The Objets Nomades

Born in 1963 in Boxtel, the Netherlands, Marcel Wanders founded his design studio in 1995 with the aim of “creating an environment of love, and living with passion to make our most exciting dreams come true”. His design approach often mixes innovative materials and techniques with historical standards, a combination that give his work a poetic and romantic feeling. Alongside his furniture, he has designed a number of stores and hotels, including the Andaz Amsterdam Prinsengracht Hotel in the Netherlands, and works as Art Director for design label Moooi. His work has been included in design collections and exhibitions across the world at institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the V&A, London; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; and the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningean, Rotterdam.

"Above all, travel offers the unique opportunity to embark on a new exploration."

Fernando and Humberto Campana have been creating modern classics since 1984. Their creativity is based upon looking beyond the obvious to capture the beauty in the everyday. With a constantly striking use of colour and a heartfelt dedication to craftsmanship, the brothers make the ordinary extraordinary and bring out the beautiful in the simple.

Since 2002, Estudio Campana, their São Paulo based company, has been producing its own product line, as well as one-of f handmade pieces. Celebrating in 2019 its 35 years of work, their pieces can be seen in the permanent collections of cultural institutions around the world, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Centre Pompidou, Paris; the Vitra Design Museum, Weil am Rhein; and the Museu de Arte Moderna, São Paulo. They were also named Designers of the Year at Design Miami in 2008, at Maison & Objet Paris in 2012, and were given a special award at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, in September 2012.

"Nomadism is for me a condition of contemporaneity and lightness"

Spanish-born Patricia Urquiola has been living and working in Milan, Italy, since the mid-1980s. She graduated from the city’s Politecnico in 1989 and went on to work for a number of renowned architects and design companies, including De Padova, Alessi, Cappellini, Lissoni&Partners and Kartell. In 2001, she founded her own studio where she specialised in industrial product design, architecture, art direction and strategy consulting. She is part of the advisory board of the Politecnico of Milan university and the Triennale Milano Museum and she gives lectures in universities across the globe.

Her work is exhibited in many international art and design museums, including the MOMA in New York, the Decorative Arts Museum in Paris and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.

Founded in Neuveville, Switzerland, in 1991 by Aurel Aebi, Armand Louis and Patrick Reymond, Atelier Oï has been striving to dissolve barriers between genres and foster cross-disciplinary creativity for 20 years. Their achievements reflect an interweaving of architecture, design and set design on an international scale. Their multidisciplinary talents, team spirit and intimate rapport with the materials they choose have long been the foundations of their success.

Born of an intuitive and emotional affinity with the act of shaping different materials, their projects have been recognised the world over (winner of Europan 3, 1994; European Museum of the Year Award, 2001; iF Design Award, 2012; Living at Home Award, 2007; Product of the Year, Architectural Record, 2008).

Raw Edges is a collaboration between Yael Mer and Shay Alkalay. Since their graduation show at the Royal College of Art, London, in 2006, they have received a number of international awards including the Wallpaper* Design Award, the British Council Talented Award and the Design Miami/Basel Designer of the Future Award.

Their work is found in a number of museum collections, such as Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Art Institute of Chicago.

Alongside their commissioned work, Mer and Alkalay produce limited-edition designs and installations at their London studio.

After studying architecture and industrial, graphic and furniture design, India Mahdavi spent seven years as Creative Director for interior designer Christian Liaigre.

She founded her own studio in 2000 and, from her base on Rue Las Cases in Paris, has since worked internationally on interior design, scenography, furniture and object design projects.

These have included restaurants and hotels, such as The Gallery at Sketch in London, Ladurée in Geneva and Los Angeles, and the Monte-Carlo Beach Hotel; retail concepts, most recently Red Valentino in Rome and London; and a line of furniture and home accessories, including her trademark Charlotte armchairs. She describes her style as "polyglot and polychrome".

San Francisco-based designer Andrew Kudless works at the frontiers of architecture, design and science. After studying emergent technologies and design in London and architecture in Tulane, he founded his multidisciplinary design studio Matsys in 2004 to explore craft, structure, form and intelligence in the natural and synthetic worlds.

His experimental and ground-breaking work has been exhibited around the world and features in the permanent collection of the Pompidou Centre and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Kudless is also an associate professor at California College of the Arts and has taught workshops in Japan (where he also lived for a year), across the United States and in London.

Born in 1967. He worked under Shiro Kuramata and Issey Miyake, and established his own studio, Tokujin Yoshioka Inc. in 2000.

Active in the fields of design, architecture and contemporary art, he is highly acclaimed globally with the works based on themes of nature and reflecting Japanese ideas of beauty. By giving shape to various human senses, using non-material elements such as light, he creates expressions that are unique and surpass the concept of shape.

Many of his works are chosen as part of permanent collections in world renowned museums, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Le Centre national d’art et de culture Georges-Pompidou in Paris, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. He has won many international design awards, and was chosen by Newsweek magazine as one of the 100 Most Respected Japanese in the World.

Born in Toronto in 1977, Oki Sato graduated from Waseda University, Tokyo, in 2002 and immediately founded Nendo, his design studio. It is now one of the most influential small companies in Japan, thanks to work such as the extraordinary Cabbage Chair: a cylinder of reinforced paper that is peeled back layer by layer to produce an instant seat. Sato’s work can now be seen in museums around the world, from Museum of Modern Art, New York, to the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

For Sato, design is about using technology to promote simplicity, while creating what he calls ‘!’ moments” for people in their everyday lives: "We believe that these small ‘!’ moments are what make our days so interesting, so rich."

André Fu was born in Hong Kong, educated in the UK from the age of 14, and studied architecture at the University of Cambridge. He credits his 30 years of travelling between Asia and Europe to define his style and unique blend of craft and innovation.

He founded his design studio AFSO in Hong Kong in 2000 and since then has worked on hotels, restaurants, galleries, installations and retail spaces worldwide, including the Upper House Hotel in Hong Kong, Singapore’s Andaz Hotel, Villa la Coste in Aix en Provence and the Pavilion Suites at the Berkeley, London. Among his most recent projects was Galerie Perrotin’s new gallery space in Tokyo.

Fu has won numerous awards and in 2016, was named Designer of the Year at Maison&Objet Asia and included in Wallpaper^* magazine’s Top 20 Interior Designers.

"Nomadism can be a forced state or a choice, but it opens new horizons."

Atelier Biagetti was founded in 2003 by designer Alberto Biagetti; he was joined by artist and singer Laura Baldassari in 2013. Since then, the Milan-based duo has been creating installations, objects and performances inspired by today’s world, human behaviour and the obsessions of contemporary society, such as beauty, sex and religion.

For Atelier Biagetti, each of its objects tells a story revealing its own "expressive functionality" and in doing so, suggests new ideas for interaction between physical and psychological space.

"Craft is vital to our studio’s work."

Designers Edward Barber & Jay Osgerby founded their London studio in 1996. Their diverse body of work spans industrial design, furniture, lighting and site-specific installations as well as gallery and public commissions such as the London 2012 Olympic Torch and projects for the Royal Mint. They are currently working with leading global manufacturers including Vitra, Knoll, B&B Italia, Hermès and Flos. Their work is held in permanent museum collections around the world including V&A and Design Museum in London, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and Art Institute of Chicago. In 2001 Barber & Osgerby established Architecture design practice Universal Design Studio, and in 2012 they founded Map Project Office, a company specialising in research and strategy-led design.

In 2007 they were awarded Royal Designers for Industry by the Royal Society of Arts and in 2013 the designers were each awarded an OBE for their services to the design industry. Both hold honorary doctorates of art and lecture internationally.

A designer of high-end furniture and spaces, Damien Langlois-Meurinne began his career with Christian Liaigre before founding his own agency, DL-M, in 2003.

Since then, he has worked on a wide variety of interior design projects that have brought together French elegance and a certain sense of timelessness.

His design philosophy is less about imposing a style on a space and more about channelling serenity into it, while respecting the personality of each client. As well as his interior design work, Langlois-Meurinne creates bespoke furniture collections that mix sophistication and simplicity. Conscious of the importance of the spaces and objects that surround us, he uses only natural materials such as bronze and precious woods.

"Louis Vuitton combines elegance with savoir-faire, creativity and ingenuity."

After meeting as students at ECAL in Lausanne, Switzerland, Giorgia Zanellato and Daniele Bortotto founded Zanellato/Bortotto Studio in Treviso, Italy, in 2013. Their first joint work, Acqua Alta, was dedicated to the city of Venice and presented at the Salone Satellite in Milan in 2013; it marked the beginning of their long-term research project on the relationship between places and the passage of time.

Zanellato/Bortotto’s work has been shown in galleries and institutions including MAXXI, Rome; Triennale Design Museum, Milan, and Somerset House and the Aram Gallery in London. In 2015, they were named Young Talent of the Year by Elle Decor Italia, were awarded the NYCxDESIGN prize by Interior Design in 2016 and won the Red Dot Design Award in 2017.