The "industrialization" of architecture that took place in the 20th century made object design especially important: similar to each other, typical buildings often acquire individual features, in no small measure due to the unique design of objects surrounding a person. Both the "finishing" and the saturation of the interior with emotions and impressions depend on them.
Therefore, as part of the IE School of Architecture and Design's Postgraduate Master's Program in Design of Workspaces, which is taught in Madrid and London, and is an additional training program for professional architects in designing innovative workspaces, we always keep a close eye on the areas of furniture and interior design. To this end, in May of this year, we visited the Milan Furniture Show - the largest and probably the most influential exhibition of furniture and interior items in the world. This experience turned out to be very interesting - especially thanks to the Salone Satellite section that was present at the exhibition, where more than a hundred young designers showed prototypes of their work or their first realized works. In Milan, it became clear to us that the most promising and innovative ideas can be found in the section of young designers.
Another feature that we noted at the Salone Satellite in Milan is a large number of designers from Russia and the countries of the former USSR: even from the exhibition catalog it was immediately obvious how significant the share of participants from Russia, Latvia and Georgia was.
This fact, along with a variety of news from the thriving Moscow design community, made our next visit - to the I Saloni Worldwide Moscow exhibition inevitable - to meet key representatives of the Moscow design industry.
The exhibition in Moscow turned out to be much smaller than its Milan counterpart, which, however, can only please any visitor: in this case, he does not suffer from an overabundance of information and an abundance of catalogs.
The exhibition was held in a large two-storey pavilion "Crocus Expo", where modern furniture was placed on the first tier, and "classic" - on the second. The Salone Satellite section was located at the entrance to the pavilion: there were exhibited works by more than 30 young designers from Russia and other republics of the former USSR, including the Baltic states.
Our opinion of this exhibition of young designers was consonant with the impression of Milan's Salone Satellite: a new generation is tackling more risky and urgent problems than the furniture establishment. Just when I entered the exhibition, three Salone Satellite awards were awarded: the third place went to Maria Ignatova from St. Petersburg for a prototype office chair for people with disabilities, equipped with a hydraulic device that helps the user to move and adjust the height and position of the seat. The second prize went to the Vishnya design bureau in Yekaterinburg, which presented at The Culle, an eco-friendly cardboard lamp designed using parametric programs and laser cut. This beautiful appliance made of recycled paper and cardboard emits a fantastic, mysterious and at the same time cozy light.
First place went to Latvian designer Ēvija Kraukle for Slider - a very simple wooden lamp, whose two lamps can be easily fixed in a variety of positions.
Also on display were plywood bionic furniture and a device designed for installation in public places and capable of recharging electronic equipment from energy generated by pedestrians.
Most of the projects shown at the Salone Satellite in Moscow are devoted to problems that are now not only coming to the fore in the field of design, but are also becoming key for humanity as a whole. "Sustainable" materials and technologies, new ways of constructing and creating forms, attention to people with disabilities and to working people of different ages - all these topics, among others, will certainly determine the leading directions of design and architecture in the coming years.
At IE School of Architecture and Design, we are committed to attracting and rewarding talented people from the former Soviet Union, and we truly believe that the Master in Workspace Design course will be a huge step forward in the career of any interior designer. After completing our course, the designer will become a specialist in workplace strategy and interior design; will be able to work both with individual objects and design the environment as a whole. Therefore, we have created a special program of scholarship support for designers participating in the Moscow exhibition in the amount of 15% of the total cost of training.
We regularly offer other fellowships for designers around the world. The Serendipity-Makers Scholarship is currently open, covering 50% of the total tuition fees.
You can get an idea of the curriculum thanks to the free online master classes of our teachers. In October, we had a meeting with Primo Orpiglia and Verda Alexander, founders of Studio O + A from San Francisco, the authors of the innovative offices of Facebook, AOL and Microsoft in Silicon Valley.
On November 12, 2013 at 20:00 Moscow time (in Madrid at this time it will be 17:00) we will
web meeting with Jeremy Myerson, Head of the Helen Hamlyn Center for Design at the Royal College of Arts, London. This center is a strategic partner of the Master's program "Design of Workspaces" and it is there that the full-time part of the training will take place in July 2014.
You can register here.
During my Moscow trip, I was extremely lucky - I managed to visit the headquarters of Dream Industries in the Telegraph building. This is an amazing huge room of 10,000 m2 in the very center of Moscow, on Tverskaya Street, next to the most luxurious boutiques in the capital. Dream Industries is a technology start-up dedicated to the dissemination of knowledge and culture through a variety of web platforms - Bookmate, Zvooq and Theory & Practice, among others. Katya Fadeeva, who will soon lead the new coworking space there, gave me a tour of the building.
We are now accepting applications from applicants for the Master in Workspace Design, starting in February 2014.
Join us!
More information can be obtained by writing to us: [email protected]
