Design Miami – Commerce and Culture Meet Up

Keeping up with the expanding presence of global names in design in the Miami area and especially around the Design District, the annual Design Miami goes into its fifth year this coming month with a broad curatorial program, dynamic exhibitors showcasing new work and a monumental temporary structure for the program presentation. 

That ambitious program includes a richly curated series of exhibitions and events, galleries keen to delight collectors with unseen work and a dramatic new design for the temporary structure, introduced last year, which houses for the fair. Since its inception in 2005, Design Miami/ has become the pre-eminent international fair for limited edition design. An eagerly anticipated biannual lauded for presenting top-quality collectible design alongside emerging and experimental work, the fair draws influential clients and industry luminaries from around the world in ever-increasing numbers. This year’s show is an expression of everything we care about most,” Design Miami/ Director and co-founder Ambra Medda comments. “Our Designer of the Year, Design Performances, Design Talks, monumental Temporary Structure, as well as our latest initiative, Design On/Site, all demonstrate our investment in furthering contemporary design and creating a forum for designers, curators, collectors, gallerists and journalists to meet, discuss ideas and discover new work.”

Design Miami/ will also add three impressive new galleries to December’s fair, extending the variety of material available for collectors and curators, including Droog, New York; Mitterand + Cramer, Geneva; and Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York. In addition to new exhibitors, several returning exhibitors such as Moss, R 20th Century Gallery, Galerie Patrick Seguin and Sebastian + Barquet will present historic work culled from well-known private collections, as well as installations meant to broaden collectors’ understanding of the designers.

(credit: courtesy - Design Miami)

A highlight of the Miami edition of Design Miami/ is its Designer of the Year Award, which in the past has been given to Zaha Hadid, Marc Newson, Tokujin Yoshioka and the Campana Brothers. This year Design Miami/ has made the bold decision to present the award to Maarten Baas, who at 31 has already built an impressive body of work, and who has opened the door to a new generation of young designers. For Design Miami/, Baas will be creating an installation, and will launch work from an entirely new series.

In its five years of existence, Design Miami/ has developed a tradition of working closely with both designers and architects. This objective manifests itself into a great emphasis on the architectural context of the fair. Situated within the Miami Design District, Design Miami/ has celebrated the architectural heritage of its surroundings, locating both the main fair and satellite exhibitions within buildings of historic significance such as the Moore building in which Zaha Hadid created a dramatic installation in 2005. For the first time last year, Design Miami/ commissioned up and coming New York architectural studio, ArandaLasch, to design a temporary structure in which to house the main fair. The critically acclaimed structure returns this year, entirely reinvented by ArandaLasch with a dramatically different façade whose impression of majestic weightiness has led the fair’s organizers to call it a ‘Temporary Monument’.

Design Miami/
1/2/3/4/5/ December 2009 – Public Hours of Admission: 11 a.m. – 7 p. m. daily. Check their website for updates on events and admission details.