Phaidon creatives at Clerkenwell Design Week
Ron Arad, Deyan Sudjic and a comforting take on Mies’s Barcelona chair are all present at the design festival
It might not have reach of Milan, or the glamour of Venice’s architecture Biennale, yet London’s annual Clerkenwell Design draws together a huge number of great pieces and practitioners into one of London’s most design-conscious neighbourhoods for three days each year. The event runs from tomorrow 20 – 22 May, and will feature a number of designers, architects and commentators featured in our books.
At 11am on Tuesday 20th the Israeli architect and designer Ron Arad and his business partner Asa Bruno discuss their approach to building in a discussion entitled Architects Can’t be Choosers: On Clients, Compliance & Cost, the Farmiloe Building, 34-36 St John Street.
On Wednesday evening at the same venu, the Phaidon author and Design Museum director Deyan Sudjic chairs a talk between the designer and architect Patricia Urquiola and Rolf Fehlbaum of Vitra, called What Next for Product Design?
Arad’s work will also be on display at Vitra’s showroom, 30 Clerkenwell Road, where the firm will be showing versions of Arad’s classic Tom Vac chair, as interpreted by today’s architecture and design studios.
You can also look out for classic, tubular steel chairs by Mies van der Rohe and Marcel Breuer at the German manufacturer, Thonet’s stand.
Knoll will also show their new Relax edition of Mies’s Barcelona Chair, an apparently more comfortable version of the piece, which Knoll developed from earlier images of the architect’s work, as well as Eero Saarinen’s outdoor tables; visit them at 91 Goswell Road.
While at the Magis booth, meanwhile, look out for pieces by the likes of Naoto Fukasawa and Konstantin Grcic; you can also look out for its stand in the Farmiloe Building, St John Street.
There’s plenty of other participants, speakers and firms involved. For more on the event, go here. For pocket-sized insight into some of the designs and designers involved, take a look at The Design Book.