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Today I went to the International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF) in the Javits Center in New York. I expected an insight in latest developments in design but in the end it was (not surprisingly) just a furniture fair. Anyway, I saw a few interesting things. If you want to go and see for yourself, tomorrow the fair will be open for the public.

My personal highlight comes with the quote of the day:
“Our computers are like SUVs – most of the energy they consume is used to propel themselves. Like the cars are so heavy they need all the energy to move themselves – not you!” so said Yves Béhar.

Yves Béhar is the founder of fuseproject and the dude who designed the Jawbone (a bluetooth headset that eliminates surrounding sounds while you speak) and the new NYC Condom dispenser:

With this quite plausible comparison (PCs = SUVs) he was referring to the One Laptop Per Child project started by Nicholas Negroponte. See this Video from the Design Miami 07 for a short wrap-up of the design side of the XO Laptop:

Yves Béhar is actually also one of the designers that contributed to the botanist series by orange22 that I stumbled upon later at ICFF. Orange22 claim that the pieces are sustainable and eco-friendly. I’m not too sure about that because the base material is aluminum. It is correct that aluminum can be recycled. But the amount of energy that is needed for the process is unreasonably high. No wonder the German green party has factually banned cans from the domestic beverage market. But anyway – I guess there are different shades of green, right? At least the look and feel makes me wanna have one (and you don’t throw benches away that often):

This one was designed by Yves Béhar but speaking of natural products you may also check out that one:

In fact they are all quite sleek.

Probably the complete opposite of it may be the chairs and benches that sixinch from Belgium put on display. They have really nice pieces in general. What they showed on ICFF was “classical” chairs covered with foam. Sorry, but that was just cheesy:

Again: check out their website as they have other stuff that I actually like.

Next thing that I want to point out is the Geneva Sound System. It has an iPod dock, radio and CD player while you can also close the top flap to make it look like a simple cubic speaker on a stand. This is (for me) one of the most advanced iPod based products that I have seen yet. As in the U.S. virtually everyone has one – why not?

If I will ever live and work in a loft, I’m sure I’ll go to M2L on 215 E 58th St in New York first thing in the morning to get one of these babies:

What you can’t really see on the picture is that you can flip the plate on the hemisphere in the front, which will serve as a table. It’s a great workspace when you just need a laptop and a phone to start working. And the look is so 60ies futuristic, it’s just beautiful.

M2L is represented as part of a Dutch collective at ICFF. Check this PDF out if you’re interested in more design from the Netherlands.

Other designers that I liked (but weren’t on the designboom market) where Takumi Shimamura and Isaac Arms(although his website sucks).

Last thing for today’s post is designboom.com which is a website/blog that covers art, design and architecture. They also organize design competitions, online classes, a web shop and so called ‘designboom marts‘ one of which is currently taking place at ICFF. The concept is to put 40 young professional designers in a flea market setting with products in a range of 10 – 100$. The designboom mart is really worth seeing and very different from the rest of the booths. What I really liked was the Milk Gone Bad lamps by Anatomic Factory:

Also quite nice the Block Night Light by 25togo:

They actually didn’t have that with them but sold their My Document laptop sleeves instead. But I like the lamps better.

These were my personal highlights of the ICFF 2008 in New York. I have to go…Good night!

By Semir (double post)