Above Image: Kabiljo Inc - Occupy!

 

Every year, Salone Internazionale del Mobile promises to offer us an exciting melting pot of design, with this year's show proving to be no different. Here we bring you our roundup of 2012's most innovative installations and creations, from big-name exhibitors to hotly emerging designers.

 

Claire-Anne O'Brien - Knitted Furniture & Booo! Studios with Front - Surface Tension Lamp

 

Bored of your winter knits? Claire-Anne O'Brien puts a uniquely contemporary spin on hers with her knitted furniture. Her playful designs manipulate standard forms and scales of knitting.

 

This quirky light installation by Booo! Studios for Front has been designed to draw on the long life of LED bulbs. The Surface Tension Lamp combines a metal base with a constant cycle of bubbles to create an ever-evolving lampshade. In the ten years it will take for the LED to burn out, the bubbles will have delicately formed approximately three million different shades.

 

Canon - Neoreal in the Forest & Ashley Temudo - Super-able Table

 

This installation by Canon recreates the beauty of a wild and unpredictable forest. Giant sculptural screens draped in fabric project a constantly transforming spectrum of colour and sound, filling the exhibition space.

 

Ashley Temudo's Super-able Table has been cleverly designed to challenge society's preconceptions of weakness. Upon first glance, the table looks delapadated and unstable. In fact, the holes used to create this image are highly functional, smartly holding glasses and mugs with an even stronger balance than your average table top.

 

Zhang Ke with Moroso - Hidden Dragon Sofa & Makoto Tanjiri with Toshiba - Passing on Project

 

Interior design meets ancient Chinese folklore with this piece by Zhang Ke for Moroso. It's designed to represent a dragon. With smooth curves and peaks like a mountainous landscape, the Hidden Dragon sofa encourages interaction between all those who sit on to it by having no set direction. Seemingly floating just above the floor, it's as though the mountain is reflecting in water.

 

The Passing on Project installation by Makoto Tanjiri was created in response to the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan to resemble the moment that light is born. Upon entering a completely dark room, visitors are each given a translucent acrylic cube. Passing through a hidden tunnel, cubes can be placed into a shallow pool of water where they illuminate on contact. With each cube placed in the water, this installation slowly begins to resemble a city scape at night time.

 

Kabiljo Inc - Occupy! & Paolo Navone with Barovier&Tosa - The Secret Garden

 

Design studio Kabilijo Inc created Occupy!, an exhibition designed to represent the 2011-12 occupy and protest movements by calling both political and aesthetic demands on design into question. Created from the uncovered springs of a disused mattress, the seating is made comfortable and functional through the addition of brightly coloured balls of yarn.

 

Paolo Navone worked with Barovier&Toso to create The Secret Garden, a clandestine beauty hidden from the outside world. 11,000 hazelnut branches have been woven into little huts, housing thousands of murano glass chandeliers inside. Visitors sneak a look into the spaces through tiny gaps, catching a glimpse of the glass secretly concealed inside.

 

United Colors of Benetton - Objet Préfére/Objet Coloré

The United Colors of Benetton exhibition combines two collections in collaboration with Fabrica and the cultural centre Grand-Hornu Images in Belgium. Objet Préfére presents fifteen pieces of furniture created around a favourite object. Objet Coloré showcases store display fittings, designed to mix surfaces, forms and multicoloured geometries to best present United Colors of Bennetton apparel.

 

Text by Josie Sampson

Images courtesy of:

1.  via ARTBoom & via Booo!

2.  via Designboom& via Ashley Temudo

3. via Indesign Live & via Passing on Project

4.  via Designboom & via Barovier&Toso

5. via Emanuele Tortora/FABRICA

Jasper Morrison Handlebar Table, 1983, image courtesy of Phillips de Pury

 

We're usually holding onto handlebars whilst speeding through the streets on two wheels but Jasper Morrison has used bicycle handlebars in an altogether more stationary way. Seen by many as a seminal Morrison work and based around the idea of 'found' objects, this quirky and simple table from 1983 has just joined over 2,500 other pieces in the Design Museum's permanent collection which is growing ahead of the big move to the former Commonwealth Institute in 2014. The acquisition was made possible by the first Art Fund grant for the museum and expect to see it on display in a future exhibition of objects from the museum's collection.

 

Text by Thanh Ma

 

With the weather we've been enjoying recently the last thing on our minds are April showers. However, it's always best to be prepared for that most typical of English weather phenomena so why not pop down to the first London Undercover pop up shop where you can find well made and wonderfully designed umbrellas.

 

Having collaborated with the likes of Selfridges and Manolo Blahnik this is a brand with fine taste and the store design reflects this with its stripped back style and carefully selected vintage props. The factory where London Undercover products are made serves as inspiration for the shop and founder Jamie Milestone says that "everything in store had just been completed and brought direct from there so we wanted that to be felt in the way they sit in a retail environment  - like final pieces just out of production". The durable nature of the product is reflected through industrial furniture.

 

The temporary store will stock limited edition umbrellas as well as the current collection of hats, scarves and bags and, as an extra special touch, they'll be offering a bespoke engraving service. Now is the time to visit the space and invest in a stylish accessory which will be protect you from the elements for many seasons to come.

 

Until 11th April 2012. 38 Monmouth Street, London WC2H.

 

Text by Thanh Ma