The countdown to the Wallpaper* Design Awards has begun and every day during the run-up to the awards ceremony we are presenting the shortlist for the ten International Judges' Awards, exclusively on Wallpaper.com. Day 2 sees the contenders for furniture designer of the year. All winners will be announced on the 11th of January.
Arik Levy
Paris-based industrial designer Arik Levy has been a regular on the design scene for a couple of decades, designing sofas and chairs
for big guns such as Vitra and Ligne Roset, but his recent collection
for Baleri Italia and his vases and ceramics for Turkish company Gaia & Gino have brought him firmly into the limelight. With his company L Design, he likes nothing more than cribbing materials from unlikely industries and turning them into pieces of design.
www.ldesign.fr
Fredrikson Stallard
Since launching their company two years ago, Swedish designer Patrik Fredrikson and Brit Ian Stallard have made waves with their art-meets-design furniture and ceramics. The high-content,
high-concept pieces, such as their ‘Villosus’ porecelain vases with horsehair and the urethane rugs, are favourites with collectors and galleries. They are working on a collection for London’s David Gill Galleries and have created a piece for Pearl Lam’s Contrasts Gallery.
www.fredriksonstallard.com
Hella Jongerius
Dutch designer Hella Jongerius and Vitra may seem an odd pairing; one is known for her naive, idiosyncratic approach, the other for its slick, hi-tech furniture. But the collaboration speaks volumes about Jongerius’s talent and Vitra’s commercial nous, because everyone wants design with a quirky, homespun feel and Jongerius provides it in spades. From vases for Ikea to a solo exhibition at Galerie Kreo in Paris, her design covers a wide spectrum.
www.jongeriuslab.com
Paola Navone
Italian Paola Navone has been a fixture on the design scene for
30 years. She was involved in anti-design movements Alchimia and Memphis and was a protégé of Ettore Sottsass. Her Gingerbread collection for Italian furniture company Lando has surrealist, theatrical touches and looks almost childlike. Many years working in Hong Kong bred a passion for fusing design and handicraft,
hi- and low-tech approaches, and she creates one-offs and niche ranges, such as this year’s bathroom products for Viva Ceramica.
Roy McMakin
He’s been around since the 1980s, but Seattle-based artist and designer Roy McMakin’s furniture is having a moment. With quality and craftsmanship at its core, his mainly wooden pieces feature almost overcomplicated joinery that gives them a surreal twist. McMakin, whose work is produced under his Domestic Furniture label, also designs houses; sculptural staircases and subtle shifts
of scale give the spaces a things-are-not-what-they-seem slant.
www.domesticfurniture.com
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