It’s been a while coming but here is the wrap up from our latest edition of Design Futures held at Decoration+Design.  The theme this season was The Collector, The Creator & The Connoisseur and looked at our voyeuristic nature and the individual’s relationship to design…

The opportunity to see behind closed doors is incredibly seductive.

Countless blogs, magazines, television shows and books are now offering us glimpses into the real, lived-in spaces of interesting people.  What we find once we are inside is often a striking reminder of how close our similarities and vast our differences can be.

The way we create a sense of place and the way we relate to the objects around us reveals more than a list of material possessions.  As one man’s trash is another man’s treasure, the way that we assign value to an object says as much about us as it does about the piece itself.

The Collector, The Creator and The Connoisseur presents three distinctive ways of relating to design and demonstrates how individual aesthetics are becoming design profiles and influencing trends for 2012/13.

 

The Collector

“The Collector’s home is an ever-growing shrine to their personal obsessions.  As guardians of the by gone and champions of the bizarre, The Collector protects the rights of the countless objects that pass through our lives be they treasured or unnoticed.

Whether it’s Faberge eggs or old toothbrushes, the value of objects to The Collector is emotional and obsessive.  Monetary value is inconsequential in the quest to acquire the desired piece.

Though the main thrill is in possession, the art of ordering, arranging, compartmentalizing and storing pieces can also be a ritualistic pleasure.  As this process spreads to the virtual realm via blogs and social media, private shrines become a public celebration of the curious and the wonderful.

Regardless of subject, value, or method of display, The Collector represents our passion for the unique and desire to cultivate the differences that distinguish us.”

 

The Creator

“The patina of the creative process is revealed as ideas, furnishings and textures are built up and stripped back.

The Creator has a clear desire for everything to be useful and ready at hand resulting in an honest and low-fi design appeal. Valued objects are well made, function with integrity and grow more precious and beautiful with time and use.

Craftsmanship and references to process are highly respected.  Vintage, salvage and up-cycled furnishings find their place amongst the delicately handmade.  Decorative items are a source of inspiration, evoking memories and triggering the creative flow.

The Creator’s space is a well-loved sketchbook of trials and treasures where a clear table beckons like a blank sheet of paper.”

 

The Connoisseur

“The Connoisseur is a critic by nature.  While the functionality or aesthetic beauty of an object may be appreciated, its true value is in its significance to a much broader cultural and design context.

Boundaries between art, architecture and design blur, as all things are considered open to analysis and scrutiny as cultural icons.

Attention to the new does not result in a rigorous following of seasonal trends.  Far from it.  When it comes to values, taste is variable and The Connoisseur has no need to appease other people’s aesthetic interests.

The passion is in the acquisition of the worthy as homage to its creator.  The joy is in the juxtaposition and orientation of objects as a statement or means of expression.”

Thank you to our sponsors, Gerflor and NCS

And to the following Design Futures participants:

Armadillo & Co, Bisque Interiors, Boyd Blue, Chunk Design, Country House Manuka, Craft Enterprises, Crowley & Grouch, Emily Ziz Style Studio, Hermon & Hermon, Inside Africa, Like Butter, Luminous Space, Mark Cody Design, Mosarte, Mud Australia, Orient House, Orson & Blake, Room Agencies, Safari Living, Spence & Lyda, Tigger Hall, Villa Inde

 

 

Happy New Year to all!

Really excited to be kicking off the new year New Black style with the third edition of Design Futures to be held at the heart of Decoration+Design Sydney.

I’ve been having a great time developing this concept.  It came about as a smooth transition of Alone Together where we looked into the importance of solitude and how we can use design to encourage people to unplug.  I loved this theme and by the time Alone Together launched I was already following its natural progression to our new concept – The Collector, The Creator & The Connoisseur.

While looking into the importance of privacy, I considered how much access we currently have into other people’s lives and their homes, our behaviour as both voyeur and exhibitionist and at how this fascination with the individual and authentic is influencing broader directions in design.

So the third edition of Design Futures was born.  The Collector, The Creator & The Connoisseur looks at this new wave of hyper-personalisation and how individual obsessions are becoming design profiles and influencing directions for 2012/13.

We have some brilliant pieces coming in for the show from Decoration+Design exhibitors including Emily Ziz, Boyd Blue and Tigger Hall so there’ll be immediate access to the must-haves for 2012.   Complementing our featured exhibitors will be our selection of guest participants presenting the hottest new Australian talent as well as designs from leading international icons Kenneth Cobonpue, Piet Hein Eek, Carpet Reloaded and Matthew Hilton!  I know!  Pretty excited here.

So drag yourself out of your post-holiday funk and come down to the Sydney Exhibition Centre.  I’ll even help to reconcile the contradiction of having individualisation as a trend…

Decoration+Design Sydney runs for 3 days only (1st-3rd February) so register online in advance.  Tickets for the Design Futures Seminar are on sale now and are available here.