Cologne January Show Will Be An International Meeting Place For Interior Design

Furniture World Magazine

Cologne's next design festival gets under way on 15th January 2007, when the city will once again be the meeting place for the international interior design scene. At the week-long imm cologne trade fair, leading product designers and trend experts from all over the world will be staging exciting presentations and launching their experimental concepts. They'll offer a wealth of inspiration and fascinating impressions, resulting in lively interaction between the worlds of design, architecture, art and business. imm cologne offers a comprehensive overview of current trends and developments in international design, paying particular attention to the special requirements of the design sector. The "pure" section of the forthcoming fair, located in Hall 11, will offer an in-depth insight into top design. As its name suggests, this area will contain the best and most important design developments on 44,000 m? of exhibition space.   Alongside the commercial aspects of imm cologne, cultural features such as the ideal houses are extremely important because they give visitors the opportunity to reflect on current developments. To date, ideal houses have been designed by Karim Rashid from New York, Konstantin Grcic from Munich, the Campana brothers from São Paolo, the Bouroullec brothers from Paris, Hella Jongerius from Rotterdam and Patricia Urquiola from Milan, all of whom made a tremendous impact with their work. In 2006, three rising design stars - Joris Laarman, Stefan Diez and Astrid Krogh - juxtaposed their ideas against those of Dieter Rams, the doyen of technical minimalism. And in 2007, the star architect Zaha Hadid will be presenting her creative ideas for tomorrow's home styles alongside those of the design poet Naoto Fukasawa. At their new location along the central Boulevard, the huge red cubes of the ideal houses 2007 will form an integral part of the heavily frequented north-south axis that runs through the entire exhibition area.   The underlying concept of imm cologne features not only commercial and cultural aspects but also a focus on new talent, which is vital to creating a complete design community. Young designers are responsible for a wealth of new interior design ideas, and the "d3 design talents" area of imm cologne will be a platform for presenting them. This area will be subdivided into three parts: the "inspired by cologne" competition for up-and-coming designers, the "future point" presentation forum for universities and colleges, and the "NRG" programme for independent designers.    The upcoming imm cologne will focus closely on trends as well as design. At "informed by cologne", imm cologne will offer a sneak preview of the trends for the coming season, highlighting colours, materials, shapes and patterns. A trend board comprising experts from different countries (Tom Dixon, Eero Koviosto, Stephen Burks, Chris Lefteri, Sophie Lovell and Inga Sempé) will research new trends in the run-up to the fair. Their findings will be published in a trend book in September.   In its capacity as a home style and trend show, imm cologne is the number one meeting place for the interior design sector. It showcases not only trends and design concepts, but also a wide array of new products and innovations. The annual interior innovation award is presented in recognition of outstanding design, technology and product concepts.   Although there are still six months to go before the fair is held in January 2007, it's already clear that imm cologne will once again be incredibly innovative, informative and exciting.