Cool & Fresh 2009

This year it was easier to find your way round Salone Satellite than last year, for the very good reason that the really good things were relatively easy to identify. Whereas last year many of the booths were elaborately staged, this year they were considerably more restrained, making the genuine pearls easier to discover. We have picked out some of these to present to you.

Surface Daylight - Daniel Rybakken, Norway
The largest pearl was the 'Daylight' concept by the young Norwegian designer Daniel Rybakken. The modesty of his manner and the poetic aspect of his work were simply great to encounter. It was no more than justice that he was the winner of the Design Report Award, with its 10'000€ prize money.

His new concept is an extension of his original idea of brightening up rooms with artificial daylight in order to create a better spatial perception. On white surfaces, part of which are backlit by LEDs, he simulated direct rays of sunlight falling on a surface. While everybody else is trying to make the white LED light less harsh, in other words to make it warmer, he exploits this very characteristic and turns it into indirect, bright daylight. Simple and ingenious.

Grown Furniture - Pudelskern, Austria
Nature meets high-tech. Pudelskern's Nina Mair, Horst Philipp and Georg Öhler have created an unusual product line made of pure, natural wool from sheep in the South-Tyrolean Alps. A coating applied by a method using the latest nanotechnology which makes the material flame-retardant and resistant against vermin creates new possibilities for the use of this raw traditional material.

Älta-Älta - Brikolör, Sweden
300 years of emotional and technical useful life. This is the confident way in which Victor, Mathias, Fredrik and Sami describe the quality of their products. They have asked themselves the question of what gives them the right to keep on creating new things in a world which is already saturated with products. For them the justification lies in extreme durability and the search for an intrinsic quality within the product. This stool is a successful example of their approach.

Remeditate - CTRLZAK, Greece/Italy
A table set for dinner with matching chairs and atmospheric lighting. What is surprising is the oppressive feeling you get when you look at the scene. It appears inviting but at the same time repellent. With their ironic and pathologically charged products Katia Meneghini and Thanos Zakopoulos operate somewhere between art and design.

Creative Space Serbia - Young Serbian Designers
Serbia's first step on the stage of the international design scene is a resounding success. With an appealing corporate image and striking products which speak a very similar, environmentally aware language, they have been able to attract a lot of attention. The platform was launched by Mikser, the Serbian cultural organisation. 148 designers applied and 10 were selected by a jury presided over by Konstantin Grcic to present their products at Satellite. Featured among them were od-do arhitekti, two female designers / architects from Belgrade who we already noticed last year. Equally noticeable are their new products, such as the Day-Night solar lamp which charges during the day and shines at night like a small starry sky.

Bell Light and Albion Chair - Sebastian Herkner, Germany
Sebastian Herkner has once more given his new lamp designs a raw, industrial character. He skilfully combines the components of wood, metal and fabric into highly individual standard lamps, which can be varied in lighting intensity and colour by different lampshades. The Albion chair also makes an impression with its combination of materials – the thick leather of the seat fits flush into its surrounding wooden frame.

Sabooh standard lamp- Anna Blattert and Daniel Gafner from Postfossil, Switzerland
This year, too, the Postfossil designers exhibited objects in Milan which made a strong impression as painstakingly designed solutions, both from a formal point of view and with regard to the materials used. All of the furniture and accessories reflect in their own way different aspects of a post-fossil age. One example is the Sabooh lamp which, inspired by oriental lanterns, radiates a warm, indirect light through the translucent porcelain globe. The golden embellishments on the inside of the globe serve as a reflector and transmit energy from the cable to the LED lighting source.

Chairs For The Dysfunctional - Alice Wang, Taiwan
Alice Wang is interested in exploring needs that huge corporations may not be able to satisfy - designing services that bring new experiences and products that encourage people to think and question.
Her chairs manifest the characteristics of their users and raise the question if they could normalize unwelcomed habits or actually support them.