The Oscars of the design world, now in their 23rd year, are awarded during Milan design week, with Perrier-Jouët as our new official partner. Here, we present the 15 winners, photographed at the PAC Pavilion of Contemporary Art, all of whom have impressed us and a jury of ELLE Decoration editors from our sister titles across the globe.
Designer of the Year: Faye Toogood
An established name on the British design scene (her studio launched in 2008, and you’ll have spotted recognisable pieces such as her ‘Roly Poly’ chair, first shown back in 2014, in many of the world’s most stylish homes), Toogood’s recent rise on the international stage has been stellar.
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A multi-hyphenate designer with a background in fine art, she works across interiors, homeware and fashion as well as furniture, with a consistent style that is distinctively her own – think soft, enveloping and primitive shapes, natural colours and raw surfaces. ‘What all my work has in common is a passion for shapes and materials, but always with different approaches and results,’ she explains.
Those results, of late, have been knock-it-out-of-the-park successful, earning her not just this EDIDA win, but also the same ‘designer of the year’ title at February’s Maison&Objet fair. There’s her ‘Cosmic’ sculptural but squishy furnishings and lighting for Tacchini, the ‘Squash’ collection of seating and accessories for Poltrona Frau (proof again of the generosity of Toogood’s aesthetic) and the ‘Rude’ series for CC-Tapis, with its names, such as ‘Tongue-and-Cheek’ and ‘Bits and Bobs’ that are brilliantly British in their playfulness.
It’s a quality that is on display again this year with her ‘Bread and Butter’ follow-up collection for Tacchini (more on p83), inspired by the everyday atmosphere of the breakfast table. fayetoogood.com
Young Design Talent of the Year: Andrés Reisinger
What could be more cutting-edge than a designer who deftly blurs the boundaries between traditional design and the world of digital and AI art? These issues, so pressing in the industry at the moment, have been part of Reisinger’s process since founding his solo studio back in 2018.
The Argentine designer may be based between Madrid and Barcelona, but the creative world he inhabits is one of impossibility and the hyper-real, often presented in his trademark colour of pink. Take, for example, his ‘Hortensia Chair’ of 2019 – an armchair covered in powder-pink petals that was born as an NFT work before becoming a viral hit on social media and eventually being put into production in 2021 by Moooi.
Last year, we admired his mosaic mural, influenced by the work of surrealist René Magritte, that served as a background to 12 chairs inspired by a vision he had while meditating, shown at Nilufar Lancetti.
There was also the poetic installation ‘Take Over’ in Jeddah, where the buildings of the old city were draped in billowing pink fabric, and solo exhibition ‘Dreams’, still showing at Amsterdam’s Moco Museum, which offers visitors the chance to walk through one of his fantastical dreamspaces. ‘I try to evoke sensations that, despite the digital context, trigger the memory of a physical and tactile experience,’ he explains. reisinger.studio
Interior Designer of the Year: Pierre Yovanovitch
A self-taught designer, Yovanovitch studied economics before beginning his creative career working on menswear collections for Pierre Cardin. Interiors, however, had always been a passion – ‘I’ve long been obsessed with scenography and a sense of volume,’ he explains. ‘As a child, I was constantly rearranging things around the house’ – so in 2011, he opened his own studio in Paris, designing residential projects as well as hotels, restaurants, castles and theatre sets.
His aesthetic language has an extraordinary sensitivity, with each space approached like a unique work of art. Meticulous details, soft lines, flashes of colour and natural materials, such as wood, stone and marble, characterise his approach and carry through into the furniture brand, Pierre Yovanovitch Mobilier, he launched in 2021.
His ‘Oops’ collection became an instant classic, thanks in part to the covetable ‘Mama Bear’ chair, while this year he collaborated with Christian Louboutin on another memorable furniture launch – chairs with feet inspired by iconic women, from Egyptian queen Nefertari to Dita Von Teese. pierreyovanovitch.com
Sustainable Achievement: ‘100R’ by Hydro
This Norwegian company specialising in the process of extruded aluminum is already a world leader in the development of renewable energy, but in 2024 it chose to inaugurate a new division dedicated to experimentation.
The result was the ‘100R’ project, launched at Spazio Maiocchi during last year’s Milan design week and using ‘the world’s first recycled aluminium made entirely from post-consumer scrap on an industrial scale’. Seven international designers, including Inga Sempé, Max Lamb, John Tree and Philippe Malouin, were commissioned to design furniture and accessories using this new material.
The collection included Lamb’s ‘Prøve’ lamp, its name taken from the Norwegian word meaning to try or test, and Tree’s ‘Billet’ chair, which he noted would be simple to recycle at the end of its life, with a carbon footprint that’s easy to calculate. This year sees a new crop of designers – including Cecilie Manz, Sabine Marcelis and Stefan Diez – take on the challenge. hydro.com
Bathroom: ‘Formation 02’ smart toilet by Samuel Ross for Kohler
‘Our aim was to rethink the toilet and create a sculptural piece that would really stand out in the bathroom,’ says British designer Samuel Ross. Founder of design studio SR_A, Ross combined an uncompromisingly brutalist form with sophisticated technology and vibrant colour (the attention-grabbing ‘Haptic Orange’) to create a design inspired by the speed and power of water.
A continuation of the innovative approach he began a year earlier with the ‘Formation 01’ tap, it utilises unique moulding and tooling techniques to create its dramatic angles, and turns a humble item into a talking point. As Ross adds: ‘It poses new questions and challenges the everyday ideas of the toilet.’ kohler.com
Bedding: ‘Spherical’ bed by Kaare Klint for Carl Hansen & Søn
It is rare that a masterpiece waits this long to be put into production, but this bed, conceived by Danish designer Kaare Klint back in 1938, is finally garnering the plaudits it deserves. Extraordinarily contemporary in its sled-like form, it was intended to be a single but is now available as a double.
The soul of the piece, as its name suggests, is the imaginary sphere that cuts through the centre of the wooden design to create its geometrically curved sides. The decision to use timber from a single tree trunk is another detail that only reinforces the modernity of the bed, giving it a uniform appearance and highlighting the elegant grain of the timber. carlhansen.com
Fabrics: ‘Ame’ by Teruhiro Yanagihara for Kvadrat
Discarded clothing can take up to 200 years to decompose in landfill and that’s just one of the many issues around the pollution caused by this industry. In response, Kvadrat’s ‘Ame’ collection is made entirely of recycled polyester sourced from textile waste.
Its designer Yanagihara was inspired by sashiko, a traditional mending technique, with a palette of earthy hues chosen to evoke the art of kasane no irome (colours of the layers) – whereby layers of fabric are combined to reflect the shades of changing seasons. kvadrat.dk
Floor Covering: ‘Jardins du Monde’ by Tatiana De Nicolay for Jaipur Rugs
Parisian artist de Nicolay drew inspiration from the museum and garden of philanthropist Albert Kahn, home to a wide variety of botanical species, when creating this range of fascinating rugs, handmade and hand-woven by skilled Indian craftspeople.
Realised in soothing tones, the designs feature motifs influenced by natural landscapes from around the world, from Japanese Zen gardens to green English meadows and even French floral gardens, not forgetting forests, mazes, waterways and pagodas. ‘The Snake Song’ depicts jungle undergrowth with the most joyful of touches. jaipurrugs.com
Furniture: ‘Stria’ Table by Andrea Mancuso for Nilufar
The terrazzo technique traditionally used to produce Venetian seminato floors is a painstaking process that Italian designer Mancuso modernises and elevates with this piece, part of his ‘Pentimenti’ collection. Brushstrokes of marble sweep across the table’s top and legs, creating an effect that brings to mind the striation of rock formations. The result is painterly and distinctly contemporary. nilufar.com
Kitchen: ‘Mantle’ by Patricia Urquiola for Signature Kitchen Suite
‘We wanted to go beyond the traditional refrigerator and make a piece of furniture that’s more physically and visually accessible, disguising that it’s an appliance and making it easier to place in the home – from the living room for snacks and drinks to the bathroom for beauty products,’ says Urquiola of this freestanding design that incorporates South Korean brand Signature Kitchen Suite’s advanced technological expertise and her own flair for the decorative and artisan. Its modular pieces are all clad in Cimento tiles made from a revolutionary cement compound derived from natural components. signaturekitchensuite.co.uk
Lighting: Lightmass^ by Raw-Edges
The London-based duo of Yael Mer and Shay Alkalay debuted this new brand at last year’s London Design Festival with a poetic lighting collection that explores the concepts of form, volume and translucence. The series of table, floor and pendant lamps have an ethereal charm, with the LED source (a spotlight placed on the floor, the ceiling or a shelf) illuminating the evanescent structures to create the appearance that they are floating in mid-air – they call it the ‘lantern effect’.
Large in size but light in weight, the pieces not only have a certain stage presence, but are also highly sustainable, with the reflective ‘skeleton’ 3D printed using a mixture of bioplastics and biopolymers. light-mass.com
Seating: ‘Ernest’ by Jean-Marie Massaud for Poliform
How do you reimagine the concept of comfort? French designer Massaud took a radical approach with this modular sofa – a design that incorporates comfortable shapes and soft, unstructured volumes, allowing its elements to be manipulated to create different compositions with great expressive power.
Each individual section of the sofa is made up of three separate parts that assemble to form the back and the seat, resulting in a decidedly innovative marriage of ergonomics and aesthetic bravado. This is a piece that not only cuts an unusual figure but has a strong point of view. poliform.it
Tableware: ‘Pezzente’ by Gio Ponti for Venini
It was in 1946, ahead of the 8th Milan Triennale in 1947, that Ponti, the master of Italian design, first turned his attention to tableware. The resulting ‘Pezzente’ collection of bottles and glasses was made using a novel technique that involved the hot application of coloured-glass patches to the transparent surface of the glass, creating a patchwork effect that made every piece of this eclectic table service striking and unique.
80 years later, Venini is bringing Ponti’s previously unrealised project to life in a tribute to the artist’s craftsmanship and creativity. venini.com
Wall Covering: ‘Egyptomania’ by Louis Barthēlemy for Balineum
French artist Barthēlemy’s hand-painted ceramic tiles have a playful take on history. The relief designs pay homage to Ancient Egypt by capturing the vibrancy and charm of the civilisation, conjuring fantastical scenes of strapping men, colourful flora and animals roaming freely, with inspiration taken from the ancient frescoes and hieroglyphics lining Egyptian temples and tombs.
Hand painted in Stoke, using earthenware bases and traditional glazes, this collection is a heritage proposition (both in theme and execution) with a modern twist. balineum.co.uk
Outdoor: ‘Eolie’ by Gordon Guillamier for Roda
Poolside relaxation became even more chic with the release of Guillaumier’s archipelago-like system of connecting loungers, side tables and canopies. Low-lying, with its proportions calculated around the dimensions of the wide iroko-wood slats that form its structure, the design is simple but has impact.
There’s the natural option (pictured here), but we enjoy how this outdoor-furniture collection also takes influence from summery hues, with bright upholstery and a choice of three wood stains, each providing a pop of colour while still allowing the natural grain to shine through. rodaonline.com
