At the beginning of June, the designers Patricia Urquiola (Milan) and Defne Koz (Chicago/Milan/Ankara) met up with the designer Harald Gründl (EOOS, Vienna), the textile designer Martin Leuthold (Jakob Schlaepfer, St. Gallen) and the editor Marco Velardi (apartamento, Milan/Barcelona) for a two-day imm cologne Trend Board workshop in Cologne. Here they filtered out four of the most important trends in furniture and interior design – trends that represent the different levels of style and lifestyle. Once again this year, these four interior trends are summed up in a trend book called Interior Trends 2011, complete with informative names, exemplary products and lavishly photographed settings.
The four interior trends will take on shape for the public at imm cologne in January 2011 in the form of installations. These will be presented by the members of the Trend Board in four exhibition cubes that will be part of the still relatively new trade fair format Pure Village.
Trend 1: Emotional Austerity
As bittersweet as dark chocolate
Austere beauties: The elegant ambiance is defined by clear and unostentatious aesthetics. And yet despite their severity, the forms and lines are anything but cold. Instead they betray the passion of their makers and owners for details and quality. In their search for the essence of things, the designers encounter classic and established forms that are equipped with new functions and produced with high-tech. This playful mixing with new technologies and the piecing together of old and new details are symptomatic of a desire to dismantle and re-arrange that finds particularly strong expression in this trend: The cards are being reshuffled. With filigree forms and soft colours, these austere beauties appeal to both our heads and our hearts. They are joined by pretty but modest basic forms with boxy or rounded contours.
The colours and materials are dominated by nature: wood, leather, felt and plant fibres are complemented by technical fabrics; an earthy olive hue dominates over lush and pale shades of green and is joined by powder shades from rosé to brown.
Trend 2: Surprising Empathy
A surprisingly warm welcome
Shedding ballast: Who says the future isn’t sensual? New forms and new materials are teaching us a new way of seeing things. What looks light turns out to be heavy and resilient, what seems heavy and solid captivates us with its lightness. This applies to both forms and materials. Volumes appear airy or are reduced to their outline, while honeycombed and woven structures add depth to two-dimensional surfaces. Light and flowing materials form a contrast with their cold and heavy counterparts. On the whole, the aesthetics are defined by angular and folded structures.
The dominant colour is a cold grey, accompanied by ash grey and black and brightened up with vibrant dashes of citrus yellow and mandarin orange. A light taupe mediates between grey and white and adds a little softness to the colour scale.
Trend 3: Re-Balancing
Reconfiguring the world
Furniture that thinks outside the box: Perhaps surprisingly, it is in the generally so tranquil world of harmonyseeking family-minded consumers that the box is becoming the epitome of universal furniture, a symbol of the search for personal, meaningful pieces populated by truly practical things – icons of everyday life. What doesn’t fit is made to fit, and wherever people are content with their own company, the furniture ought to be unpretentious too. Even angular and simple individual structures can be fashioned into rounded and astonishingly comfortable opportunities for retreat – soft padding or sheepskins emanate a sense of luxury. The preference is for natural materials. The surface textures are knitted or woven, occasionally even hand-spun.
A warm rhubarb-red radiates positive energy and warmth and is combined with creamy-white, corn-yellow and tan shades ranging from light brown all the way to terracotta.
Trend 4: Transforming Perspectives
Simple forms for complex things
Material as an experiment: As in performance art, this Interior Trend (unlike “Emotional Austerity”) is not so much interested in a long-term relationship as it is in a snapshot, in a response to the nature cult, the hype surrounding cult objects or “green design”. The protagonists try to convey their newly gained insights with the aid of archaic forms, simple solutions and it-products taken to cliché-like extremes. A great deal of importance is attached to material finishes, to polished or matt surfaces. The experimental workshop of “Transforming Perspectives” prefers to work with foamed metals, composite mineral materials, glass and metal fabrics.
A dark plum-blue provides the dominant background for both an artificial lavender shade and a dove-grey with a violet shimmer. Important features are emphasised in a caramel shade with a metallic-brown gleam.
Information about the manufacturers and sources of the products shown in the photos can be found in the Trend Book Interior Trends 2011.
The Trend Book – A Reference Work for the Future
The 72-page Trend Book depicts these trends with sensitive synopses of the formal and emotional motifs, lavishly produced photos and detailed information about the colour values and material collages. Thanks to its autumn publication date, the Trend Book is able to take stock of the spring presentations and evaluate the developments that will make it to the first major furnishing and order show of the year, the imm cologne 2011, according to their potential for the interior design of the future. This definitive book is compulsory reading for the furnishing industry and is available for a nominal charge of 50 euros. It provides a compact overview of what’s happening in the design scene right now and is a valuable orientation aid for exhibitors, trade visitors and journalists.
Further information: www.imm-cologne.com
15. September 2010
Categories: Interior Trends 2011, pure village, Trends
Tags: apartamento, Cologne, Defne Koz, Emotional Austerity, EOOS, furniture show, Germany, Harald Gründl, imm cologne 2011, interior design, Interior Trends 2011, Jakob Schlaepfer, lifestyle, Marco Velardi, Martin Leuthold, Patricia Urquiola, pure village, Re-Balancing, Surprising Empathy, trade fair, Transforming Perspectives, Trend Board, Trend Book, Trends
