7 Design Miami Events You Can't Miss

It’s pretty much impossible to miss the fact that, for one week in early December each year, Miami is the creative capital of the world. With Art Basel (ABMB), Design Miami, Pulse, Scope, and literally a dozen other art and design fairs happening at the moment, it’s safe to say that all eyes are on the Magic City. We’ve already highlighted a few of the best things to see at ABMB, so here’s a few suggestions for must-sees at Design Miami, which opened Thursday and goes for the rest of the week.

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Jean Prouvé

This year, Design Miami boasts a double whammy of works by the late, great Jean Prouvé. Laffanour-Galerie Downtown of Paris is showing an aluminium ‘Meudon’ door, whose scope and geometry is awe-inspiring (and total Instagram bait), while iconic Parisian gallery Patrick Sequin is showing the last remaining example of Prouvé’s 1939 Demountable House. A 4×4 square-meter bent steel ‘hut,’ which was designed to be quickly filled in with simple wooden panels, was used widely during the early part of WWII as guard huts and makeshift dormitories. Given the current need for, and focus on, pre-fab housing, this exhibit couldn’t be more timely.

UNBUILT Pavilion

A group of Harvard graduate students have created a pavilion outside the entrance to Design Miami, in the vein of a giant Erector Set. Comprised of a grid of poles, interconnected by glossy pink upside-down models of works by students from the school’s architecture, landscape architecture, planning, and urban design programmes.

Campana Brothers

São Paolo gallery Firma Casa is showing the Cangaço collection; a series of six leather and wicker pieces of furniture designed by the Campana Brothers, referencing the decorated leather clothing of 19th-century Brazilian Cangaceiros bandits.

Gerrit Thomas Rietveld

Dutch Galerie Vivid is showing a collection of pieces by Gerrit Thomas Rietveld. While of particular interest to fans of De Stijl, the shape of these chairs is recognizable to most design fans, even if they couldn’t identify them.

Yinka Shonibare MBE

The British-Nigerian sculptor and artist’s Windy Chair I, shown by the Workshop Gallery of Paris and London, will delight and inspire awe in equal measure. Inspired by sails, the nearly 2-meter-tall pocket of windswept batik-influenced abstraction functions as both furniture piece and geo-cultural conceptual statement.

Kengo Kuma

Paris-based Galerie Philippe Gravier is showing two pavilions by Japanese architect (and living legend) Kengo Kuma. The first, entitled ‘Oribe,’ is a temporary, mobile tea room, which “resembles an irregularly-shaped cocoon.” Resembling a hollowed-out pearlescent Quartz, Oribe is comprised of 5mm-thick polycarbonate boards, affixed with banding bands. The entire structure can be simply and quickly broken down and re-constructed. The other project, ‘Hojo-an,’ is a prototype of a pre-fabricated micro dwelling. Three ETFE sheets (which can be rolled up), combine into a hard unit manifesting as a 3×3 square-meter cottage.