International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF) 2009

Jacob K. Javits Convention Center – New York City

I didn’t attend his year’s ICFF looking for particular products to write about.

I knew what I didn’t want to write about: any products that explored concept at the expense of quality and the inverse of this; anything by a rock star – music, design or a famous just-for-being-famous person, I’m not fussed; they all push my buttons – anything made of felt and anything over –stuffed. I was happy to walk away empty handed.

Only four products made me curious enough to want to speak to the designers.  They are all intelligent, beautiful and accessible products of exceptional quality that will remain timeless.

The first three are all related by virtue of training.  It wasn’t my intention to select a group of people who were alumni of the same design school; but it happened (something I only became aware of as I interviewed each about their work) which says something about their formative training.  When you speak to the three graduates from Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) – Searle, Adelman, and Takagi – and they tell you about the environment in which they studied, you understand why it is that they are capable of designing the furniture and lighting that they do.  The fact their design education takes places within a “culture of curiosity” where they are “taught to use their eyes” means they have learnt the language that creates products that are other-worldly.  Humble, knowledgeable, confident, kind – these are the professionals that are needed now.  I have to agree with her, when Adelman, says, “RISD, doesn’t just produce good designers; but good people as well.”

The final product you will read about is a gem – okay, I have a bias as you’ll discover.  But even if I wasn’t biased, I would still say it is a fun, smart and practical product that deserves success.

Here is my ICFF best in show 2009:

ELEGANT UTILITY

C-Beam Table by UM Project – Brooklyn, USA

François Chambard and Colgate Searle are the partnership that forms UM Project, a “hybrid between a workshop for fabrication, a laboratory for discovery and a consulting practise for design.”

Originally founded by Chambard – Searle only recently was made a partner in the firm – UM Project’s C-Beam Table is one of around 50 products that the company has designed and manufactured to date.  The table was developed with multiple uses in mind; a work desk, conference table or for casual dining, and thought has been given to eco-friendly ingredients; the materials are renewable, recycled, responsible or post-industrial.

Part Jean Prouvé and part American Arts & Crafts movement, the C-Beam Table gives you a sense of monastic security: austere, but not cold; present, but not daunting it is perfect for sitting at without distraction.

Searle, who designed the table, has managed to retain an honesty of simplicity often missed by designers who mistake simplicity for ease.  There is no self consciousness to its pared back, bare-bones look, “I design for an economy of means”, says Searle, and you can see the authenticity of his words when standing beside this product.  It looks simple and it is; but it is not facile.

Graduating with a BFA in Furniture Design (RISD), and growing up in New England surrounded by various craft traditions, most notably furniture (“our house was full of Windsor Chairs”), Searle says has given him a particular type of aesthetic ingenuity that supports his ability to design a piece such as the C-Beam Table.  This ingenuity is evident when he divulges the solution for the top-to-leg join (I have sworn to confidentiality), that allows the legs to simultaneously punch through to the table’s top while splaying out at a 5% angle towards the ground.

Searle has been thorough in his details; the color choice is unusual, a little whimsical, and a combination few designers would immediately think of: drab, civil service gray for the table top has been paired with canary yellow legs, but, it looks stunning and the result is a surprisingly neutral effect that will work well in most environments.

The C-Beam Table is simultaneous in its nature – robust and delicate; grounded and floaty, scholastic and homely; it would be easy to place this in the domain of minimal; doing so would cause you to miss exploring the substance underpinning its style.

DOMESTIC JEWELLERY

Lindsey Adelman Studio – Brooklyn, USA

If one were to track the typology of Lindsay Adelman’s various lighting designs, lineage could be extracted from Alexander Calder, the 1970’s, scientific instruments, and the metal work of the Bauhaus.  But of all the familial resonances that her products conjure, the most beguiling is Art Deco.  In particular, Adelman’s lighting can be likened to Art Deco jewellery.

These designs are exuberant, optimistic pieces made for adornment, where slender metal work supports multiple bosses of glass jewels at its end, which if viewed through quick glances, can convince you that they are multiplying.  Rapidly.  All around you.

Every product from the range is unique; no two glass bubbles are the same.  Each bubble is mouth-blown and hand finished (in Seattle) and therefore impossible to standardize – thankfully – adding greater sentience to each.  As a counterpoint the metal work (also produced to spec off-site) shows how adept Adelman is at perfecting the details.  Connections between metal components seems magical; no slack or allowance within the joints is apparent, “I like the idea of combining something that is honest, exposed, and vulnerable”, she says.  Little is hidden in these pieces, which is why the attention to detail matters and the nature of the work echoes silver smithing and jewellery making.  By virtue of scale a jeweller works by travelling further into the micro-environment of their piece; Adelman, works by exploding the details of junctures and over emphasizes the points of articulation.  The detailing and level of perfection of the metal work that she has directed into these pieces are a testament of her ability to translate the most delicate of details into the physicality of a material.

A lighting designer since graduating in 1995, from RISD’s Master of Industrial Design program, early employment took her to Seattle where she worked for a lighting company that had its own metal work and hot glass shop.  Here her affinity for glass really came to the fore, and Adelman gained the knowledge needed to design with the material, “humans have a visceral relationship with glass”, she says, “glass is organic and fluid, it is very feminine in nature”.  New York born and bred, she returned home, and in 2000 began the partnership Butter, with fellow lighting designer David Weeks.  After a successful 5 years, the two went their separate ways to pursue solo careers.

The eponymous Lindsey Adelman Studio was started after the birth of her son, “I wanted to know what, why and how; if something was going to take me away from my son, then, I thought, this had better be good.” That mandate has produced a “healthy business” that combines the creative with the practical, “I have designed the process [of manufacture] – I don’t want a stressful environment; if I had to be there doing it all, it’s not worth it – every stage is considered.” All products are shipped disassembled and assembly is carried out on site by an electrician; Adelman never gets to see her work assembled and in situ, “I only ever see a piece in its parts”.

Adelman naturally designs products that intuitively spark the emotionality of beauty.  Which is why, when she says, “I wanted to create beauty”, you get the sense that perhaps she knows something about it that the rest of us have yet to learn.

URBANE COLONIAL

American Gothic Table by Atelier Takagi – Washington DC, USA

“It’s not particularly anything”, says Jonah Takagi when speaking about his table American Gothic.  I intuit that he actually means the table is not one particular style, but a fusion of influences instead.  In fact here is a product that is the sum of its many parts, which Takagi has merged noticeably well, without conceptual or aesthetic loop holes.

Takagi holds a BFA in Furniture Design (RISD) and, like Searle and Adelman, he mentions the traits of authenticity, honesty and appropriateness when speaking about design process and final products, “the fact I grew up in New England surrounded by a blue blood Yankee, puritanical sensibility has something to do with it – the way I approach the work”.  Further add into the mix his Japanese background (Takagi’s father is Japanese), an appreciation of tinker toys and a “nebulous, surreal design process”, and you might be able to imagine how this particular table could be thought up.  These influences show themselves in the radial connector designed to join the legs and the black lacquer finish which unifies all of it.

The most fascinating aspect of this table is the sense of tension felt when you look at it.  I had cognition of something being unsettled and not quite right, and then I realised that there are 5 legs.  This one element is what gives the table its edginess; picturing it with less (4 or 3 even), I realise that if Takagi had not engineered this quirky mutation, it would be just a table with mismatched elements of style.

It would have been easy for Takagi to lose the design of this table to self indulgence and finish with a piece that was stylistically over-cooked and lacking quality of construction; instead the constraint and discipline used in its development has resulted in work that stands with assurance, in the spaces in-between styles.

KITTY KAT KOOL

The ModKat Cat Litter Box – New York, USA

When the partners of ModProducts – Brett Teper and Rich Williams, embarked on the design for The ModKat Litter Box, they wanted to “design a product with no compromises.” What started as a lamentation by Williams about the mess from his cats’ litter box is about to be manufactured in a production-run of 800+.  Finding this product was especially enjoyable for me, as I, like Williams have a cat, and live, in a space-challenged New York apartment.

Necessity is the mother of all invention.  The issues faced by pet owners who live in small spaces with their animals means that we often have to tolerate having horrid looking pet products on permanent view in our apartments; the lack of room typically means there is no practical area where bowls or litter boxes can be discreetly stored.  It was the restriction of Williams’ apartment; the fact that his bathroom was a capsule too tiny to fit a normal litter box in, that prompted Williams to think that another style of litter box was needed; one that looked so good, hiding it would be redundant.

The ModKat is a smart, compact and tasteful version of the hooded litter tray that discerning cat owners will want to own.  Although what was on show was the final prototype, the quality and finish are faultless.  The swinging lid (at the top of the piece) hinges effortlessly, the construction is sturdy and with a built in poop-scoop/brush and removable internal liner, it is a self-sufficient, all-in-one, unit.

There is one other delight which I found a joyful experience of the ModKat; the product has this great aural quality to it – yeah, you read right – it sounds great.  It’s got a deep and rolling sound, not echoic and empty.  This product sounds, as though it is quality.  It had, for me, such a familiar sound that I finally remembered; this product sounds like the Kartell Componibili Modules.

I consider the ModKat a great house-wares product, and I know they will be purchased and appropriated for other storage means, and why not?  Little wonder it won 2009 ICFF Editor’s Award for Best Accessory.

See it in action in the video below.

Available in cyan, lemon, red and white (black is coming soon).

I will be buying one; in black of course.

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May 26, 2009