<p>The art market was a plump target for digital disruption and democratisation. The internet and a sharper, smarter kind of e-commerce promised accessibility and transparency in a business almost entirely lacking in either. </p> <p>Online art galleries could open the door to new and younger collectors intimidated by traditional galleries and the complex hustle of art fairs. Artists, meanwhile, could find a platform and salesroom outside the dealer and mega-dealer system and the battle for part-time space in the physical place. </p> <p>Art though is not books, groceries or flat-pack furniture. Paintings have texture and brush strokes, a precise play of colours. Sculpture inhabits space in a way hard to capture online. Buying art takes time and deliberation. Art is a commitment. And it is not industry. Art is not produced in regular shapes and sizes and to a regular schedule. And crucially, the making and selling of art, is built on the human relationships between artist, dealer and col…

<p><a href="https://www.kartell.com/in/en/ktrow/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Kartell</a> has always been a creative workshop in which designers are asked to conceive industrial products. In parallel, they are now being tasked with adopting the same approach and applying the same experience to expanding the Kartell product range and creating products made from different materials and destined for different uses, indoors and out. Kartell means everything from single articles like lamps, mirrors, trays and chairs produced using the latest moulds to complete living zone arrangements with rugs and lamps alongside sofas and armchairs.</p> <p>The creativity of our designers is what turns a concept into a finished product, or into a family of products covering a whole range of lounge furnishings. The project is transformed into an industrial product and the culture of the product and the brand becomes a style of living. <a href="https://www.architonic.com/en/action/pdf-download?attid=31850…

<p>A familiar attraction in more populous cities, bistros are said to have been born in Paris, where enterprising residents would set up makeshift stalls in front of their homes, selling their leftover produce to earn a little extra income. What started out as a neat little side hustle turned into the homely, or perhaps even cosy restaurants and café spaces we know as bistros today. With minimal space inside their small-scale premises, these small-scale eateries often continue their ancestors’ traditions and pitch up tables and chairs outside.</p> <p>Fighting for their lives in the hazy pandemic months, small hospitality spaces took advantage when major cities relaxed their rules surrounding outdoor dining. Anywhere and everywhere from piazza-facing pizzerias in Porto to cobbled back-alley sandwich bars in Edinburgh cordoned off what little space they had with as many tables and chairs as they could. Enabling safe fresh-air dining, the furniture also served to entice customers in – onc…

<p>It takes a lot to keep a design trade show fresh year-on-year. There’s the keeping-up with the perpetual churn of trends and tastes, while also offering new platforms and formats with which to highlight them. Managing the juxtaposition of established names and creative upstarts. Juggling the obligations of pragmatic business networking but also offering a little outré pizazz to cut loose with as the days roll on.</p> <p>London’s <a href="https://www.architonic.com/en/microsite/decorex/5206135">Decorex</a> is a keen example of how to do it right: nearly half a century in existence, still the only show of its kind in the UK and a bona fide lynchpin for the European interior design community. Founded in 1978 – with only one fallow year, due to COVID in 2020 – it remains a meticulously curated undertaking; a ur-text for the model that’s stuck firmly to the key tenets of quality, inspiration and connection. </p> <p>This year’s iteration – taking place from 8-11 October – will see over <a…

When it comes to planning a kitchen, there’s the fun part of expressing your design vision through cabinet and countertop materials and colours – Do you keep cupboard doors uniform or mix it up? Do you tile behind or continue the worktop up the walls? It’s an intensively creative process combining clever spatial conjuring to devise something that is both ergonomic and unique – and then there’s the working parts of a kitchen: the bits that bake and boil, steam and clean. Here the choice is typically about efficiency and functionality; gas or electric, double or single? But who says the working parts can’t be diverting and individual too? The German maker of high-quality built-in home appliances, <a href="https://www.neff-home.com/uk/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">NEFF</a>, has been putting fun and functionality together in a bid to bring character to those industrious parts of our kitchens, so that the process of cooking isn’t simply a technical feat, but a joyful one too. Over the pa…