In order to keep on opening markets linked to creative economies, Argentina brings along a sample of the effervescent prospect of new design in the country. For its first exhibition in the London Design Festival it arrives at the biggest trade fair of the festival: the 100% Design Event, with eight enterprises selected at a public Call.
The mission of spreading and selling our design, is especially important this year because of the Bicentennial, since the country looks back on its past and plans its futures revising its former role as a provider of natural resources and its aspiration of settling as a provider of goods and services, which of course includes design in the most varied areas, industrial production and others resulting from the economic model, where the cultural industries sector and its exports are growing significantly.
A tradition very much linked to creativity and to doing from the economic limitations has been the driving force that impulsed design activity during the last decade. Crisis of the beginning of the millennium has been a great opportunity for design, which bloomed not because of the big industry but because of the many small-sized enterprises.
The eight businesses exhibiting their products today at the London festival’s 100% Design have been chosen by national and metropolitan Foreign Trade and Design authorities, after an open Call for exhibiting at the main trade event of the London Design Festival.
Among 64 businesses of very different sectors of the field of products´ design, the Argentine Chancery and the CMD (Metropolitan Design Center) chose, together with Curator Carolina Muzi, eight enterprises which have in common their search for projection in international markets and innovation in a framework of local traditions, whether in uses, materials, techniques or craftwork mix and industrial processes.
Having varied contents and productions, both formally as well as in the product areas involved, these Argentine businesses offering their products at 100% Design Event share their concern about use of materials and environmentally correct processes.
Argentina New Design
Most of this reality may be linked to the historical trace left by the Modern Movement that, through architecture, pioneered in Latin America, leaving as its legacy a built patrimony where furniture associated to great architecture pieces glow: skyscraper Kavanagh and Paraguay and Suipacha Ateliers, for which the famous BKF Chair was specially made in 1938, an icon that achieved international fame.
Or the famous Amancio Williams´ Bridge House and Curutchet House designed by Le Corbusier for the city of La Plata, that, in 1949, produced a chair which innovation of plywood preceded the use of plywood later applied by Earnes in USA. It is César Jannello´s W Chair.
César Jannello´s W Chair
Those innovations that turned limitations into an impulse rather than an obstacle have left a great lesson, later present not only in historical products but also in the profile of people bound to design who, from Argentina, became known to the world: paradigmatic cases are Tomás Maldonado´s, Austrian Martín Eisler´s and Hermann bros´ and Fridl Loos´, German Gui Bonsiepe´s who settled in South America. Other Argentines whose carreers became famous globally are Norberto Chaves, Ronald Shakespear, Alberto Churba, Jorge Pensi and Alberto Lievore, Dani Weil, Diana Cabeza, Alejandro Sarmiento, Francisco Gómez Paz, Paula Gaudio among many others.
Design for all
Bondi
Bondi
It is a design bus which, from its name, adopts a ludic tone: bondi is the slang for bus. They consider this association as a creative trip, of many people, and very much Argentine, like our bondis. Precisely, they bring to London a very nice and funny outdoor bean bag chair made of reinforced concrete. This bean bag chair plays with contrasts since it has a cushion look print on the solid structure making it look soft and comfy. But it also has the kitsch pattern printed on, this being the pattern decorating the Argentine bondis’ seats. Bondi’s proposal, in this and other materials, appeals to popular imagination, to reuse and to a fresh overview on reality.
It is an enterprise from the Santa Fe province, which has specialized in design of outdoor furniture, as well urban and home furniture. Its offer in this area is comprehensive: from bike racks and parasols to all sorts of rest supports. This time they are introducing the mutant bench made of Eucalyptus Grandis, the most popular of our reforested woods. The bench changes according to the needs, providing seats, table or a bunk.
Coconut Lounge
Lounge culture was the inspiration that brought two young designers together under the name of a historical office and home chair: George Nelson´s Coconut Lounge chair. This firm’s proposal is providing rest and leaning supports for lounge spaces. They have taken up again a “vintage” material, the PVC fiber, and propose with it an organic and jovial expression, mainly for outdoor spaces.
Industrial Designer Patricia Lascano is very versatile in her path of production, both as regards the materials she uses and the types of products she develops. Her innovation around an Argentine custom, the asado (barbecue), is accurate and developed with synthesis and economy of resources, making a local identity truly global. Her designs are glocal, as the techno music she encourages. Here, she also presents very tech torches, made of acrylic rings and led, which nowadays embellish the London club, Superclub. The most arduous product of her career is in the last phase of production and also represents an evolution of a traditional element: a horse saddle, which she is now developing for Polo.
This firm has increased its proposal on contemporary furniture, from the market of home furniture to the market of hotel furniture in Argentina and Chile. The combination of industrial and handcrafted processes, together with the election of native materials which were underused, for example wicker, grew qualitatively and quantitatively towards a varied offer of furniture for institutional or private use. It is important to mention that in the case of wicker, they started to work with it due to public policies of promotion of these materials carried out by CMD.
Founded by Argentine entrepreneurs, Manifesto starts in 2001 with the objective of bringing design furniture closer to a greater amount of people, projects and enterprises. Apart from producing a comprehensive collection of classic pieces by modernist European architects living in the country, it added new contemporary designs and international brands such as Kartell and Haworth. In 2003 it inaugurated “Author Design”, a line including pieces by the most renowned domestic designers. Its production is divided into Manifesto Home, Manifesto Office and Manifesto Project for tailor-made proposals. The chair introduced, Poncho, shows their contemporary search in a framework of local traditions: the chair is covered by the typical gauchos´ outfit (the poncho) by means of a magnet system.
Vag is founded in Argentina in 2007, as a design ludic and creative space, aimed at creating innovative products mainly made with non-conventional materials. Created as an experimental lab within the design agency under the same name, the Vag products division explores the different uses and possibilities provided by the different materials, redefining its use in simple, timeless and innovative designs for carrying work objects, in various shapes.
TecArt offers industrial design products and services. Nowadays it produces and exports mechanical pencils and other desk objects of contemporary design and sustainability features. Pencil Dock is an accessory for lengthening the useful life of drawing instruments, such as wooden pencils, erasers, stumps and wax crayons. It´s made of a standard aluminum bar, mechanized only in some parts in order to save energy while being manufactured. It uses 100% of the raw materials of the aluminum bar, which is a recyclable material. Pencil Dock aims at making wooden pencils last longer, and thus invites people reflecting on the use of raw materials and the indiscriminate deforestation.
Visit our playfull Pampa! / Stand C50
If one has to choose one of the most representative landscapes of the huge and varied territory of Argentina (3,300 km long), the Pampa, an extension of plain, sky and cows, is undoubtedly the most representative one.
Settled in the geographical center of Argentina, this landscape has become an icon of our country, which up until the XX century has had its economic model based on agriculture. This is part of the past but the iconography, which also comes with international fame for Argentina’s good meat and leather, lasts.
In this case, we appeal to this impression but in a new version of design, taking advantage of a material which turns out to be an ecologic evolution of cow leather: cueroflex, laminar material made of reused leather.
Studio Diseñaveral, which has focused great part of its design proposal of objects for tables and desks on this material, gains international recognition in stores like MoMA´s and other museums due to its cueroflex little animals. Thus, and since it has to do with a young enterprise incubated by Buenos Aires Cultural Industries, it was asked to develop the concept in our space. Thus using cueroflex, as only material, and the colors identifying the country, light blue and white, it recreates the Pampa plain and a sky where the clouds are QRs with information.
Its ability at designing little animals from a laminar material, this time turned into useful cows that work as information elements for each exhibiting enterprise and, at the same time, as a storage and furniture support for the stand. Attention: the last day of the fair the cows will be raffled among the visitors.
Clouds up to date: discover us through QRs
If the concept of bringing a traditional landscape of the Pampas plain as a theme framework for our C50 stand appeals to innovation from material design, it also appeals to innovation from a communication design. In our austral sky the clouds are interactive codes where people can access vast information about design in Argentina, the keys of this mission and the significance of Buenos Aires as city of design. But our proposal goes beyond the ludic use of QRs. By means of an enterprise that innovates on the use of this tool, Fuhbrand, we aim at linking these contents to Wikipedia. All this, because we truly believe in spaces of public use and in design as a great tool of democratization.
