What to expect from 100% Design
Richard Rogers in conversation and Zaha Hadid's reinvention of shopping among this year's highlights
100% Design, which takes place between September 18 – 21 at Earls Court in London, is Britain's largest and longest running contemporary design event, and tends to address an audience both interested in blue-sky innovation, as well as the messy business of making, innovating and selling new products and services.
One of this year's attractions that looks set to capture this perfectly is Retail of Tomorrow, a collaboration between the Pritzker Prize laureate Zaha Hadid and the Korean technology company Samsung.
Hadid has produced retail spaces before; however, her Samsung collaboration promises more than a simple shop. In their “vision for Retail of Tomorrow” Hadid and Samsung will “integrate both online and High Street retailing, combining pioneering interior design with exciting interactive customer communication,” to transform “shopping into an event and social experience.” It's an ambitious aim, and one we might not immediately associate with Hadid, who tends not to ally her designs with a specific social ambition.
Then again, could traditional bricks and mortar shopping be rendered even further obsolete by 3D printing and home factories? It's a proposition partially investigated by 100% Design's 3D printing hub. The expo will produce a “concept space”, including a prototype home factory, and an area to show-off 3D printed interior products; designers can also enter their product plans into the show's competition.
{media3}
For a more retrospective view of drafting and making, visitors can also catch Richard Rogers in discussion with Icon magazine's editor, Chris Turner. The great British architect, who celebrated his 80th birthday last month, will discuss his life and work. Elsewhere in the talks programme, the Italian furniture innovator, Phaidon author and Bouroullec brothers collaborator, Giulio Cappellini, will discuss “finding the fine and exact equilibrium between design innovation, product function, form and commercialism.”
{media4}
It seems an apt subject for a firm founder who appears to have struck this balance so well over the decades. to find out more about 100% Design, go here. For more on Richard Rogers, please take a look at our collection of his complete works; for more on Cappellini, consider our Bouroullec Brothers book or Spoon title. And for a great overview of successful product design, please also take a look at our new Design Book.