Earlier this month, the art and design world descended on Miami for a whirlwind six days of design reveals and pop-up installations at Art Basel and Design Miami 2023—and beyond. Scanning the city-wide festival is like taking a pulse of the creative industry, uncovering the forms, concepts, and materials inspiring artists and makers right now. AD editors’ report is in: Here are the six emerging design trends they spotted (and can’t stop thinking about) at Miami Art and Design Week.
Neo Art Nouveau
At the turn of the century, Art Nouveau style embraced the great outdoors for inspiration, twisting natural motifs like flora and foliage by using new technologies in the realms of metalwork, glass, and more. Now, over a century later, as we find ourselves at another moment of near-constant technological innovation, this style holds new resonance—and the pieces on display last week in Miami were proof. At Nina Johnson’s Miami gallery, the works in Katie Stout’s stunning solo show channeled the eerie, otherworldliness of early-20th-century decorative arts. In the exhibition, supersized vessels shimmer with bronze, glass, and colorfully glazed ceramic flora; a branch-like bronze chandelier sprouts glass blooms and frilly, tulip-shaped shades.
At Design Miami 2023, the Future Perfect showed Autumn-Casey’s technicolor riffs on Tiffany lamps, in which swatches of epoxy-coated fabric are hot-glued together, giving the effect of stained glass. Even Wendy Maruyama’s hand-painted quilt chest, on display in the Superhouse booth, feels like a contemporary take (and a reclaiming of the narrative) on the Japanese motifs that laid the groundwork for Art Nouveau. Meanwhile, over at Bernard Goldberg Fine Arts, the stellar originals still shine—like a bespoke glass mosaic fireplace by Tiffany Studios. —Hannah Martin
New Blandscape
For the last several years, the aesthetics around Miami Art Week have often revolved around the possibilities of technology—NFTs of glowing digital renderings, psychedelic algorithmic design, and bizarroland 3D-printed forms. While there’s still plenty of that to go around, some designers are balancing the scales by calling attention to a more everyday side of visual culture. Take Gyuhan Lee, who uses McDonald’s paper packaging as the raw material for a collection of sleek, showroom-worthy lanterns at Side Gallery’s Design Miami booth. A row over, Harry Nuriev (always one to check the highfalutin vibe of the collectible design show—see his trashbag sofa from 2022) puts a spotlight on one of the most recognizable American furniture pieces of all time. No, it isn’t a Knoll sofa: It’s a sectional La-Z-Boy-style recliner, upholstered in a tapestry like one you’d find at granny’s house.
Meanwhile, in the Fendi Casa booth, Bless takes visitors through the looking glass and into the Fendi Palazzo della Cività Italiana in Rome through trompe l’oeil scenography. Stroll past the photorealistic panels and you’ll find yourself inside a wood-paneled hallway, just like you would at the real place—or even in a back office, complete with harsh fluorescent lighting. Inside the latter, the designers present a wonderfully detailed intarsia blanket depicting a copy machine, stanchions, and an emergency fire hose. Bless founders Ines Kaag and Desiree Heiss have also put their own spin on the Peekaboo bag, surrounding the frame in a sheath that looks like everyday cardboard packaging. Masterfully executed by their makers, each of these pieces offers an antidote to the head-in-the-clouds techno-optimism you’ll all too often find in Miami—and reminds us how much can be done with what’s sitting right there in front of us. —Lila Allen
Sci-Fi Futurism
Futurist architecture is rooted in the embrace of technological and scientific advancements, environmental elements, and pure imagination. Add sustainability to the forward-thinking framework and opened are the gates to a better world. At ICA Miami, solar designer Marjan van Aubel reconceptualized the Lexus Future Zero-emission Catalyst (LF-ZC) electric car in an installation that used OPV sheets to harness solar energy through batteries in the base of the sculpture. Nature’s bounty continued to power ideas at Twenty First Gallery, where artist Marcin Rusak fossilizes flower clippings in an abyss of black resin to create the surface of the Flora coffee table. (The Polish artist comes from a lineage of flower growers, so naturally that’s the foundation of his “unnatural” design practice.)