The countdown to Basel is on, and this year Design Miami/Basel moves to a Herzog & de Meuron-designed home in the new permanent exhibition hall. The eighth edition of the Basel fair is also shaping up to be the biggest yet. “We’ll have about fifty percent more galleries than last year,” Design Miami director Marianne Goebl told us during a recent trip to New York. “And we’re expanding our geographical reach. For the first time in Basel we’ll have a gallery from South Africa, Southern Guild. We’ll also have a first-time participant from Beirut, Carwan Gallery, which will present the work of India Mahdavi.”

A Vitra veteran who took over from founding director Ambra Medda in February 2011, Goebl has succeeded in freshening up Design Miami for an audience that ranges from die-hard design fans to newcomers who strolled over from the neighboring art megafair. “I have this very naïve mission of wanting to communicate to a large audience that design matters,” she says. “Everybody lives with design, whether they want to or not. Not everyone can make choices, but to a certain degree a lot of people can make choices and I think that not enough people do it…until now.” We asked Goebl about how she became interested in design, what’s in store for Basel, and if she believes the 3D printing hype.

How did you become interested in design?
I thought I would end up in the arts, so growing up in Vienna and already when I was a teenager and during my studies [in economics], I always worked in galleries and museums. I interned at the Museum for Applied Arts, worked for an art gallery for three years, and really felt like I wanted this to be part of my life, but then designer friends of mine took me to Milan [Salone Internazionale del Mobile] when I was maybe 22. This whole new world opened up and I realized that in design I could find…conceptual thinking, but also something beyond that, which is tangible and really part of everyday life. And I felt that this is what I wanted to be part of.

Since taking over as director in 2011, what have you found particularly surprising about your job or the fair itself?
What I’ve really learned over the last two years–and what I hope to continue in the future–is that Design Miami can speak to different types of people. First there’s an audience of general enthusiasts, people who are just really interested in design. They may not be interested in buying something, but it doesn’t matter. They can just come [to the fair], get all of the information, ask all of their questions, see the material, interact, use it as a forum. And on the other end of the spectrum, we can reach an audience that can actually help fuel the market and help designers to continue their research and to tell their stories. I don’t want to call it two levels, because it’s not necessarily two different levels, but it’s a broad spectrum of audience, and that wasn’t clear to me before I joined Design Miami.

Tell us about Design Miami’s new location for Basel in June.
In Basel this will be Design Miami’s fourth location. It’s like an itinerant fair! It brings a lot of opportunities, because first, it’s a brand new hall with great architecture. It’s part of the fairground of the Basel convention center. They built a bridge across two buildings on a public plaza. There’s a skylight. It’s in the middle of activities. And then the fair will unfold in the bridge. And there’s moments when you can overlook the square, so it’s nice to communicate with the outside world. I would say it is sophisticated, industrial, not at like a sleek, carpeted convention center.

And Design Miami will also have another space, in addition to the main fair?
We’ll have an additional space that we did not have before in Basel, on the ground floor, where we’ll be able to stage a design performance. We’re working with a German designer who collaborates with dancers. It will be about the relationship between the maker and the object. It will be an ongoing thing, so that every time you come something else will be happening.
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Chairs, glorious chairs, are everywhere at Design Miami, but no one sits for long. Collectors, dealers, journalists, and the odd celebrity (who knew Will Ferrell was a design buff?) stream through the fair at different speeds and with varying agendas: see Maarten de Ceulaer’s latest “mutations,” close the sale on the Nakashima bench, locate a friend and a chocolate dulce de leche pie ($7 at the catering stand), nab a seat for Stefano Tonchi’s on-stage chat with Diane von Furstenberg, load up on free magazines. A welcome pause from this year’s frenzy was offered by Glithero, the design duo of Tim Simpson and Sarah van Gameren.

The London-based studio was commissioned by Perrier-Jouët to create an installation that honored the champagne house’s Art Nouveau heritage (that famous flowered bottle was the result of a 1902 collaboration with artist Emile Gallé). “We sought to work with a designer that has the Art Nouveau dimension in his or her DNA,” Axelle de Buffevent, brand style director for Martell Mumm-Perrier-Jouët, told us in Miami. “With Glithero, you immediately see that their work is very inspired by nature, by the processes of nature.”

Long fascinated by processes ranging from artisanal craftsmanship to industrial production methods, Simpson and van Gameren responded to Perrier-Jouët’s commission by creating “Lost Time” (pictured), a darkened chamber strung with skeins of shot beads that dripped from the ceiling like glamorous ghosts of stalactites—or champagne flutes. The swooping volumes, inspired in part by Gaudí’s Sagrada Família, were reflected in a shallow pool of water, an infusion of moisture that heightened the cave-like atmosphere (and winked at the humidity that awaited on the other side of the air-conditioned tent).
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In Miami? So are Elizabeth Diller, Ricardo Scofidio, and Charles Renfro. The trio will be signing books today at Design Miami from 1-2 p.m. before heading across the street to chat with Ari Wiseman, deputy director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, as part of the Art Salon series at Art Basel Miami Beach.

This is part of a series of elegantly wrapped December posts about desirable goods that we suggest you purchase with the laudable yet vague intent of giving to others and then keep for yourself. Got a “nifty, gifty” idea? Tell the UnBeige elves: unbeige (at) mediabistro.com

Previously on UnBeige:
• Nifty, Gifty: Rodarte’s Out-of-This-World Ornament
• Nifty, Gifty: Crate&Barrel 50th Anniversary Teapot

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-Vito Acconci, whose Acconci Studio is Design Miami’s 2012 Designer of the Year, in an interview published today in the Art Basel edition of The Art Newspaper

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Among the perks of winning Designer of the Year is the opportunity to whip up a large-scale installation. These commissions have typically consisted of site-specific, temporary installations for the fair iself, but now Design Miami is setting its sights on projects that will be both permanent and public. Acconci Studio will get the ball rolling with “Klein-Bottle Playground,” the Moebius strip-style climbing structure in the above rendering. Originally developed for the “Art for the World” program, as part of a touring exhibition of experimental recreational equipment and toys for refugee children, it will be permanently installed in the Miami Design District in 2014. The structure was inspired by the German mathematician Felix Klein, whose “Klein Bottle” had no identifiable “inside” or “outside.” Acconci Studio’s playground-ready riff will consists of a series of tubes extending out from and into a central sphere, allowing children to climb in, through, and on top of it.

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The footage speaks for itself: here is Safer posing under Erwin Wurm’s giant police officer’s cap, there he is lobbing softballs at Larry Gagosian (“This place has become one of the places that someone like yourself have to show at?”), all interspersed with shots of parties, concerts (infernal rock music!), and the occasional graph that depicts the climbing valuation of the art market since Safer last visited. A chat with the whipsmart Guggenheim curator Alexandra Monroe about the likes of Anish Kapoor and Haegue Yang is harvested for “artspeak” soundbites, a row of Nick Cave’s Soundsuits is used for a segment-capping punchline, and don’t even get him started on video art. The conclusion: Safer still doesn’t like this contemporary art stuff, but we did notice one person he seems to be warming up to: Kara Walker. When Eli Broad beams over a recently acquired Walker, Safer refers to her as “a truly gifted young American artist.” Walker is sure to be delighted.

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Few things pack the overstimulating punch of Miami in early December (or late November, depending on the calendar). In the wake of this year’s swirl of fairs, events, and exhibitions, as we packed up our haul of foreign periodicals, flip-flops, and a signed copy of artist Erwin Wurm‘s latest book (mmm, pickles), we asked a handful of highly esteemed fellow fairgoers to share with us some of their highlights— the stunning, interesting, surprising, and/or delightful— from the Art Basel Miami/Design Miami week that was. Miami-based architecture critic and author Beth Dunlop went above and beyond the call of duty. Here are a few of her favorite things:

Art Basel (known to many in Miami as Art Frazzle, or even Art Hassle) has come and gone. What was most compelling? In the end, the places to sit and contemplate are what linger on—David Adjaye’s miraculous pavilion outside of Design Miami, Luis Pons’ personal chapel shown as part of Inventory 2 in the Miami Design District, and to a lesser extent, the Fondation Beyeler homage to Louise Bourgeois at Art Basel proper. I have to admit, however, that there were other highlights. I’m crazy for Jorge Pardo, and though it took some hunting across the giant Miami Beach Convention Center, found two different sets of his light fixtures and a brilliant table and chair set done in wood, glass and synthetic (vinyl?) cording (they were at Petzel and Neugerriemschneider) and if blurring the lines between art and design, they also speak to the magic of the mundane. And though not design (but about the way we inhabit space) were to be found at the Danziger Gallery’s Pulse booth: Karen Knorr’s elegant photographs of Indian palace rooms occupied by exotic animals, almost the exact opposite of Doug Aitken’s mesmerizing video—he called it “Migration (Empire)”—of some few years back in which wild animals rampaged through seedy motel rooms. In a way, the whole Art Basel experience is much more like Aitken, but there’s something deep and profound in Knorr’s work that takes us full circle to the Adjaye pavilion and the Pons chapel, especially—retreats into simplicity and even moments of tranquility amid all the art-buying and social-climbing and frantic partying that is what is now called, in Miami, “Art Week.”
—Beth Dunlop

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It’s that time of year again, when design lovers around the world seek out gifts that surprise, delight, and won’t be swiftly returned for store credit. In the coming days, we’ll offer an alphabet of suggestions in the UnBeige Gift Guide, which we hope will also supply some ideas on how to spend the seasonal smattering of gift certificates (and store credit) that will soon be burning a hole in your pocket. Our first pick: African Metropolitan Architecture (Rizzoli), the sublime new book by David Adjaye. The set of seven slipcased volumes is the culmination of the Tanzanian-born, London-based architect’s decade-long project to document the built environment of every major African city. It’s a fresh look at a continent that the world has come to know through exotic images from National Geographic.

“I just wanted ordinary pictures. Everyday life,” said Adjaye last week at Design Miami, where he was celebrated as Designer of the Year. “There’s a sense that Africa’s all a jungle, with savannahs, animals running around, and some nice natives.” In fact, with 54 countries and 1.5 billion people, Africa is on an urbanization streak. Growth of cities on the continent is now outpacing that of China. “But nobody’s talking about Africa. I couldn’t even talk to architects about it,” he added. In the course of visiting every African city, Adjaye looked beyond the political boundaries to examine the distinctive aspects of six regions: the maghreb, the sahel, savannah and grassland, mountain and gighveld, desert, and forest. A book of essays about African urban development rounds out the edition. “The landscape of Africa is one of the most primal and powerful environments that we have on this planet,” said Adjaye. “It’s nurtured a lot of artists and creative people, and even when architecture doesn’t realize what’s happening, it’s actually authoring architecture, and that’s what this book is about.”

Have a suggestion for the UnBeige Gift Guide? E-mail us at unbeige@mediabistro.com.

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First the turkey, then the art and design. Today Art Basel Miami Beach opened its doors to the public. Now in its tenth year, the ever-expanding fair is showcasing works from a eye-watering 2,000 artists represented by approximately 260 galleries worldwide. Based on the champagne-swilling VIPs at yesterday’s preview (we spotted Morley Safer lounging with a cigarette and intially mistook him for a highly realistic sculpture), Erwin Wurm is gaining a lot of new fans, thanks in part to crowd-pleasing works on view at the booth of Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac. Drawn in by the Vienna-based artist’s disembodied pink hoodie (above), few fairgoers can resist standing under the neighboring giant, wall-mounted police officer’s cap. Wurm was also feted last night at the Bass Museum of Art, where an exhibition of his genre-bending work opened today.

Right around the corner from the Convention Center, Design Miami got a headstart on things with its opening yesterday, complete with a Veuve Clicquot-sponsored food truck and champagne lounge. In addition to works from 23 galleries, this year’s fair features “Craft Alchemy,” a performance project in which designer Elisa Strozyk and artist Sebastian Neeb work their magic on Fendi’s leather scraps. Meanwhile, architect David Adjaye gets his close-up as designer of the year, while Bjarke Ingels has teamed up with Audi on a “digital street” environment. And what’s that floral aroma wafting through the tent? Belle-Ile, a fragrance created by olfactive branding company 12.29 especially for Design Miami.

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Design an awesome home for Adam Lindemann and the world will beat a path to your double-height, multipaneled bronze door, as will Design Miami, which will honor Tanzanian-born, London-based architect David Adjaye as Designer of the Year at this year’s fair (November 29-December 4 in Miami Beach). Awarded annually to an internationally renowned designer or studio “whose body of work demonstrates unmatched quality, innovation, and influence, while expanding the boundaries of design,” the honor has been bestowed in previous years on the likes of Zaha Hadid, Fernando and Humberto Campana, Maarten Baas, and Konstantin Grcic.

“Winning Designer of the Year is huge for me,” said Adjaye. “To win an award like this from the design community is really significant because so much of my work is about crossing platforms. Being recognized this year—which culminates in all of the work and research I’ve been doing in Africa—is extremely meaningful.” Of Ghanaian descent, Adjaye has spent ten years traveling to 53 cities throughout Africa to document the continent within an urban context. The resulting project, “Urban Africa: David Adjaye’s Photographic Survey,” includes more than 36,000 pictures, 3,000 of which were displayed at London’s Design Museum before traveling to other locations around the world.

Among the perks of winning Designer of the Year is the opportunity to whip up a site-specific installation for this year’s fair, and Adjaye has designed a triangular pavilion called “Genesis” (rendering at right) that will welcome visitors to Design Miami. The immersive environment will be constructed of hundreds of vertical wooden planks, with the interior formed by an oversized ovoid shape cut out from the center. Inside, Adjaye will provide seating (on a platform formed by cut-away timber frames) that affords views of the sky and surrounding environment. The Design Miami galleries will be visible through a curved window. According to Design Miami, “Genesis” represents the first time that Adjaye has combined structure, seating, window, and doors into a single gesture.

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With less than two months to go before the Swiss blitz of Art Basel, the organizers of Design Miami/ Basel have announced the winners of the 2011 W Hotels Designers of the Future Award: Asif Khan (London), mischer’traxler (Vienna), and Studio Juju (Singapore). The three up and coming design firms will each create a new object or series based upon this year’s designated theme of “Conversation Pieces.” Expect works that “encourage people to overcome social barriers while also sparking conversations between strangers.” After making their debut at Design Miami/ Basel, the commissioned projects will get people talking at W Hotels worldwide.

“With this year’s award, we wanted to highlight the young design vanguard while exploring works that are intentionally interactive,” said Design Miami/ director Marianne Goebl in a statement announcing the winners, who share an experimental and multi-disciplinary approach demonstrated in projects ranging from flowering furniture and laser-cut stationery to a Spirograph-like cake decorating machine and a cell phone with an undulating surface inspired by fruit trays. The 2011 Designers of the Future were selected by an international jury that included Aric Chen (Beijing Design Week), Li Edelkoort (Edelkoort Inc.), Konstantin Grcic (KGID), and Zoe Ryan (The Art Institute of Chicago). Qualifying candidates must have been practicing for less than 15 years and have produced a body of work—in the fields of furniture, lighting, craft, architecture and/or digital/electronic media—that demonstrates originality in the creative process, while also exhibiting an interest in working in experimental, nonindustrial, or limited-edition design.

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“The uplift that the mythos and business of contemporary art has brought to the life of [Miami] can be compared with the way that Frank Gehry‘s Bilbao Guggenheim has transformed the Basque capital. It used to be said that trade followed the flag. Nowadays, you are likely to find that an artist made the flag and a dealer sold it to a collector. Who flipped it.”

-Anthony Haden-Guest, writing in The New York Observer of his recent experience at Art Basel Miami Beach

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This weekend, following a much needed haircut, this writer accidentally happened to pass by the Coonley Elementary School here in Chicago at roughly the same time that former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel was officially entering this city’s mayoral race. While there was some commotion, including dozens of broadcasting trucks and protesters outside yelling about something, it was a relatively subdued affair. But after weeks of travel and not paying any attention to much of anything outside of airplane schedules and what’s on our computer screens, it finally got us thinking about what Chicago would be like with Emanuel as our mayor. In how this relates to UnBeige (we’re trying desperately to make a smooth segue here), ArtNet was on hand to pull out some good details from a recent interview with Emanuel in the local edition of Time Out, wherein, among other arts-specific items, he says “…we should restore the Chicago Art Expo‘s rightful place next to the Basel Expo in Miami.” While we’re not sure when exactly we were ever able to compete with the annual mega-fest down in Florida, it’s positive to see some forward thinking about pushing Chicago’s place in the arts. Though the underlying tone of ArtNet’s synopsis, which is perhaps a better read than the interview itself, seems none too positive about the candidate himself.

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It’s been a very good year for Konstantin Grcic. Having begun 2010 by clinching the “Furniture Designer of the Year” honor from Wallpaper* (and a panel of judges that ranged from Steven Holl and Kelly Wearstler to John Galliano and Carsten Höller), the Munich-based industrial design star has seen his 360° chair and 360° stool welcomed into the permanent collection of New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Now comes word that Grcic will be feted in December as Design Miami‘s Designer of the Year, awarded annually to an internationally renowned designer or studio “whose body of work demonstrates unmatched quality, innovation, and influence, while expanding the boundaries of design.” Grcic was the unanimous selection of the Design Miami jury, according to Wava Carpenter, acting director of the fair. “Konstantin’s work in the last year has demonstrated his incredible range and prolific talent,” she says. “His ability to work in multiple contexts simultaneously is the hallmark of today’s most successful and enduring designers.” Past Designer of the Year winners include Maarten Baas, Fernando and Humberto Campana, Zaha Hadid, and Marc Newson.

Design Miami commissioned new work by Grcic that will presented at the fair (which this December will take place right in Art Basel’s backyard at the Miami Beach Convention Center), and Grcic came up with “Netscape,” an installation that will be presented in the courtyard of Design Miami’s temporary structure designed by Moorhead & Moorhead. The interactive work will consist of a six-point star-shaped structure from which seats made of netting will be suspended. The 24-seat web of hanging chairs will create a space for guests to engage with one another before entering or leaving the fair. “When I first looked at the design for this year’s temporary structure, there was this beautiful part of the tent, just before the entrance,” says Grcic. “I knew that I wanted to create something special for the fair—something functional,but also something that incorporated my ideas of what a place like Miami is like in December….It’s a space for people to enjoy.” Fairgoers will also be treated to a selection of Grcic’s greatest hits (three cheers for Chair One!) with an exhibition of career highlights curated by Grcic himself.

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