Alex Tieghi-Walker
The recently appointed curator of London Design Festival’s Brompton Design District is ushering in a new era of collectivism
It’s safe to say that becoming a curator was not at the top of Alex Tieghi-Walker’s agenda when he began studying languages at Durham University. ‘It’s so far from what I started out doing, but it means that my thinking about design isn’t as classical or as prescribed,’ he says. That less- conventional route, which included roles at magazines before relocating to the US to launch the showroom and gallery Tiwa Select, has shaped a distinctly open-ended perspective and a passion for breaking down barriers.
‘Design fairs and museum exhibitions shouldn’t just have objects placed on a plinth with a caption. They should be these interactive, evolving, dynamic spaces,’ the British-Italian curator argues, citing the recently opened V&A East Storehouse, where visitors can see museum pieces being restored in real time, as an inspiration: ‘It has taken the idea of a museum and tipped it on its head.’
Armed with this outlook, when he took over as curator of Brompton Design District after Jane Withers’ 18-year run, Tieghi- Walker knew that he wanted to do things differently. ‘In my experience of going to design fairs in the past, it seems that everyone puts forward a very confident step in the type of works that they’re showing,’ he recalls. ‘There’s this idea that design should be loud. What I wanted to do with Brompton was the exact opposite.’
This led him to land on the theme ‘A Softer World’ – an antidote to the noise and a place where visitors could find some respite from the wider tumultuous geopolitical situation. He invited artists from a broad church of fields to either exhibit their own work or to take the reins as curators. ‘It’s a gift to be offered a role like this and to be able to platform viewpoints other than my own,’ he explains. ‘My knowledge and experience alone can’t represent “design in London today”, and that’s exactly why I’ve invited external curators and gallery partners, to bring in their communities, histories and perspectives.’ Like Tieghi-Walker, many of the individuals he called on, including Nata Janberidze and Keti Toloraia of Rooms Studio and Tione Trice (co-curator of Mirroring Dialogue; pictured, top), are self-taught.
With plans to move back to London in the summer, he will return in time for his second year as curator of the district this September. So, what will he be doing differently this time around? ‘I would like to partner more with local institutions, and I want these spaces to become synonymous with Brompton, contributing to a district that reflects a global, diverse understanding of design,’ he says. tiwa-select.com
What's everyone reading?
Maria Porro
Salone del Mobile’s president welcomes a new chapter with the launch of Salone Raritas, dedicated to collectable design
Maria Porro has been the president of the world’s largest furniture fair, Salone del Mobile, since 2021. In her five-year tenure, she has made it her mission to keep the fair evolving with the times, finding ‘the balance between what’s innovative and consistent’. When the event returns to Rho Fiera Milan for its 64th edition this spring (21-26 April), Pavilion 9 will welcome its latest venture: Salone Raritas. ‘The idea of Raritas is to spotlight rare pieces, unique creations, craftsmanship, experimentations, antiques that can speak the word of longevity – icons and gems of the design world that have been able to survive the passage of time,’ she explains.
The display will feature 25 exhibitors curated by Annalisa Rosso, with the space designed by Formafantasma. Among the highlights is a limited-edition series created exclusively for the fair by Rotterdam-based designer Sabine Marcelis, which underscores the initiative’s commitment to cross-pollination between collectable design and large-scale production. Elsewhere, the historic Murano glassmaker Salviati has entrusted the studio Draga & Aurel, a regular on the Milan design week circuit, with the task of reinterpreting glass in a modern way. The Milanese gallery Nilufar will also have a space.
‘Edition zero’, as Porro refers to it, has been in development for three years, and is shaped by conversations with exhibitors and shifts within the interior-design industry itself. She notes that many of Salone’s past exhibitors already have a presence in the collectable market, so it felt natural to add this to the fair’s offering. ‘Our goal is to open these works up to a different kind of audience – the audience of Salone,’ she explains.
On the other side of the coin, Salone Raritas provides an access point for regions where industrial-manufacturing infrastructures may not yet be established. ‘In parts of the world where large-scale production is not already in place, this kind of experimentation can bring forward voices that are not yet represented among the main exhibitors because of scale,’ says Porro. ‘I find the prospect of promoting dialogue with new cultures very interesting.’
Porro’s vision for Salone Raritas is for it to become as veritable as Salone Satellite, the jewel in the fair’s crown that showcases the work of young designers. There are already plans to make the space bigger next year to cater to a wider pool of collectable exhibitors. Above all else, though, she hopes that Raritas will be much more than just a space with galleries exhibiting: ‘It’s an incubator of new ideas. We think that it can produce value, not only in the short term, but in the long term for the entire design ecosystem.’ salonemilano.it
Silas Adler
The co-founder of rebellious platform Other Circle is dissolving boundaries that once defined Copenhagen’s design scene
What would you get if you asked a team of experts from the worlds of fashion, PR, music, production, spatial design and advertising to come up with a new event for their city? It might look something like Other Circle, the annual design exhibition that sprang out of Copenhagen last year. ‘Our tagline is “post- disciplinary, creative culture”. We’re trying to establish a platform where creativity from different genres can be viewed under one roof,’ says co-founder Silas Adler.
Set to run from 10 to 13 June, alongside the city’s 3daysofdesign, (the team did consider scheduling it at the same time as Copenhagen’s fashion and art week, but felt the breadth of the design week was more fitting), Other Circle will showcase work by a very diverse pool of talent at The Lab, an industrial building just outside of the city centre. When asked to define Other Circle, Adler remains deliberately elusive. ‘I give a different answer every time,’ he admits. ‘In essence, it’s an exhibition where we are focusing on creative culture. We don’t really differentiate if it’s fine art, collectable or mass-produced design – or none of the above,’ he says. ‘Even gastronomy is part of our exhibition programme.’ Last year, the restaurant Noma appeared as an exhibitor, presenting an installation that blurred the line between culinary practice and conceptual art. ‘That could just as well have been an artist or a designer,’ says Adler.
The aim, he explains, is not to categorise, but to spotlight participants for their ideas and sensibilities rather than the boxes they tick. The approach is fluid and intentionally international, with participants often selected through an open call. ‘We wanted to make sure that we were not missing out on talent from parts of the world that are less frequently represented in European art and design spaces,’ says Adler. Our pick of this year’s programme includes British designer Max Lamb’s project with Tajimi Custom Tiles, and the Ghanaian sculptor Paa Joe.
The diversity of the exhibitors is reflected in the team’s democratic approach to the exhibition’s layout. ‘We’re not going to have one space for emerging designers and a corner for design from the global South. That’s not what we’re about at all,’ Adler says. To carve up the show along familiar lines, he suggests, would undermine its founding principle. ‘We’re trying to break down boundaries, so it doesn’t make sense to fall back into a disciplinary system.’ Despite its Copenhagen setting, Other Circle sidesteps the familiar tropes of Danish design. ‘Don’t expect mid-century Scandinavian minimalism,’ Adler says, pointedly. In a city with an established design heritage, Other Circle offers something original: a platform where creative culture in all its many forms is celebrated and refuses to be defined. othercircle.com
Harry Nuriev
The designer’s debut festival promises to be a radical, immersive event more akin to an adult playground than a conventional trade fair
Harry Nuriev is no stranger to design fairs, having exhibited at some of the biggest in the world since founding his interior-design practice Crosby Studios in 2014. This spring, he will channel this experience into his own offering, culminating in a brand-new, immersive ‘festival’ driven by community. Nuriev doesn’t want his event, which is as yet unnamed, to be just ‘another design fair’, but something closer to an ‘adult Disneyland’, shunning the conventional trade-show format. ‘I want a cultural shift,’ he says. ‘Traditional fairs often operate within a B2B ecosystem – transactional, static. But culture today is fluid. People want participation, dialogue, intensity.’
The festival will have two facets: one half is dedicated to art, design and fashion, and the other centres around dance, performance, music and competition. A series of talks and intellectual exchanges will underpin the programme. The aim is to create a hybrid event that fuses disciplines that aren’t traditionally experienced at the same time. ‘Design is not just objects. It’s behaviour, movement, rhythm and sound,’ Nuriev says. ‘A performance can explain a space better than a rendering. A competition can drive culture, not just entertainment.’
Though the 41-year-old, who trained as an architect and was named 2026 designer of the year by Maison & Objet, is based between Paris and New York, he felt the Big Apple was the more suitable location for the festival. ‘New York is the right context to test new cultural formats. It’s a city that doesn’t wait for permission, and that spirit is essential for something experimental and community-driven.’ The festival will ‘plug into’ the energy cultivated by NYCxDesign, which runs concurrently, when New York is ‘already activated’, and ideas are ripe for the picking.
If the event is to be a laboratory for experimentation, then its visitors are the live test subjects. ‘This festival will open our platform to a new generation. It will become a launch pad offering visibility, space and infrastructure to young talent across design, movement and sound. It’s about amplifying others and creating an interconnected cultural ecosystem where creativity feels collective, physical and alive.’
When asked if there is one thing he hopes people can take away from it, Nuriev is quick to answer. ‘I want to create a sense of belonging and a shift in how design is perceived – not as something isolated, but as something that moves with culture.’ He is pushing for real audience interaction, and wants people to engage rather than observe, to participate instead of recording. For a designer whose work has gone viral numerous times, this emphasis on physical experience over digital is clear evidence that the pendulum is swinging the other way: we are living at a time where connection is now valued over online engagement, and real community is prized over likes. crosbystudios.com
Dan Thawley
Matter and Shape’s artistic director is combining the worlds of fashion and design in a mutually beneficial way
When Dan Thawley was asked by Matthieu Pinet to assist him in turning his digital design platform Matter and Shape into a physical annual event, Thawley saw it as an opportunity to plug what he had identified as a gap in the French capital’s design scene. ‘Many existing events in Paris operate within traditional gallery models and often with blue-chip art and design,’ he says. ‘We saw that there was potential for a much more contemporary vision that felt of our time – not something that was holding on to old, aristocratic French conventions.’
For its third edition, which was held at the historic Jardin des Tuileries from 6 to 9 March, exhibitors responded to the theme of scale – a framework that Thawley figured would encourage visitors and designers to interrogate the fertile space between ‘the immediate and the historical, the micro and the macro, the minute and the monumental’.
With Thawley’s background in fashion – he was the editor-in-chief of A Magazine Curated By for 13 years – and the salon (because of its intimate size, both Thawley and Pinet prefer not to call it a fair) being powered by French fashion trade show WSN, Matter and Shape is cross-disciplinary by nature. It takes place at the same time as Paris Fashion Week, offering attendees a welcome change of pace.
‘We are able to show this wonderful travelling group of buyers, journalists, collectors, celebrities, influencers, VIPs – anyone who comes to Paris Fashion Week – beautiful moments of pause,’ Thawley says. ‘It is an ecosystem that has an economy behind it.’ Matter and Shape’s proximity to the fashion industry is reflected in its programme, with names including Ann Demeulemeester, Completedworks and stylist turned textile designer Grace Atkinson exhibiting at this year’s affair.
According to Thawley, while the seasoned design-fair-goer is likely already aware of the increasing presence of major fashion houses (Hermès, Loewe and Bottega Veneta are all regulars, among others) on the scene, the fashion crowd is much less used to seeing interiors brands at shows. This is why Thawley decided to bring design to their doorstep. ‘We wanted to create the reverse function of the fashion world going to Salone [del Mobile] by having these companies come to them,’ he explains. matterandshape.com
