my personal favorite.
Molteni & C Freestyle Sofa
Molteni & C
Molteni & C have collaborated with Foster + Partners to create exceptional quality furniture with attention to design and engineering, materialized especially in the Arc Table. Moreover, Molteni & C will launch Sofa Chats on 24th September to celebrate and debate the influence of Italian design.
Exclusive furniture
As an opposition to the modernists, these traditional Italian furniture professionals offer a selection of luxurious pieces. It’s also an ideal time for the premiere of a new collection of fabrics, created in cooperation with Rubelli. If you demand exclusive interiors, you should start here.
Natuzzi Chair
Designers from the Apennine peninsula are the world leaders in prestigious furniture, as proven by another exhibition of Italian craftsmen, Natuzzi. This year’s choice is leather, but don’t expect leather sofa sets only. Natuzzi (celebrating the 50th anniversary this year) presents the use of leather in a wide range of products from sculpture to photography.
National furniture design
Eyes On Spanish Design
9 Spanish designers offered their creations to present the selection of Spanish attitude to furniture and decoration trends. Contrast of various combinations of (non)traditional materials, simple shapes and manufacturing innovations (with the stress on sustainability) are their key features
Peel Club chair by Varier
100% Norway
If you need to cool down after digesting the works of the southern professionals, try it at this exhibition, organized with the cooperation of the Royal Norwegian Embassy, the Norwegian Design Council, InsideNorway and Innovation Norway. You can see both prototypes and commercial products from the foremost northern manufacturers.
Experimental furniture
Grassworks
Why not devote some of your precious time to this small presentation of experimental furniture by Jair Straschnow. Simple, self-assembly furniture is made of bamboo sheets, using a minimum of glue and screws. Nice and relaxing after the previous orgies of shapes and materials.
Working On Time
Lamm (hosted by Sagal Group) launches a new collection of innovative furniture. ‘On Time’ is represented by folding chairs, which are able to provide comfort together with high flexibility (let’s hope that one day they will replace the horrible chairs we know from our universities). Similarly, ‘Working’ is represented by the concept of a folding and easily storable table designed to create completely flexible working environment.
Installations
Zante chandelier - A V Mazzega
White Light
Even excellent interior designs are useless when not seen properly, therefore lights are one of the keys for every home staging professionals. White Light installation combines lighting, furniture and film. Slamp, AVMazzega, Varaschin and Fratelli Boffi have joined forces to present the best.
Colour Creativity and Verner Panton
Peter Lassen’s Montana system is the most versatile storage system in the world with thousands of combinations. With the help of Verner Panton’s lighting, he is going to present the juicy color palette of his system.
No Comments »
No comments yet.
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL