Ciba Inc.
Klybeckstrasse 141, P.O. Box
Basel
4002
Switzerland
Tel.: +41 61 636 49 16
Fax.:
+41 61 636 25 59
Review of Decorate Life: Tendence Autumn + Winter 2008
Reviews
By Le Vin Chin
The Frankfurt Exhibition Centre was buzzing July 4 to 8 this year, with five major design shows assembled under one roof and one banner title imperative: “Decorate Life”! Crammed to the gills with design as it was, it was a godsend to this roving reporter: more things to see, more designers to talk to and a better overview for what’s going on in the wide world of design. And all in one place!
On the flip side, there really was too much to see without overloading my brain’s design receptors or damaging my feet: I concentrated on the “Loft” and “Interiors & Decoration” sections of Tendence Autumn + Winter and this year’s Design Annual (separate review to come next week!).
Jason Miller’s Personal Shopper installation is a forest glade
We had already interviewed Jason Miller before, so it was a pleasure to see him continuing to push the envelope as one of two designers operating as “Personal Shoppers”, presenting a personalized selection of the design items from the whole show, skewed to his imagined client: a forest gnome. Well, obviously! But he uses the gnome simply to address his points about the desirability of objects: how expensive are they? How “showy”? How bourgeois? How “natural”?
“Kids’ World”: the children’s playroom in Ineke Hans’s Personal Shopper installation
The other Personal Shopper, Ineke Hans, on the other hand, grouped items in rooms of a fictional house that nonetheless reflected her own personal interests and themes.
PET light 33 by Karl Emilio Pircher and Fidel Peugeot of Walking-Chair Design Studio
Quite my favorite piece of the show, this chandelier is “happily” made of 33 PET bottles “shaped by hand”, but can, of course, be customized with your own used plastic bottles!
Alexa Lixfeld with her computer-designed, but hand-made porcelain-ware
It was Alexa Lixfeld who first inspired me on my crusade to convince the world that concrete is the material of the future, ever since we met briefly at Material Vision last October, so I was pleased to meet her again to see how her work was progressing.
She told me she first had her “vision” of using concrete as an alternative to ceramics when she was trying to progress beyond the current materials paradigm – to find the next, new material. Ironically, it was an “old” material which caught her eye: concrete, which offered its own new possibilities for enhanced functionality. Thereafter, it was only a question of pushing, prodding and cajoling the material as far as it could go into her aesthetics … And it seems to have paid off: Lixfeld’s work was selected by the German Crafts Association (Bundesverband Kunsthandwerk e.V.) as among the most innovative of the entire Tendence offering and shown in the FORM 2008 exhibition, while one of her vases has been accepted into the collection of the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich, and she has won a slew of design awards in the past year.
CLYT, a lamp by Alexandra Tsoukala’s Minimum Design
Another piece selected by the German Crafts Association for FORM 2008 was this lamp, by Greek design Alexandra Tsoukala, which seems to fold in and upon itself. UPDATE: Read an interview with Alexandra Tsoukala here.
Pulpo lamp by Ulrike Rösner of RAUMINRAUM
Knots – modular aluminum CD racks which can be attached to each other in a variety of configurations by Alan Chong and his Hong Kong-based CY Design Studio (site still seems to be under construction, but looks pretty nice anyway).
Pacific Art Design’s Trendy-Tubs, which we talked about in our review of Maison&Objet earlier this year, were also here.
 |
 Magno wooden radio designs by Singgih S. Kartono |
These Magno wooden radios by Singgih S. Kartono’s Peranti Works in Kandangan, Indonesia, are meant to redefine the relationship between a user and a product: the wood must be taken care of and the ritual of applying protective wood oil to the surface emphasizes the “moral obligation between the product’s owner and their products”.
Setting up his studio and production facilities in his home village has allowed Kartono to bring employment (and margins!) to his village as well as put responsible “sustainability” principles into practice: all the wood used is replaced through tree planting activities.
Designs to brighten your day: the Toms stand
The Toms brochure characterizes their output as “each piece crazier and more eccentric than the next” and the Living with the Drags collection certainly lives up to that description, with it’s brightly patterned figures made of marble composite and porcelain. But what really drew my attention was owner and designer Thomas Hoffmann’s commitment to sponsoring underprivileged children from around the world through World Vision.
Susanne Schmitt at Tendence – as well!
Lastly, no design show would be complete without a meeting with the seemingly ubiquitous Susanne Schmitt, who I had already previously met at Material Vision, Blickfang Zürich and the Premium fashion trade show in Berlin in the past 9 months! Schmitt was here with a do-it-yourself stand to present her many new designs of hats and to show off her nomination for the Design Award of the Federal Republic of Germany (for which XYMARA.com’s own INMYX magazine is also nominated). Congratulations, Susanne!
The Anke Drechsel stand