Newsletter 09.2008

Dear Readers,

What some people would regard as a drawback in a trade fair, a restricted and manageable range, is in fact the best potential for 100%Design in London. With its limited number of carefully selected exhibitors Great Britain's major design event has come to fill an important position in the premium market next to the established international fairs. We have collected a number of impressions for you.

With its photographic exhibition «Architects' Offices» this year's Orgatec is taking a look at the work behind the scenes and presents insights into international architectural offices: the "rooms, where the rooms come from"

In addition Architonic is giving you the opportunity to win one of 500 free tickets to Orgatec - the international trade fair for the planning, design and furnishing of offices and buildings.

Be inspired!

Your Architonic Team

Zürich | Frankfurt | Berlin | Barcelona | Kopenhagen | London

It could easily have been a real flop - a period when Wall Street was in turmoil and in the UK the property market found itself in a state of meltdown was not the ideal time for 100%Design, the trade fair for top quality interior design, to take place in London.
Fortunately things turned out much better than could have been expected. In spite of the unfavourable circumstances most of the exhibitors were satisfied with the results of the fair and the organisers even registered a considerable increase in trade visitors - with more architects than retailers. One explanation for this may be the persuasive selection of exhibitors and the holistic orientation of the fair. 100%Design placed its focus clearly on visitors from inside the industry, in other words architects and planners, who were attracted above all by the increasing importance of 100%Detail, the section of the fair which deals specifically with materials for building design and construction. The concept is a successful one. Even if it isn't always easy to look beyond the sterile standardised architecture of some manufacturers, experienced trade visitors to the fair should be in a position to appreciate as such the high-quality and innovative products which are to be discovered on the occasionally sparsely designed presentation areas.
100%Design has succeeded in positioning itself as a small but premium quality exhibition, and with its manageable range it fills a gap left by the major fairs such as Milan, Cologne and Frankfurt.

100%Futures, the presentation platform for up-and-coming design, is an established part of the fair and an important forum for young international designers. This year individual participants made a strong impression with inspiring experiments in materials and production methods.

Off events
100%Design is very much the commercial basis for the London Design Festival. However, the example of Milan shows that alternative exhibition areas, which in London and are above all the areas around Brompton Road, Covent Garden and Shoreditch, can provide a lively accompanying programme and make a visit to the fair even more enjoyable.
The largest of these alternative exhibitions is the Tent at Truman's Brewery in the legendary Brick Lane. However, every year the impression grows stronger that the Tent is increasingly developing into the vintage marketplace for the festival - which means that for architects the location is becoming increasingly irrelevant.

So far the interest of the public and the media has always been fully focussed on the works which are produced by architects. However, with its special 'Architects' Offices' exhibition Orgatec is now for the first time showing the working locations themselves where the architecture originates. The exhibition shows offices such as those of Graft/Berlin, Henning Larsen/Copenhagen, Massimiliano Fuksas/Rome, Delugan Meissl/Vienna and others. The exhibition was conceived and curated by Architonic.

The exhibition is distributed among 5 'hotspots' in the intermediate rooms between the exhibition halls: in the Nordboulevard as well as the corridors between Halls 4 and 10 and Halls 3 and 11.

You sit more comfortably on colours you like

He made design history with his visionary creations. Verner Panton revolutionised the way the Sixties looked at design, especially with his interiors.

Under the Same Roof

It's not always easy to finish your design studies and then start to concentrate fully on your own production, transferring the enthusiasm and energy of your college days to the world of work. The London designer collective, however, has shown us how it's done.

Illuminated Circular Outline

Alone, an "illuminated circular outline", a coat hook that casts an eye at the concept of a wall light. Its clear-cut, linear design is enhanced at the rear by an opal finish ring that fills with white light creating a bright halo focusing on the hanging garment.

Starting with The Universe

Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983) was one of the great American visionaries of the 20th century. Best-known as the inventor of the geodesic dome, Fuller devoted much of his life to resolving the gap between the sciences and the humanities, which he believed was preventing society from taking a comprehensive view of the world.

Gubi in Stage

The danish manufacturer presents five one-of-a-kind installations of its furniture and Bestlite lamps at the Copenhagen Furniture Festival.

Net'n'Nest

In 2006 Net'n'Nest was presented by Vitra at the Orgatec exhibition in Cologne as a pioneering solution to the open plan office, which had until then had the highly negative image, at least in Europe. Net'n'Nest enables the requirements of collective work in teams (Net) and of individual requirements for concentration, privacy, separation and differentiation (Nest) to be balanced.

«The DESIGNSPOTTER exhibition will open the door to global markets for you. In the coming year we intend to present to the world the coolest and most ingenious young design ideas of all. As a leading exhibition in the furniture sector the imm cologne is a business event par excellence. All the more reason for you to apply NOW and make sure you get one the highly coveted exhibition spots. Just imagine, an exhibition area of 500 m², more than 115,000 visitors and YOUR PRODUCT right in the middle of it all.

As an exhibitor you will be part of the DESIGNSPOTTER press operations round and about the exhibition and will be listed in the official exhibition catalogue. We will take care of the organisation and coordination of the product presentation, provide an open exhibition design, a special area for the press on the stand and a central info-point. It is not obligatory for you to appear at the exhibition in person. The only condition for participation is that your product was created in 2007/2008 and has not yet been on display in Cologne. Any exhibitor can present a product (exceptions to this require consultation with DESIGNSPOTTER). DESIGNSPOTTER reserves the exclusive right to select participants from all the applications which are received.»
(Invitation Designspotter)