• Preview of the London Design Festival 2008 - London calling!
• Colors and beyond: Ciba at 100% Design 2008!
• Blog from 100% Design London 2007
• Link to INMYX 3 Article - A Colourful Rebellion
• Review of Maximal Reduction Minimal Boundaries - A Fixed Gear Exhibition With Remarkable Response
• Chris Lefteri: Abducted Materials - Page 1
• Feel the heat! Introducing Ciba® XYMARA™ Fireball™ …!
• “Try not to repeat what already exists” – An Interview with Tom Dixon
• Presenting ... the winner of the XYMARA™ Design Award: Soner Demirel's "xys  Chair"
• Concrete: Material of the Future!
• “Always start from scratch” – An Interview with Ditte Hammerstrøm
• Carbon fiber "au naturel"
• Review of Maison&Objet September ’08 – Part 2: Design and Materials
• Preview of Tokyo Desginers Week: Blickfang Tokyo and 100% Design Tokyo - Tokyo design extravaganza
• "What I am doing is new and exciting" - An interview with Tom Rossau

By Le Vin Chin

Blog now closed

6:13 p.m., Monday September 22, 2008

One last item, as I've just received the photos from another stand I visited. Duracryl make epoxy floors and the interesting thing for me - concrete being one of the materials I've been championing - was that they even see a trend towards imitation concrete in their industry! The Duramique floors apparently simulate the patchy drying pattern of concrete and have the heft and feel of real concrete, while avoiding the shrinkage of concrete ...

Duramique flooring

1:01 p.m., Monday September 22, 2008

On the mornings of Saturday and Sunday, I had the opportunity to visit the hall containing 100% Design proper. Here's what caught my eye ...

Nominated for a 100% Design Award last year, Pottinger & Cole were back with some new designs, including this lamp, with its strong form, playing with the solidity of the shape:

Pottinger & Cole's C Pendant

Lucy Turner - displaying on the Hidden Art Cornwall stand - reclaims furniture, strips them and then re-covers them with laser-cut laminate:

Lucy Turner's Turk, based on a sideboard by Nathan from the 70s.

The country stands (design associations from Korea, Belgium, Germany and Norway, among others, flew their country flags) were of high quality. For example, the Slovene Designers' Association's stand was once more an Aladdin's cave of funky designs.

Slovene Designers' Association's stand

Here, I particularly liked Jurij Dobrila's bigg O chair (I also liked his CH AIR last year):

Jurij Dobrila's bigg O chair

Log Bowls by the Loyal Loot Collective at the New Design Canada stand: handmade from reclaimed wood and finished with a water-based finish.

And the best of the rest:

Clarissa Hulse's wallpapers featured some magnificent effects:

Clarissa Hulse's wallpaper designs

PearsonLloyd's Twist for Martinez Otero

molo's Softwalls were a great hit

Lastly, here's a view of XYMARA™ Design Award keynote speaker Tom Dixon's impressively gleaming stand:

And that's a wrap for another year! Hope you enjoyed the show, or, if you couldn't make it, our blog from the show! See you next time!

3:29 a.m., Saturday September 20, 2008

So, having narrowly avoided a meter-long pizza, I'm ready to blog once more! Today I finally had the opportunity to explore the rest of 100% Design, starting with 100% Detail.

First up: 100% Materials. Here I found Helen Storey leading a workshop ...

... and our very own Ciba^® XYMARA™ Fireball™ nestled among the samples ...

Then there was Jonas Wagell's Mini House, a cheap pre-fab designed to fit Swedish building regulations - but also selling well enough in the U.K., according to the designer. The Mini House also included many other examples of the multi-talented designer's work, including the enjoyable Bold Clock series ...

Jonas Wagell's Mini House

Jonas Wagell's Bold Clock series

Two enormously creative (and fanciful) pieces by Thórunn Arnadottir caught my eye:

Thórunn's Clock: every five minutes, another bead drops ...

Thórunn's Blush: a radiator covered in thermochromic paint - when it's hot it's red, when it's cold, it's blue.

Regular readers know one of my favorite materials is concrete, so I was immediately drawn to Benjamin Hubert's Heavy Light lamps, which aimed to question "perception of material quality". Later that evening, Hubert would go on to win the best newcomer award at the 100% Design London Awards.

Heavy Light lamps by Benjamin Hubert

Labware by Benjamin Hubert

The "Match Making" stand had an interesting collection - organized by the British European Design Group - a non-profit funding body - the stand's concept was for the "matching [of] tradition with change, cultural heritage with glol interface" ...

Eugenio Menjivar's lamps are the ne plus ultra of recycling: the shades are egg cartons already made from 100% biodegradable recycled paper, while the bases are metal objects found in junkyards. Set design below by Ana Urquilla.

Eugenio Menjivar and Ana Urquilla's work

Sarah Angold's fascinating work is all about creating new surfaces by combining disparate materials. Look out for lots more Angold on XYMARA.com!

Sarah Angold's work

Woo Suk Han's Lake table

I met up again with our friends at MINDCRAFT - who also later went on to win the award for "Best Contribution to 100% Design" at the 100% Design London awards. NB. in the picture below you can finally see the wall of Astrid Krogh's Swirls lamps, which I couldn't get a good photo of in Milan.

The MINDCRAFT stand

I also had the great pleasure to have the opportunity to catch up with MINDCRAFT participant Ditte Hammerstrøm - who we interviewed recently - soon after.

Tom Rossau's lamps use fine strips, which are either one to three layer wood veneers or metalized polystyrene. UPDATE: read our exclusive interview with Tom Rossau here!

Tom Rossau lamps

Finally, here's a nice example of the use of carbon fiber in new applications: Magdalen Metalwork, a metalworking company specializing in hand-crafted bespoke objects, have used it here in this coffee table. And that was it for the day. As mentioned, later that evening we attended the 100% London Awards hosted by Dezeen's Marcus Fairs, but - as last year - once more failed to come away with any awards ...!

Martino Gamper wins big at the 100% Design London Awards

Lastly, for those who want more pictures, here's our installation presenting the xys Chair, winner of our XYMARA™ Design Award:

More tomorrow - with a visit (hopefully) to 100% Design proper!

2:05 a.m., Friday September 19, 2008

100% Design kicked off today!

And we held our Ciba^® XYMARA™ Design Event, which kicked off with a "Desert Island Materials" panel discussion, moderated by Chris Lefteri ...

... followed by a press conference on all the new products, effects and stylings offered by Ciba, including the launch of Ciba^® XYMARA™ Fireball™.

Then, we went straight into the prize-giving ceremony for our Ciba^® XYMARA™ Design Award, which kicked off with a keynote speech by Tom Dixon.

Tom Dixon takes receipt of a Fixed-Gear bike, given by Ciba as thanks for his keynote speech.

And finally, we opened the envelope and announced the winner of the Ciba^® XYMARA™ Design Award: Soner Demirel, with his "xys Chair".

Soner Demirel receives his award

1:39 a.m., Thursday September 18, 2008

Just a quick update this time: the team has had a long day, working hard to prepare the Ciba XYMARA stand, the "Effect Tunnel", as well as the Ciba^® XYMARA™ Theatre. Another part of the team also spent some time today working out the logistics of our award ceremony for the XYMARA™ Design Award.

Just to finish off the story from yesterday, here's how the wall of the Theater we saw before progressed:

And here's how that all looks in close-up:

And, of course, every single piece is decorated with stylings based on Ciba XYMARA colors and effects!

Meanwhile, on another wall ...

Yes, those are whole new generations of Fixed-Gear bikes based on new stylings developed after the our last Fixed-Gear exhibition!

It's been hard work, but as we learned last year, it will all be worth it when the show opens!

And now it's time to go get our beauty sleep ... tomorrow will be a big day, what with our panel discussion, our media event and our award ceremony.

2:40 a.m., Wednesday September 17, 2008

We're in London again!

We've arrived a few days early, because we have so much to prepare, as we count down to the start of 100% Design and the XYMARA™ Design Award ceremony on Thursday!

After last year's great experience, we've come back with even more stuff - which will take time to set up ... Meanwhile, we've also started rehearsals for the award ceremony as well, so it's all GO!

It started on Monday, when our top secret "Effect Tunnel" arrived - thankfully safely! - and was dual-forklifted into place ...

By very early Tuesday morning, we'd unloaded the contents ...

... but as for what the insides will look like, well, we'll draw a veil over that for the moment, until the opening day of 100% Design! Meanwhile, work on the Ciba® XYMARA™ Theatre is continuing apace. It's not finished yet, but I thought you might like to see how it's progressed throughout Monday and Tuesday!

	2:52 p.m., Monday September 15, 2008
	3:28 p.m., Monday September 15, 2008
	10:51 a.m., Tuesday September 16, 2008
	12:06 p.m., Tuesday September 16, 2008
	8:32 p.m., Tuesday September 16, 2008

More on the finished Theater (wait till you see the other side!) and the rest of our preparations later today!