Features

Dazzling exhibits and events survey contemporary design’s current best and brightest.

Material Makers

Digital design and fabrication technology are transforming both the way designers create and manufacturers bring products to market, and the products themselves. To showcase the power tools of design innovation from idea to material to production technology, the ICFF is introducing a new special feature, Material Makers. In spotlighting the people, processes, and materials behind the scenes of the design revolution, the first up – design whiz Tom Dixon is collaborating with the high-tech company TRUMPF Inc. on ICFF-exclusive products that explore Dixon’s creativity and TRUMPF Inc.'s remarkable sheet-metal processing and laser-based production capabilities. Material Makers is a unique opportunity to witness design history in the making.

DesignX

Alongside Material Makers, The Architect’s Newspaper and Mode Collective launch DesignX, a series of concentrated workshops devoted to digital design and fabrication technology. The DesignX workshops – on the topics of parametric design, direct-to-fabrication, and web-based design apps – are bringing designers up to speed on the latest software and showing them how to use fabrication technology to bring their ideas to reality.

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African & African-Caribbean Design Diaspora

The ICFF is also broadening its boundaries to a new continent, with an unprecedented feature that explores the African & African-Caribbean Design Diaspora. An initiative of the British European Design Group (BEDG), this exciting addition to the show celebrates the multi-disciplinary creative talent emerging from the African and African-Caribbean craft traditions includes multiple freestanding exhibits with craftspeople plying their particular artisan expertise.

Vodunuvo

Vodunuvo, an exhibit presented by Patty Johnson, furthers the ICFF’s exploration of new design territory – in this case, Haiti. Vodunuvo makes the case for Haiti as a dynamic, evolving culture with a critical place in the contemporary design marketplace by reexamining and transforming Haitian artifacts into products and objects that carry the island’s essential culture in a new form.

designboom mart: TRANSITION

All protestations to the contrary notwithstanding, the analog and digital worlds still interact. And happily so when it comes to matters of design and the design marketplace, as the designboom mart demonstrates year-in-and-year-out. This collaborative effort between the ICFF and designboom, Europe’s leading design-related e-zine, annually stops traffic on the Javits Center floor. A true nexus of design culture and design commerce, the designboom mart makes the virtual tangible – and the better for it. The format is classic: the zine’s editors select the items for sale in a mesmerizing design bazaar that thrums with activity for the ICFF’s duration. This year, participating designers have focused on the idea of TRANSITION, creating objects that blur the boundaries of classification and merge easily into our daily activities. Each will show one to three products, network, and sell their design souvenirs to help cover travel expenses. Stock is limited to 100 pieces maximum per stall; prices range from $10-$100.

Bergdorf Goodman

Through Tuesday, May 21
57th Street at Fifth Avenue

Bergdorf Goodman puts the ICFF and design front and center in its 57th Street windows for the run of the show. This year, the grand emporium with the most glamorous windows in the world brings the ICFF to the heart of midtown – and the center of the retail world – once again. Watch out 57th Street: the ICFF is back, and the ICFF exhibitor products in Bergdorf Goodman’s windows gives the long-loved pastime of window shopping an inventive, eye-catching twist. Artek USA Inc., Bernhardt Design, Carlo Aiello, dlV Designs, Emeco, ercol, Flavor Paper, GABRIEL SCOTT, Marset USA, Mary Wallis, molo, Phase Design, Roll & Hill, LLC, Tom Dixon, Vitra, Vondom USA

Party

GLM and The Museum of Modern Art
ICFF Opening Night Party
MoMA Design Store DESTINATION: NYC Launch

Saturday, May 18, 7:00-9:00 p.m.
The Museum of Modern Art, The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden, Applied Design Exhibition in the Design and Architecture Galleries

Open Bar

11 West 53rd Street
New York Cty

The ICFF is the exclusive sponsor of DESTINATION: NYC.

By Invitation

Fantastico

Saturday, May 18-Tuesday, May 21
201 Park Avenue South

In celebration of the ICFF and W New York - Union Square‘s recent multi-million dollar renovation, the iconic, design-centric-nexus W New York - Union Square is hosting a fantastic installation by Wanda Barcelona, the remarkable Spanish design firm celebrated for magical paper and cardboard constructions and dreamy ephemeral environments. Located at a unique and historic New York City convergence point, W New York - Union Square is a pulsating point of contact where uptown and down, radical and established, Beaux Art-style architecture and 21st-century steel-and-glass design come together. To capture and reflect the hotel’s exceptional zeitgeist, the wunderkinder of Wanda Barcelona have conceived a fantasia on one of Spain’s truly iconic designs, one that, like the literal, metaphoric, and historic traffic patterns approaching Union Square Park, also flares out and converges: the fan. With support from Interiors from Spain, the marvelous fantasy will unfurl through the airspace of the hotel’s Welcome Desk and the Living Room windows that face Park Avenue South, energizing the interior and captivating all who see it.

ICFF Public Day

Tuesday, May 21, 10:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m.

Design is everywhere, and it’s here to stay. So, if you want to discover more about what’s new and what’s next, what’s in and what’s out, what’s hot and what’s not, make your way to the ICFF. That goes for your design savvy friends, too. Tweet them. Text them. E-mail them. Phone them. However you do it, just make sure you tell everyone in your social network that they are welcome to explore the ICFF on Tuesday, May 21.

Tickets may be purchased in advance and onsite (by credit card only). Tickets are nonrefundable.

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