Material world: Heimtextil 2018

From 9 to 12 January 2018, Heimtextil, the largest international trade fair for home and contract textiles, once again opens its doors. The upcoming fair will include the debut of the Interior.Architecture.Hospitality Expo, taking place in Hall 4.2. Along with an extensive Heimtextil exhibition focusing on the theme “customised”, the new format offers a diverse accompanying programme with guided tours, expert talks and events in the areas of architecture, interior design and hotel furnishings.

The accompanying programme is organised by the Expo partners: the Association of German Interior Architects/Designers (BDIA), the architecture and interior design journal “AIT”, World Architects, the hotel and catering industry journal “Allgemeine Hotel und Gastronomie-Zeitung” (AHGZ) and the Munich hotelforum. A broad spectrum of topics will thus be covered, from interior trends to technical focuses like fire prevention, to societal questions about new forms of habitation.

The meeting point for the guided tours is the Interior.Architecture.Hospitality Salon in Hall 4.2. AIT, AHGZ, BDIA and World Architects each offer a range of tours in cooperation with leading interior designers, thereby opening up expert perspectives to participants. While AIT presents product innovations and facilitates discovery tours with trend scouts, the BDIA will focus on new developments in the “field of tension between aesthetics, sustainability and suitability for contract furnishings” and additionally offer a tour tailored to students. World Architects has put together six tours on specific topics with professionals including Klaus de Winder of de Winder Architekten and Jana Vonofakos of VRAI interior architecture.

Visitors from the hotel industry will be enthusiastic about the tours organised by AHGZ with Corinna Kretschmar-Joehnk, who with her Hamburg firm JOI Design has realised numerous hotel projects in Germany and abroad. Together with Michael Struck, CEO of Ruby Hotels, she explains the demands that textiles in the hotel sector must fulfil and gives answers to questions about trends and innovations.

On 11 January, the area of hotel furnishings will also be the special focus of various presentations and discussions offered within the framework of the Heimtextil trend theme “the future is urban”. The Munich hotelforum, for example, will host a panel discussion and simultaneous presentation of new and innovative hotel concepts that explore how urbanisation influences hotel planning. In the series of talks “From pop-up hotel to living hotel”, AIT offers a forum for various architects to grapple with unusual hotel concepts and asks what effects they may have on our cities.

A series of lectures by an international cast of architects – also organised by AIT – will not spotlight living in hotels, but rather “New forms of habitation” in times of demographic change. Morten R. Gregersen of the Danish firm NORD Architects, Issei Suma of the Tokyo-based SUMA, Andreas Graf of the Swiss firm Liechti Graf Zumsteg Architekten and Oliver Thill of Rotterdam’s Atelier Kempe Thill will present concepts for age-appropriate and cross-generational living as well as discuss strategies, opportunities and effects of this relevant contemporary subject.

The Expo’s thematic focus, “customised”, takes account of a trend that has gained increasing momentum in the last several years in the area of architecture and design, pursuing a development from mass to individualised production, especially with regard to products tailored to the specific customer. This topic will be taken up by four speakers in the AIT series “Customisation – design architecture and craftsmanship”. The participants will include, for example, the Swiss interior and stage set designer Ushi Tamborriello and the Danish architect and furniture designer Sigurd Larsen, who takes on commissions involving the interplay of complex spatial design and high-quality products.

The exhibiting companies in the Expo have based their programmes on the “customised” theme as well. During the Expo, fair visitors can work with them to develop solutions to concrete design and application questions relating to current projects. In summary, in its compact, focused format, the Interior.Architecture.Hospitality Expo offers a diverse exhibition and a richly varied programme with numerous opportunities for interaction and professional exchange.

© Architonic