This week Design Miami has landed in Shanghai as Design Miami/ Podium x Shanghai — the fair’s first edition in Asia. The collectible design fair hopes to engage the public with the continent’s rich design history and emerging designers by highlighting rare 20th-century and contemporary art and design. Coinciding with Shanghai’s art season with other art fairs and events, Design Miami/ Podium x Shanghai spans from November 4 to 14 in the resplendently restored former British consulate.
LARRY’S LIST has asked four designers: Chris Shao, Andre Fu, Paul Hsu, and Louis Li to pick their not-to-miss design pieces, followed by our top 10 highlights from Design Miami/ Podium x Shanghai.
Designer’s Picks:
Chris Shao — collector, interior designer, founder of CSS&OBJ, Design Miami Shanghai Co-Host
Max Lamb
Scrap Poly Blue Chair, 2019
Lapis lazuli blue, polystyrene, rubber, polymer
86.4 x 36.8 x 55.9 cm
Unique
A meticulous hoarder, Max Lamb utilizes all his residue, as “every little bit of material is precious and has potential.” As assemblage of random offcuts, the nature of the scraps dictate each form. This chair is sprayed in a high-density polyurethane rubber coating to form a permanent, waterproof exoskeleton over the fragile polystyrene, making these works functional both indoors and outdoors. Lamb has chosen a primary mineral color — lapis lazuli, a standard “off the shelf” unadulterated color —“straight out of the tin.” Lamb enjoys the duality of a practice that combines the fundamentals of nature with the synthetic.
Andre Fu — collector, interior designer
Shanghai Art Deco
Rose wood
76 x 80 x 87 cm
Unique
This pair of dining chairs is made of rose wood throughout and has a straight back with wheel-shaped trim on the top and bottom. The seat cushion is reversible, i.e. one side hard and one side soft, for use in both winter and summer.
Paul Hsu — designer, founder of MHPD&Paufect
Chris Wolston
Nalgona Chair 03, 2019
Mimbre, steel frame
81 x 101 x 137 cm
Wolston’s Nalgona chairs are inspired by the unity between human beings and our environment, as expressed by the movements found in T’ai-chi. Depicting a supplicated body made of organic material, the Nalgona 03 imagines the body as an extension of the world.
Chris Wolston is an American artist and designer based in Brooklyn, New York and Medellin, Colombia. His playfully fabricated work — which spans furniture, lighting, seating, and accessories— rigorously blends traditional techniques and materials with a wry, contemporary realism, arriving at an entirely original postmodern aesthetic, imbued with charm and technical sophistication.
Louis Li — collector, founder of Jackalope Hotel
Thomas Heatherwick
Extrusion Chair, 2011
Aluminium
360 x 55 x 75 cm
Limited edition
As a student, Thomas Heatherwick visited an aluminum factory and saw the industrial process of extrusion.He was attracted by the warped shapes produced when the first section of metal passed through the die, catching unevenly on its surfaces and contorting before becoming perfectly straight.He then developed a concept for seating to be manufactured using the extrusion process. 16 years later,a machine was created in China for manufacturing aerospace components, and the studio realised its design ideas using the largest extrusion die ever produced. A limited series of Extrusion pieces were created, and due to retention of the variable and random stages of the extrusion process, each Extrusion piece is unique.
10 Highlights at Design Miami/ Podium x Shanghai
1) Joseph Walsh Studio
Enignum I Rinn Shelf, 2018
270 x 220 x 5.1 cm
Unique
Joseph Walsh’s work reflects his passion for expression through material and form. From monumental sculptures to one-of-a-kind site-specific commissions and collectible design editions, every piece within his dynamic body of work reveals an intuitive relationship with making, a sympathetic use of materials, and an expressive engagement with form.
2) Virgil Abloh
Alaska Chair, 2021
Polished bronze
47.5 x 48 x 73 cm
Limited edition
The main thought behind this work was how to capture this particular emotion of a non-flooded and flooded state of Venice and showcase this moment all across the world, wherever these objects may travel. Virgil Abloh used Venice itself as the inspiration, Influenced by the programming of the meandering streets – the nonlinear methodology to it all. This work is an ode to Virgil Abloh’s signature which illustrates a composition of objects’ interacting with different intentions. The ideology found is in the form of language. It is in the nomenclature of the world, understood by both the purist and tourist.
3) André Fu
ARC Occasional Chair
Mineral marble fabric with charcoal cast bronze base
60 x 55 x 73 cm
Edition of 12
With origins from a spatial design discipline, André Fu embarks on a journey to create a dialogue between object and user. He questions traditional materials and techniques to foster his own creative language, to transcend the formal expression of dimensionality. Each object is conceived with its own inspiration and personality while conveying the duality and contrast between the restrained and the expressed.
For the ARC Occasional Chair, Fu looks to express notions of strength and rigor – in a bold yet delicate design. The designer has worked with caste bronze for the chair’s frame, and silk fabric for the chair’s cushioning.
4) Fernando Mastrangelo
Persistence of Nature, 2021
Hand-dyed sand, crushed glass, powdered glass, brass
61 x 137 x 168 cm
Fernando Mastrangelo’s work has been focused on issues of climate change since 2015. He has created works that embody melting glaciers and forlorn landscapes being plagued by floods and fires as the world reaches its climactic breaking point. Now the designer is introducing his next conceptual focus through a series of lamps that drive a new narrative. The Persistence of Nature is a surrealist interpretation of nature colliding with itself to find its new harmony and reveal itself in ways we havenever experienced before.
5) Bryce Cai
Trumpet Chair, 2021
Suede, leather, carbonized wood, artistic metal paint
87 x 84 x 82 cm
“Trumpet Chair” balanced harmonious geometric shapes with subtle asymmetry, softly layered with variations in textures between textile and leather.
Bryce Cai is a Shanghai-born designer and artist whose design approach actively seeks to blur the lines between industries and cultures. His pioneering work began with interiors but has expanded to include furniture, objects, and various art forms. Ever in pursuit of stunning beauty, Cai’s work utilizes design thinking to create conceptually intriguing pieces that fuse quality, utility, and pure aesthetics.
6) A.A. Murakami, Studio Swine
Cell 1, 2020
Foam aluminum, stainless steel base
Rock size: 58.7 x 48.8 x 54.9 cm
Base size: 132.4 x 30 cm
Inspired by the long tradition of Chinese rock gardens, this series of works brings elements of rugged landscape into the domestic, drawing striking contrasts between the power of nature and the still sanctuary. Foamed aluminium is created by injecting a gassing agent when molten, resulting in a lightweight material that has the appearance of pumice which undergoes a similar process within volcanoes.
7) Danful Yang
Fake Chair, 2010
Replica bags and fabric upholstery with elmwood frame
96 x 67 x 73 cm
Unique in a series of 20 + 2 AP +2 Prototypes
Born in 1980, the young Chinese designer Danful Yang reinvents traditional Chinese art and craft techniques using modern Western materials to create playful and visually dynamic works.
Her iconic ‘Fake’ armchair is an over-the-top hybrid chair that is an amalgamation of Chinese and western Rococo styles upholstered with fake designer handbags. The creative work is a cross-cultural bombardment of visual stimuli, turning imitation into originality and reflecting the onslaught of a globalised consumer culture.
8) Lin Fanglu
Love under the hammer, 2021
Cotton thread, radix isatidis, dye yam, egg white, bamboo.
300 x 650 x 100 cm
The inspiration and materials of this piece come from the ancient Dong tradition of hand-woven cloth known as “bright cloth.” The production of bright cloth involves more than twenty processes such as dip-dyeing, pounding, drying, and applying egg whites. With this ancient craft method, the fabric surface becomes very shiny after drying under the sun, hence its name “bright cloth.” It is still the cloth used by Dong people today.
The work also incorporates a traditional and intangible heritage which is a hand-woven bamboo material. It is the basic structure of the work, supporting the massive installation.
9) Zhou Yilun
Practice Stool
High density foam
20 x 37 x 42 cm
Every era has some iconic material, and this era is undoubtedly foam and various polymers — fast, durable, and light. With the addition of computerised 3D modelling and the output of CNC machines, you can create everything yourself in the form of a small, light, and controllable Play-Doh model. On the other hand, contemporary abstract images are no longer confined to two-dimensional space; Zhou Yilun uses these furniture pieces for painting at the same time.
10) Neri & Hu
Two Brick, 2021
Brick, stainless, wood
200 x 74.5 x 61 cm
“One Brick” and “Two Brick” are the traditional flooring tiles used exclusively in imperial palaces. The dense clay tile, almost as expensive as the precious metal, is considered a rare collectible treasure. For the design of this small table, Neri & Hu celebrates the brick at its center. Treated with the utmost respect, it is purposefully left untouched, elevated by a discreet structure that makes the heavy object appear to levitate. The velvety smooth patina of the deep indigo-hued brick and its organic raw edges, is contrasted against the precision of the delicate bronze supports, giving a contemporary interpretation to this ancient material.
More information: Design Miami/ Podium x Shanghai
By Ballad Liao and Ricko Leung
