PURE TALENTS 2018 @ IMM Cologne – Varjo by Umberto Garcia. All images: courtesy of the designers and IMM Cologne.

IMM Cologne 2018 – Do we actually need furniture, or is it furniture that needs us?  The Pure Talent exhibition on show at the first furniture fair of the year addresses the relationship between man and object with works by emerging designers. Here’s what we liked the most.

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Umberto Garcia’s formable hanging lamp features movable rings

Varjo – Finnish for shadow – by Italian designer Umberto Garcia features a sequence of suspended and movable rings connected by a tightened wire. The top and the bottom rings are fixed supporting the light fixture. The four intermediate rings can be slided up or down or tilted, changing the entire configuration of the lamp. The strips that make up the lampshade are constrained by the rings and shaped by their movement. Watch the video.

Outdoor nocturnal furniture for teenagers by Yohay Alush

Israeli designer Yohay Alush created Nocturnal Beasts, a concrete and metal outdoor furniture collection which come to life after sunset tuning with teenagers’ lifestyle. Inspired by street elements, the series comprises an urban mobile phone music amplifier which invites users to to share music his friends, a pedal-powered street lamp and a concrete bench placed upon a stove’s chimney aiming to generate social energy.

Sofia Souidi’s lamp makes windows of light move across the wall 

Berlin designer Sofia Souidi created Gradient, a table lamp projecting a rectangle of light on the wall whose colour, brightness and shape varies imperceptibly, reflecting the time of day and current weather conditions – almost as if the sun were moving past the (non-existent) window. 

Matthieu Muller and Pierre-Alexandre Cesbron’s fastened multifunctional furniture

French designer Matthieu Muller and Pierre-Alexandre Cesbron created Liga, a series of metal furniture which work both as a storage furniture as well as a bedside cabinet and a coffee table. The two-piece lid is fastened using a full-perimeter nylon strap that serves as a joint and can be folded open separately to grant access to the closed interior of the piece of furniture.

Xiang Guan’s symbiotic furniture set functions only when in contact with a person

Inseparable: the table and chair in Symbiotic Objects are mere fragments made from metal, wood and leather that only become complete when a person inserts him/herself between them as part of the furniture. The Chinese designer Xiang Guan highlights the relationship between human beings and utility objects, one he believes needs to be redefined in our consumer society and throw-away culture.

Iridescent sacred beetles-inspired stools by Catalan students from ECAL graduates

The Rose Chafer, a beetle considered sacred in many ancient cultures, inspired Alejandra Perini, Gonzalo Sanchez de Lollano and Raúl Arribas de Miguel to create the Cétoine iridescent metal stools which shimmer a multitude of colours depending on the viewer’s perspective. The designs respond to this interplay and are joined to each other in a sleek, fluid movement.

Julien Manara’s shelves aesthetically reveal their moulding process

Amsterdam-based designer Julien Manaira, wants to make the production process visible. The Frenchman shelf exposes its production process by pouring epoxy resin onto a mould layer by layer. The design aesthetically exposes mould-casting as time factor embedded in thew final design.