Toronto Craft Alert

Here is the second installment of our coverage of the Toronto International Design Festival. After enjoying MADE’s Radiant Dark show, photographer Danijela Pruginic and writer Adam Gorley checked out the 2010 Interior Design Show, Canada’s largest contemporary design event which features 300 exhibitors, quite a different design animal.  Those of you who missed the show will appreciate these visual highlights by Danijela (more in the flickr set) and be sure to scroll down for a review by Adam.  Click on the photos for designer info.

I looked at pretty much every booth at the 2010 Interior Design Show, and it’s clear to me that the most worthwhile parts were the showcase of new Canadian design, Studio North, and the Prototype section.  Nothing was as thought-provoking as Radiant Dark, but IDS isn’t an art or high-concept show; it’s for consumers. Usually, the things I like most demonstrate attention to materials and processes that minimize the end product’s environmental impact, but not always. In this case, few designers exhibited such focus. Here are the things I found most interesting.

Balance Glassworks showed a simple, attractive, and slightly frightening handmade drinking glass set and stand. The glasses are hexagonal and sit on their sides atop a honeycomb frame. One base can hold a pyramid of six glasses. The bases are also stackable, which could lead to all kinds of worrying configurations. It’s quirky and novel, but not for the careless.

Carmen Yatscoff (Cymple Design) showed a prototype for a “semi-permanent patio surface”. This means coloured hexagonal aluminum grates that you can place on any level surface to create a patio or path or anywhere you want to obscure a patch of ground or concrete. They allow light to pass through, so plant life can still grow beneath or through, and I think one could find many clever uses for them.

City and North Custom Design showed their TV and end tables, made from plywood and reclaimed barn wood, with sheet metal shelves and facing. The shape of the tables is not novel in any way, but the contrast between the metal facing and reclaimed wood exterior grabbed my attention.

Jaga (not part of Studio North) produces lightweight stylish radiator heaters that minimize water use (and save energy as a result). Maybe I just haven’t seen a contemporary radiator, but I was quite impressed by the updated look of the ones on display at IDS. The small ones are discreetly simple, and the larger ones look like design elements and can be incorporated into a home as such. The company’s newest design actually takes the form of a wrought iron element—the sort of things you’d find atop a gateway to an English manor house, or maybe at an entrance to the Paris Métro.

Two Toques Design offered three colour variations of a basic side table. The simple design belies a number of interesting details, including local wood, exposed joints, excellent colour contrast, and (to my eye) terrific precision. These tables could easily fit into a modern bedroom, an industrial loft, a woodsy den, or many other settings.

One3 Creative seem to go a bit backward and a bit forwards with their triangle knick-knack shelf. Obviously, this product doubles as art since its large form far outweighs its slight function. I include it mostly to show that, but also because it is a subtle implementation of the common inclined plane/crystalline influence I see in design today. Also, they had nice wooden business cards.

Ridgely Studio Works showed lights featuring crinkled gold-coloured aluminum (it’s gold inside and white outside). The piece I liked most was a take on a sconce light, with a bulb hidden in a shell of aluminum, bearing some resemblance to an oyster. It’s very modern and almost ugly, but its connection to a traditional form (the sconce) and an organic form (the shell) make the thing interesting, thoughtful, and curiously beautiful.

Rob Southcott impressed me with his subtle update on an old chest of drawers at Radiant Dark. At IDS he showed his most recent signature piece: a re-envisioned coffee table, made up of a simple glass top resting on a more traditional wood table chopped in two. It has a simple message: the triumph of modern over traditional forms, but it expresses it in such a simple and irreverent way that it remains clever and unpretentious. I guess it would be nice to know if he could make one of these out of any old wood coffee table.

Science & Sons produced a retro-styled radio with only one purpose: to listen to CBC radio! The wood and brushed steel radio has only two controls; a volume knob, and a switch to change between CBC’s Radio 1 and Radio 2 channels. The unit’s speaker grill is a variation on the well known CBC logo. From what I hear from friends, there is definitely a market for this thing. I assume its makers feel the same way. The very idea of the thing suggests the great affinity Canadians have for the ceeb, while also pointing out the broadcaster’s clear limitations.

Finnish group Secto Design Oy offered a selection of their pendant lamps. The shades are traditional shapes reduced to skeletons of wood with light radiating from a point deep within and high in the shade. They’re pretty much immediately recognizable as Scandinavian.

The Practice of Everyday Design offered their own take on the coffee table, with a smooth flat top, and stalactites supporting it beneath. There’s something to be said here about the hidden underside of things and the way we prefer to smooth out any bumps in the road and pretend that the underside isn’t really there; but it might also be that this is just a table with stalactites on the bottom.

There was lots more to see, and I saw most of it. Unfortunately, since I dislike trade shows and like to get away from them as quickly as I can, I only saw three of the Five Small Rooms. These were garden sheds re-envisioned by designers. The thing that struck me most about the rooms I saw was that all the designers decided to do basically the same thing: to create a comfortable office-like space in a shed. Each of the three included a desk and computer and some sort of small chesterfield or daybed, among other elements. At first, I thought this was pretty unoriginal, but after talking it out a bit, the idea does make some sense. As we move farther from manual labour, be it part of our professions or our hobbies, and closer to the services we love so much, like online shopping or social networking, this is the type of shed we’ll want. At the same time, I find this idea dubious. I might imagine wanting something like this, but the space, security, and maintenance it would require place it well in the realm of the wealthy. I also found the overall designs unimaginative.

That was IDS. It was nice to get a more down-to-earth perspective on new Canadian design than Radiant Dark, but it also would have been nice to see more designers taking on the sustainable design principles on display at that show.