The London showcase of all that is funky in interior design, 100% Design, celebrated its fifth year at last weekend's show, and it's still the most influential show of its kind. It started out as an exhibition for over 100 young designers who didn't fit into London's more conservative interior design shows. For its first three years, its location in a large tent on the Kings Road accurately reflected the more laid back experimental attitude of the exhibitors.
Last year, it moved to the massive Earl's Court exhibition centre, doubled its size and prompted dark mutterings among the design cognoscenti who predicted that the show would become just another anonymous trade fair drawing the big corporate names at the expense of the more streetwise, cutting-edge designers.
Looking at this year's show, it would seem that it has not happened. Certainly, the big names, such as B&B Italia, Cappellini and Sottini, were there, but so were emerging designers such as Gitta Gschwendtner and Caterina Fadda.
These and other young designers were given reduced rates by the exhibition organisers to ensure that the show maintains its vibrancy and excitement.
Just as fashion has its looks and trends which change every year, so too has the design business. Last year, you couldn't move at the exhibition without tripping over suede pouffes and the year before you couldn't miss all the highly coloured curvy furniture. This year, colours were more muted with beiges, browns and greys predominating, fabrics more textured and many of the more exciting designers were working with ceramics and glass.
One of the star pieces of furniture was a sofa by renowned minimalist architect David Chipperfield. Produced by Hitch Mylius, it has neat lines, tailored upholstery and mixed materials and it should be available in Ireland through Foko in the new year with a £1,500 price tag depending on the fabric. This serious and restrained approach to furniture design was reflected on other stands and even when designers added in some funky details, they were not the over-the-top, jokey elements of previous years. Designer Michael Sodeau's storage cabinet for Isokon Plus showed typical retro classic styling mixed with innovation. The birch or walnut "wing unit" cabinets feature interiors painted in primary colours as well as curved edges and will retail for around £800.
Sarina de Majo's ceramics with pebble motifs are already well known and in the shops (Brown Thomas is now stocking the line) but she has now expanded the range to include hand-decorated floor and wall tiles, including mosaics. Gitta Gschwendtner describes her predominantly white ceramics as having "an element of surprise and humour, while remaining formally very minimal". Her "Strangled Light" is a pendent light whose cable apparently "strangles" the shade and seems to determine its shape. The effect is that the shade (which will retail at £64) appears soft but is, in fact, hard ceramic.
Another designer exploring curvy, soft shapes in ceramics is Caterina Fadda, whose anthropomorphic-inspired dinner plates are available in light blue, pink, yellow and lilac.
These colours were also found on one very surprising stand - leading sanitary-ware manufacturers Sottini. While the avocado and brown bathroom suites of the 1970s and 1980s seem beyond redemption, the company has developed a new range of coloured suites. The new colours are soft, very light pastels but they have a matt finish - something which is very new as gloss or semi-gloss finish has been the standard in bathroom fittings for years.
Disappointingly, no Irish designer took part in 100% Design this year, which is a pity given that it has become such an important international showcase with buyers and media coming from Europe, Japan and America.
While the show is just too darn cool to make a big deal about the millennium or, oddly enough, to even mention the M word on any of the stands, one room-sized installation was devoted exclusively to the future. Several familiar companies, including Whirlpool, Corian and Amtico, got together to create the kitchen of the future and it looked truly space age. If these design predictions come true, in the future appliances won't be those boxy things taking up floor space. Instead, they will be fully integrated, often at eye level, into the kitchen units.
Not only will they look more streamlined, they will be smarter. Fridges will be able to reorder directly from the supermarket when stocks run low and hobs won't be fixed solid items, instead they will be made from heat sources, which are beamed on to the work surface, only to disappear when cooking time is over. Washing machines will calculate how dirty clothes are and programme themselves accordingly and, best of all, dishwashers will not only wash dishes, they'll also put them away. Now that's smart design.
