Show Review: 100% Design 2005

London has recently hosted 100% Design, the city's response to the Milan Furniture Show that currently dominates the product design calendar. Just as the Italians have spread their show over the city, Londoners have begun to do the same, introducing 100% East in the arty East End, and using more floorspace at Earls Court, the exhibition centre that formerly hosted the British Motor Show.

100% Design is complemented at Earls Court by 100% Detail and 100% Material. Fortunately the exhibition is better than the mathematics, with many independent thinkers provoking the minds of show-goers. Though 100% Design repeats much of what Milan presents earlier in the year, there are still new ideas.

DuPont Corian is now 30 years old, but designer Caroline Broadbridge has updated its use, casting it as a solid tablecloth. Fluid expression in solid materials is millennia old, but the way lighting has been used to support this is less common. Recessed decoration brings the thickness of the Corian down from 12+mm to 3mm, thin enough to let the glow from the light-box behind emerge. The interior -and exterior- of the Mazda Sassou at the Frankfurt Motor Show played with a similar way of surprising with light, and certainly this use of Corian could allow for further interesting advancements of dashboard design.

Nearby, fledgling company 'ebb' used rival material 'Hi-Macs', by LG, for their novel bathroom suite. Described as 'Natural Acrylic Stone', Hi-Macs is less expensive than Corian, which has so far limited its automotive application. Here, the material is used for integrated bathroom fittings, each item belonging to a single strip. Simplistic architecturally, it is nevertheless interesting, though highlights are caught on the tangent of the radii, lacking the necessary lead-ins. At Modus Design, Polish designer Marek Cecula exhibited his 'Zig Zag' tea set, an indulgent reinterpretation of the traditional teapot that does away with a body so that only handle and spout remain.

Utterly minimalist in ideation and with Bauhaus overtones, the $200 'Zig Zag' inadvertently proposes the thermodynamic opposite of a sphere, the slender cuboid form optimal for heat loss, while its length would ensure enough sloshing about for the contents to completely miss the accompanying thimbles. Not much would have been lost functionally had it actually been made of chocolate instead. Nevertheless, what is there is well executed, the set remaining unique and curiously desirable.

100% East featured a more eclectic mix of products, including a framed fruit-bowl, so the user 'can create their own still life', next to concrete being used to new effect: cast as flock wallpaper to induce texture, then polished to a mirror finish. The East End also hosted the launch of a hydrogen-powered bike, designed by product designers Seymour Powell.

By Robert Forrest