Design Miami.Basel 2024 platforms historic and contemporary collectible designs

The ongoing 18th edition of Design Miami.Basel is transpiring at the world-famous Messe Basel Convention Center in the cultural heart of Basel, Switzerland, exhibiting distinct collectible designs from over 25 international exhibitors. The annual design fair spotlights world-leading contemporary and historic collectible design across its gallery, 'Curio' and 'Design at Large' programmes, covering “design history icons to future trailblazers” according to Grela Orihuela, senior VP of Fairs at Design Miami. Where Design Miami.Basel 2023 witnessed traditions with fewer emerging galleries, this year’s fair presents ten debut exhibitors showcasing furniture designs, jewellery, art objects, lighting designs, and more. The design festival also honours the late Italian iconoclast Gaetano Pesce (1939-2024) through a special tribute exhibition and many influential works from his career.

STIR selects 10 renowned gallery presentations from the ongoing Design Miami.Basel 2024 that spotlight unique demonstrations and celebration of collectible design.

Friedman Benda

Identifying and advancing key narratives that intersect contemporary design, craft, architecture, art, and technological research, Friedman Benda gallery based in New York and Los Angeles showcases a group design installation focused on thirteen exceptional sculptural design works by eight visionary designers including Ini Archibong, Wendell Castle, Enrico Marone Cinzano, Carmen D’Apollonio, Misha Kahn, Samuel Ross, Ettore Sottsass and Barbora Žilinskaitė. Ross’ ‘FIRE OPENS STONE’ (2022) limited edition bench at Friedman Benda (New York/Los Angeles) bagged the Best Contemporary Design Object award at the fair. The bench design, part of Ross’ Course series, features rough stone and concrete elements that reference the visual language of public architecture and spaces.

Laffanour | Galerie Downtown

With expertise in twentieth-century French design with a focus on postwar, midcentury, and contemporary design, Paris-based François Laffanour's Galerie Downtown presents a selection of masterpieces of 20th-century design by Simone & Jean Prouvé, Charlotte Perriand and José Zanine Caldas at the design event.

Galerie Yves Gastou

Centering itself on post-war design, contemporary limited-edition design, and decorative arts of the 20th century, Paris-based Galerie Yves Gastou highlights through its exhibited works, the versatility and fusion of plastic materials in the seemingly contrasting design philosophies. of Shiro Kuramata’s zen and Pesce’s baroque extravagance. Galerie Gastou features a curated selection of plastic furniture manifested in Japanese designer Shiro Kuramata’s zen minimalism and Italian architect and designer Pesce’s theatricality and 'baroque extravagance,' among other notable featured creatives such as Andréa Branzi, Béatrice Serre and Ann Veronica Janssens.

Galerie Mitterrand

Predominantly showcasing sculptures over the last three decades, Galerie Mitterrand, founded by Jean-Gabriel Mitterrand exhibits works by the late artist couple François-Xavier (painter) and Claude Lalanne (architect) at Design Miami.Basel this year. The exhibition features one of Lalanne’s earliest and most recognisable works, 'Le Choupatte' (1960s), which exemplifies her masterful use of the galvanoplasty technique, "whereby cabbage leaves are immersed in an electrolytic bath to obtain copper imprints," as described by the gallery. 'Les Oies' (1992), the installation by François-Xavier, is a limited edition sculpture art of a playful menagerie of ducks.

Ketabi Bourdet Design

The Paris-based contemporary art and design gallery founded by Paul Bourdet and Charlotte Ketabi in 2019 displays furniture collections by French designers Philippe Starck and Elizabeth Garouste, "lifelong friends and brilliantly successful École Camondo dropouts," as the gallery shares. The design exhibition combines Starck’s radical minimalist style with Garouste’s opulent and neo-baroque kitsch, begetting product designs in line with Ketabi Bourdet Design’s focus on 1980/90s furniture with an emphasis on French design.

Thomsen Gallery

One of America’s top leading dealers in Japanese art and design, NY-based Thomsen Gallery reveals a collection of bamboo baskets from the early 20th century to the present, alongside ceramics from the 15th - 21st centuries, gold lacquer boxes from the 20th century, and a pair of Japanese folding screens at the design fair. The intricate Japanese crafts belong to some of the great masters including Ishikawa Shōun (1895-1973), Kawano Shōkō (b. 1957), Morigami Jin (b. 1955), Ueda Shōunsai (1897–1990), and Kosuge Kōgetsu (1933-2016).

Galerie kreo

Known as one of the most influential furniture galleries on the international scene with expertise in contemporary limited-edition design and vintage lighting from the 1950s to the present, the gallery based in France showcases a collection of nine futuristic pieces at the fair comprising ceiling lights, floor lamps, table designs as well as consoles in sleek black or silver anodised aluminium. Galerie kreo highlights materiality and technology in a key exhibit called Transformers, featuring a linearly designed ceiling lamp by German industrial designer Konstantin Grcic where he "reimagines the original purpose of a precision measuring device, typically utilised in the automotive industry," the gallery states. This is further complemented by French designer Guillaume Bardet's work, wherein the exhibit embodies the confluence of French and German design sensibilities within Switzerland.

Spazio Nobile

Within the 'Curio' program, Spazio Nobile unveils the duo exhibition named Lunisolar between Taiwanese artist and designer Pao Hui Kao (finalist of the LOEWE FOUNDATION Craft Prize in 2022) and acclaimed Norwegian artist and ceramicist Ann Beate Tempelhaug. With a focus on 21st-century applied arts, Spazio Nobile's exhibition at Design Miami.Basel 2024 "describes the world as a spatial figuration: poetry - calligraphy - painting with Urushi lacquer or porcelain glaze following the rhythm of nature," according to the gallery based in Brussels, Belgium.

Pulp Galerie

Also presented at 'Curio' is the France-based Pulp Galerie's monographic booth paying tribute to the late Gaetano Pesce and his furniture-like, strange antique sculptures. The French gallery that focuses on 80s to 00s sculptural design bases its booth's concept at the fair on an Italian garden installation that allows visitors to traverse unique, translucent pieces. "The visual and sensorial proposal of our scenography will enhance the main points of Pesce's work: perpetual questioning and freedom in creativity," the gallery shares. The exhibits include furniture first displayed at the Centre Pompidou 1996 exhibition, Le temps des questions, the 'Pratt chair n°7' which was awarded the ‘Best Historical Design Object,’ and 'Sick' (or Sikh) Cabinet that was exclusively crafted by Pesce for the exhibition.

Objects with Narratives

An art gallery in Brussels for collectible, bespoke and storytelling objects, Objects with Narratives debuts with Liquid Solids, Belgian designer and craftsman Ben Storms' solo exhibition comprising a new collection shaped with Onyx, cast glass and aluminum pieces. Storms creates seemingly afloat volumes on the water-covered floor, addressing fluidity as an enchanting expression of states and qualities through design. Another series displayed is Crushed, which welds varying metal sheets to form a transitory shape further transformed into fluid, where glass appears as stone, and water presents itself as a solidified liquid.

“Last year was a significant milestone in the evolution of Design Miami, and this year will only see the momentum continue,” says Jen Roberts, Design Miami CEO. “The eighteenth edition of our Basel fair follows the announcement of our global rebrand and the inaugural Los Angeles edition. I greatly look forward to returning to our flagship location in Basel, to continue our mission at Design Miami: building and cultivating creative collaboration and a global platform for cultural exchange,” she continues.

Design Miami.Basel 2024 runs from June 11 - 16, 2024, at the Messe Basel Convention Center in Basel, Switzerland.

(Text by Simran Gandhi, intern at STIR)