Pod cast: exhibitors at this year’s Design Miami are in their element

Porky Hefer’s inhabitable sculptures for Southern Guild join a crop of galleries fitting into the theme Elements: Water that curatorial director Aric Chen assigns for Design Miami 2019

Hanging colourful seating pods
Porky Hefer’s cosy fur-lined seating pods represent molecular structures with the bright leathers corresponding to atomic colour codes.
(Image credit: Hayden Phipps)

At this year’s Design Miami, Porky Hefer plans to give us all a science lesson. Taking his playful vision to a microscopic level, the designer will craft inhabitable sculptures in the form of molecular structures for Southern Guild gallery, using bright leathers corresponding to atomic colour codes.

While known for his fantastical, animalistic creations, this new collection has seen the Cape Town based designer create giant, spherical seating pods made up of differently hued sections, each representing a different element. For example, in his ‘Water’ pod, two white atoms of hydrogen and one red atom of oxygen have been brought together to form a cosy fur-lined nook.

Coincidently, Hefer’s ode to H2O also fits in with the theme for 2019, set by Design Miami’s curatorial director Aric Chen. Named Elements: Water, it’s a continuation of his Basel offering, Elements: Earth, in which he curated a range of projects that investigated the future of materials, resources and making.

2 small wooden benches

In Circulation Bus Stop Benches, by Rooms Studio, 2019. Courtesy, Rooms Studio

(Image credit: TBC)

Elsewhere in the fair, Georgian design studio Rooms will be encouraging visitors to return to their rebellious school days by asking them to deface one of its wooden benches, while Melbourne gallery Broached Commissions joins the line-up for the first time – taking a slightly different approach, it will be showing a collection of Victorian antiques that have been contemporised and brought back to life.

Black & white image of men cutting a tree

The Grid Within by Broached Commissions, 2019. Courtesy, Broached Commissions

(Image credit: TBC)

INFORMATION

Design Miami is on view 3-8 December

miami2019.designmiami.com

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