We’ve scoured the globe to find the most captivating, uncanny and memorable design exhibitions. From retrospectives and major blockbusters to thematic exhibitions and solo shows, here’s the design events not to miss this month.
Louis Vuitton Objets Nomades, Hong Kong
Hong Kong-based architect Joyce Wang has transformed two floors of the city’s former Central Magistracy into a grand pop-up that perfectly balances the colonial architecture, contemporary rooms and niches to create an immersive experience of Louis Vuitton’s Objets Nomades travel-inspired furniture and accessories. The poetic and cinematic feel is enhanced with whimsical touches including a dining-room with walls clad in bamboo and vertical greenery, elegant diaphanous steel mesh archways and a virtual swimming pool. Standout new pieces include a chair in riotously patterned fabric by Raw Edges and Patricia Urquiola’s simple ‘Overlay’ bowl, a sculpture of four leather sheets, created for Les Petits Nomades. Writer: Catherine Shaw
Until March 31; Tai Kwun, Block 9, Central Magistracy, 10 Hollywood Road
Neotenic Design at A/D/O, New York
Leave it to A/D/O to give the emergence of ‘cute’ furniture and design a real name. The term ‘neoteny’ is traditionally a zoological reference to the retention of juvenile features in an adult animal, but it could easily also apply to the proliferation of childlike features and proportions, such as thick legs and rounded feet, in design over the last ten years. Curated by A/D/O members, the design firm Jumbo, ‘Neotenic Design’ brings together objects from designers like Faye Toogood, Konstantin Grcic, Big Game and Pierre Yovanovitch, to show how the trend for rounded, chubby shapes in design actually elicits an emotional response that we are subconsciously seeking.
Until 28 March; 29 Norman Ave, Brooklyn, NY
The strange order of things, by Nathalie Du Pasquier at Pace Gallery, Seoul
This is the second exhibition of work by Nathalie Du Pasquier at Pace in Seoul and it is a particularly personal one, as the French artist and designer curated it herself. In an array of 30 paintings, drawings and ceramics, the show dives into the her engrossing visual world that started life in painting and travels through her time as a founding member of the Memphis Group. ‘For this exhibition, I’m interested in how things chosen from different moments in the last 20 years go together in a specific display,’ Du Pasquier mentions of the edit that forms an abstract dialogue in the space.
Until 25 May; 5F, 262, Itaewon-ro, Yongsan-gu, Seoul