From a select gathering of modernist decorative arts galleries, Design Miami/ has become second only to Art Basel Miami Beach as the must-attend event of Miami Art Week. The design fair’s tent has grown in vision, as well, as corporate sponsors, young gallerists, students, and others now take a place alongside the original exhibitors.
Design Miami/ 2015 culminated this notion of inclusiveness thus far. The 11th Miami edition of the event widened its geographic representation and embraced foodie culture, for example. And, by celebrating the humanitarian work of Design Visionary Award-winner Yves Béhar and inviting the public to experience the Design Miami/ Pavilion Commission (alongside the Airbnb-sponsored installation Belong. Here. Now. across the street), it feted design for the masses as equally worthy of collectors’ attention.
Of course, collecting is still the bread and butter of Design Miami/. But even objects of affection seemed more inclusive in the event that concluded this weekend. Ruminations on utility, social impact, and technology took their places alongside the blue-chip artifacts and almost-sculptures that have dominated past fairs. Because this brand of work should particularly charm architects, here we survey the 10 most resonant illustrations of the type.
For VES-EL, shown by London’s Sarah Myerscough Gallery, Gareth Neal was granted access to Zaha Hadid’s computer modeling platforms to digitally imitate traditional hand-thrown pottery. The American Hardwood Export Council and Benchmark Furniture initiated the collaboration between designer and architect, and the resulting carved oak vessels were first exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum in September 2014.
Brooklyn lighting and product designer Bec Brittain debuted Mercury with Patrick Parrish Gallery (shown here at the far end of the gallery’s Design Miami/ booth). Mercury comprises 35 strands of LED tubes, oversized stone beads, and massive suede tassels that, suspended in an L shape, can provide both spatial organization and illumination to an open plan.
Galerie Patrick Seguin presented the only surviving example of the 4×4 Demountable House by legendary designer Jean Prouvé. Between 1939 and 1940, Ateliers Jean Prouvé produced several hundred of these four-meter-square huts for the French army, by adapting a system of prefabricated recreational structures to military purposes. After wartime, this extant example housed the entry guard of the Ferembal factory in Nancy, France.
The Design Miami/ booth of Beijing- and Los Angeles-based Gallery ALL had a strong architectural appeal, overall, with highlights that included the Off-Railing Series by ArandaLasch and Naihan Li’s cabinetry disguised as iconic buildings. The Metsidian table by Janne Kyttanen, shown here in the foreground, ponders the potential of 3D printing in the design industries, as the stunning form uses both that technique and explosion welding to fuse obsidian to gridded copper.
Oribe Tea House, designed by Japanese architect Kengo Kuma for Galerie Philippe Gravier, comprises five-millimeter-thick corrugated plastic panels banded together at 65-millimeter intervals. Demountable and flat-pack, the project is an experiment in temporary architecture that also offers insight into the strong emotional bonds that humans forge with the built environment.
Regionalist architecture is scaled down in the Kassena Isibheqe cabinet from Dokter and Misses shown (at center) by South African gallery Southern Guild. The furniture’s geometry is taken from the hand-painted adobe structures of the Kassena people, who live in the Tiébélé region between Ghana and Burkina Faso, and its surface patterns represent two literary texts in the Sotho and Tsonga languages written in the Isibheqe Sohlamvu system.
Also in the vernacular vein: 21 years after discovering designers Fernando and Humberto Campana, São Paulo gallery Firma Casa presented the brothers’ new Cangaço collection at Design Miami/ 2015. The furniture honors northeast Brazil by drawing inspiration from the fashion and material culture of the region’s famous 19th- and 20th-century outlaws and by employing the leatherwork skills of local artisan Espedito Seleiro.
Rome’s Secondome gallery turned its entire Design Miami/ booth over to Body Building by Milan-based duo Alberto Biagetti and Laura Baldassari. The furniture does not so much capitalize on the nascent pommel horse-as-clever-seating trend as it tries to generally domesticate athletics. In so doing, these rings and dumbbells and playing fields reappraise the gym’s place in a fitness-obsessed urban ecosystem.
Dawn Lights, created by Rotterdam-based Sabine Marcelis and presented by Victor Hunt Designart Dealer of Brussels, embody the slivers of colored light that appear momentarily at dawn and dusk. The luminaires, which feature white neon tubes embedded in cast resin, are a continuation of Marcelis’s Voie Light Series project.
New York- and San Francisco-based The Future Perfect presented Fragments at Design Miami/ as part of the fair’s Design Curio initiative. Featuring compositions of rough-hewn and honed marble by Dutch designer Lex Pott surrounded in a landscape scene hand-painted with pigment derived from the same material by Calico Wallpaper, the installation is, at first blush, a consideration of the natural and manmade. Second and third glances revealed a commentary on the parametric design trend — plus a lesson in decorating with avant-garde collectibles.