NEW YORK — How many ways can you reinvent the sofa? That’s the annual conundrum for designers and manufacturers in anticipation of the International Contemporary Furniture Fair, the industry’s essential stateside trade show. For the 25th year, the ICFF arrived in New York this weekend to serve as a stage for new collections. Touring the behemoth-sized Javits Center, we found plenty of new colorways, patterns, and materials for the forms we recall from ICFFs past. We also found, however, that the only designers with something truly new to offer had identified uniquely modern-day problems — specific cultural controversies, emerging technologies, evolving social practices — and responded to them, without any trendy gimmicks, sparkles, or smoke and mirrors.
The spirit of innovation wasn’t limited to sofa designs. From an ad-hoc, modular conference room, to an adaptation of the traditional opium den, to an LED fixture you would actually put inside your house, ARTINFO picked three stand-out designers with something relevant to offer the 21st-century consumer. It’s necessity, after all, that breeds invention.
Bernhardt Design
When inventor Robert Propst created the first cubicle for Herman Miller in the ’60s, he envisioned it being used as a mobile partition that allowed for adjustable levels of privacy and interaction in the workplace — and it only took half a decade for businesses to catch on. In the past few years, concepts like “collaboration” and “synergy” have driven workspaces to evolve from so-called “cubicle farms” to open spaces. That doesn’t do away, however, with the need for privacy. Noting this shift, North Carolina-based Bernhardt Design tapped Korean designer Jang Won Yoon to create the Code Sofa, a modular set reminiscent of the Bouroullec Brothers’ 2007 Alcove Sofa. The modules’ high backs and sides provide seclusion by blocking sound and prying eyes. “It’s so simple, it disappears like architecture,” Bernhardt Design president Jerry Helling told ARTINFO. Paired with Jephson Robb’s lightweight Quiet Table, equipped with a fingerpull groove on its underside for easy relocation (“It’s got a base that floats across the floor,” said Helling), the two make an ad-hoc private conference room in the most progressively open of workspaces.
Neri&Hu
In light of China’s recent counterfeiting controversies; disposable, mass-produced products; and the surge of hastily-planned skyscrapers, Shanghai-based architects Lyndon Neri and Rossana Hu (otherwise known as Neri&Hu Design Research Office) have established themselves as vocal opponents of China’s conveyor-belt approach to architecture and design. This ICFF, Neri&Hu (the firm’s official furniture brand) launched a line exclusively through New York retailer The Future Perfect to express this critical viewpoint while dually demonstrating the couple’s own fascination with their Chinese heritage. In collaboration with De La Espada, a Portugal-based design management firm that works solely in natural materials, they borrowed typologies that evoke the language of traditional Chinese design and reinvented them for modern use. A prime example is the solid wood Opium Sofa, an adaptation of the Qing Dynasty’s low, wide beds, newly outfitted with side shelving and spacious armrests that double as mini built-in coffee tables. “It’s a very utilitarian, very practical piece of furniture.” Neri told ARTINFO. “People can still use that for drugs or other things, but it is a reference to how a bed is not just a place to sleep, or a sofa is not just a place to sit.”
The designs are on view now through June 30 at The Future Perfect’s Meatpacking District pop-up showroom.
Rich Brilliant Willing
LEDs, the low-heat, low-energy, ultra long-lasting lighting choice for high-art designs and Daft Punk’s flashing helmets, are finally making their way into the home — just with a few adjustments. “The technology is there to do really amazing things,” said Alexander Williams, who with Charles Brill and Theo Richardson operates Brooklyn-based design and manufacturing studio Rich Brilliant Willing. This ICFF, the trio of RISD graduates launched the Gala Chandelier, a household-friendly lighting fixture that marks a departure from prior space-age LED statement pieces. The team created its own lightbulb of self-customizable temperatures (ranging from clear to soft white, in incandescent bulb terms) for handblown glass lanterns that hang from a simple aluminum beam. The warm, familiar glow is subtle, charming, and operates on just 8 watts.