imm cologne news

In recent years, the brand with the white clouds in its emblem has evolved from a glass and giftware provider into a modern lifestyle brand. Today around 80 percent of the German population know LEONARDO, the 1972- registered lifestyle brand of the Glaskoch company from Bad Driburg where, since its opening in May 2007, the LEONARDO glass cube has been giving the brand a constructed architectural face. This year CEO Oliver Kleine celebrated the company’s 150th anniversary.

Weiterlesen…

Every autumn, the imm cologne furniture fair publishes a trend forecast on the most important developments in interior design. In the so-called Trend Book, the themes shaping the design scene right now are extrapolated in four directions representing various tastes and lifestyles.

The trend analysis is the work of the Trendboard inaugurated by the imm cologne six years ago – a group of five or six influential designers, architects, material specialists and journalists. Every year, several new members join the line-up to ensure a constant stream of new input for the Trendboard’s work. In a two-day workshop, these creative designers and experts discuss the most promising developments in the design scene, the needs people have and the answers design could potentially come up with. Once the workshop is over, the members of the Trendboard check how the trends they have formulated have been translated into the imm cologne’s publication, the Trend Book.

Using vivid photos of lavishly staged interiors and outdoor spaces, representative products and forms, material collages and detailed colour specifications, the Trend Book shows how people would like to furnish their homes in the coming season. The renderings and information are just as helpful for the general public as they are for professional interior designers or retailers. The pictures are supplemented by texts that describe the corresponding outlook on life and explain the aesthetic attitude of creators and users alike. The trends are also given catchy, evocative names.

The current “Interior Trends 2010” are called “Discipline”, “Trickery”, “Comfort Zone” and “Rehab”. Learn more about these four trends.

Weiterlesen…

Five months before the next event all indications are pointing to a successful imm cologne 2010. The current registration status looks good despite the difficult situation in the industry. “We are currently assuming that we will again have around 1,000 exhibitors from over 45 countries. It’s time to think ahead, and for me that means stating my commitment to the leading trade fair. Germany needs a strong leading trade fair and that is imm cologne,” says Gerald Böse, CEO of Koelnmesse.

In the coming years imm cologne is set to be Europe’s most cutting-edge furnishings and interior design trade fair. By fulfilling all market-oriented criteria, it is offering optimum prerequisites for business and networking on the international scale. In the modern design area – halls 10, 11 and 3 – visitors will be presented with a show of ideas for global design developments in a compact form. Over 300 companies will have stands there, including such brands as COR, interlübke, Ligne Roset, Walter Knoll, Domaniecki, de Sede, Kettnaker, Fraubrunnen, girsberger, Team 7, Riva, and Gervasoni, all with strong emotional appeal. “We are firmly convinced that in the coming weeks additional registrations will come from renowned companies, particularly from Italy,” says Udo Traeger, Head of the Furniture, Interior Design and Textiles division at Koelnmesse.

Weiterlesen…

Despite the huge rivalry through the Internet trade fair appearances are still highly important. The direct contact to the manufacturer continues to be a main issue for customers. Thus, trade fair stands still form an important part of brand management.

In “Fair Design” Sybille Kramer shows how much the appearances of different companies can vary. The book presents a total of 60 projects in international fair architecture from the Orgatec in Cologne up to the Expo in Aichi, Japan, among them works by Karim Rashid, Luigi Colani and Francesc Rifé.

Weiterlesen…

Floor plan templates are out. Flexibility and individuality are the distinguishing features of up-to-date domestic architecture and furnishings. Or is it just that there are new templates? At the very least, it is possible to outline general structures that will determine the layout of our future homes.

It seems as if action is called for – especially when it comes to standard housing.Your own four walls, a house in the countryside: a place to live out your twilight years and something to leave to the kids. But even without a deed of ownership, the “Ikea nesting instinct” (Chuck Palahniuk: Fight Club) is more widespread than ever before.

Weiterlesen…

Spanish design is alive and kicking. The creative minds of the so-called New Spanish Design of the late 80s and early 90s like Alberto Liévore, Javier Mariscal, Jaume Tresserra, Antoni Arola, Òscar Tusquets, Jorge Pensi or Ramon Benedito continue to produce first-rate work.

And the post-’92 generation, represented by people like Marti Guixé, Martin Ruiz de Azúa, Curro Claret, Anna Mir and Emilio Padrós as well as young designers like Jaime Hayón, has long made a name for itself both within and beyond its national borders.

Weiterlesen…

Privacy is the luxury of the 21st century. The apartment is increasingly opening up to the outside world, becoming both a stage and a place of work. And as the walls of the cocoon get thinner and the boundaries blur, the once separate formal canons of private and public aesthetics are merging too.

Man is a nomad by nature. Actually. For thousands of years, his nesting instinct was confined to caves and what we today would call “temporary architecture” – more or less provisional shelters. You stepped in or out, inside was inside and outside was outside. Window holes were barricaded up and the room with a view is a romantic invention. The dwelling as the focal point of life, with individual aesthetics and a private character, is not just a phenomenon of the modern age: it is little short of avantgarde. Well into the 20th century, having a room of one’s own was the exception rather than the rule.

Weiterlesen…

The Cologne furnishing fair imm cologne 2009 (19 to 25 January 2009) reflects the furnishing trends of tomorrow. It isn’t just furniture and interior design concepts that tell of a change in our everyday life, the structures of our homes do too.

“Trends are like waves in the ocean…they advance slowly and retreat slowly, and move on a different level as they do so,” says Eero Koivisto, the Swedish architect and designer who is analysing the future style developments in interior design as a Trendboard member on behalf of koelnmesse. The simile is all the more fitting as many trends return after a period of time in a slightly different form – after all, waves too are nothing more than new forms of one substance that is in constant flux.

Weiterlesen…

Furniture design from Germany is not only comfortable to sit on, it is also uncomfortably provocative. Whilst it generally sticks to the straight and narrow, it is sometimes blatantly off-centre. And though its aesthetics might not always be accessible at first glance, they are made to last a lifetime. A look beneath the surface reveals why.

Design legends of the Bauhaus movement like Marcel Breuer, Walter Gropius and Mies van der Rohe would find today‘s world a perplexing place. German design is running out of steam. Shelves are losing their structure, sofas have to be stuffed post-purchase, strangely bent legs appear to keep the tabletop horizontal purely by chance and lamps look like wire skeletons held together with strips of fabric.

Weiterlesen…