Contemporary Furniture Trends

Special Report: Contemporary Furniture Trends

Unique, eco-friendly, and light-hearted describe the latest interior design products at the 2007 ICFF — the International Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York. This annual exhibition showcases the latest trends in furniture, accessories, and materials from around the world and attracts designers hungry for new items to show their clients.

First stop: lighting. Josh Urso Design uses the latest Maharem fabrics to create organic pendant light fixtures that would look at home in an English garden. Urso impregnates the fabric with epoxy resins to create stiff origami-like folds of flower petals and attaches them together to form hanging light balls.

Bocci lights recall a galaxy of stars with its cast glass globes. When grouped together these sturdy hanging pendants shimmer spots of light and provide beautiful accent lighting to any room. Besides adding beauty, they are very practical too — they house xenon bulbs that have a life 10,000 hours.

Niche Modern has updated the traditional blown glass and gave it a modern twist. Using sophisticated glass colors of green, gold, and red-violets, Niche Modern created Moroccan shapes such as its Minaret and Stargazer lights. Instead of hiding the light bulbs, its filament tubes are central to its design — showing through its transparent glass.

"Green" and "recycled" are the buzzwords heard all over the design industry. With the push in several fields towards eco-friendly products, ICFF reflects many of these concerns. One designer, Inghua Ting, decided to recycle an ordinary product into a unique design statement. She turned reclaimed seatbelts — yes, from cars — and clothes belts into pillows, hammocks, and placemats. Weaving the belts into strong hammocks or bold pillows, she breathes new life into products that might have just been thrown away.

Salvaged timber is also the latest trend in eco-friendly furniture. Mackler salvages old timber from lumberyards and creates modern cubist furniture. Since the woods they reclaim are usually smaller pieces, the cubist style allows the designers flexibility in creating their design.

Futè design creates outdoor furniture made of abaca, a type of hemp plant. Abaca, native to the Philippines, is an easily grown plant and is an eco-friendly resource for furniture-manufacturers.

Surface materials also have new exciting entries. Lumicor created architectural resin panels with its new line "Botanicals". Lumicor embedded fabric in acrylic resins to create an organic line that evokes meadows, forests, and the beach. Inside these panels are leaves, beach grass, oats, and other plant life. These acrylic panels can be specified in different thicknesses and sizes. Its application range from doors, partitions to column wraps.

Another new surface product is Sensitile's polymer panels. These panels are light refractive — each panel is cut in different angles to capture and bend light into lace-patterns. The panels come in different colors, patterns and sizes. They can be created into light fixtures, partitions, signage, and furniture.

Last stop: children's furniture. Pkolino (translates to child in Italian) introduced its foam modular seating for children. The chairs are shaped into whimsical frogs and bear. They come apart so that a toddler can sit on it and pushed together it becomes a stuffed toy. Other modular pieces include a desk and chair when pulled apart.

Mozzee presented their seating for toddlers — an egg shaped highchair called Nest. Made of polyethylene materials, Nest can be adjusted to table height for feeding time and down to floor height for play time.

Through furniture and furnishings exhibits such as ICFF, designers have access to all the creativity from many countries all under one roof. Besides diversity of selection, designers also have the chance to check on the pulse of the many design concerns and issues facing clients today.

— Janet Ramin

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