Fiera Magazine – Issue 4

Fiera Magazine Issue 4 is available now on loremnotipsum.com. Issue 4 covers IMM Cologne, Maison & Objet in Paris, Reykjaviík’s Design March and Milan Design Week. As in previous issues, it opens with Kaleidoscope, a colourful collection of everything editor Katie Treggiden saw at the four fairs covered. Some of that work is then explored in more details through interviews, features on the making of products and in-depth articles about the exhibitions showcasing the work, and finally, Opinion offers context, analysis and insight to help make sense of it all.

Fiera magazine is the independent biannual publication discovering new talent at the world’s design fairs. New designers still believe in the impossible – a crucial trait if design is going to help some of the problems, large and small, that we face today. Fiera magazine exists to make sure their ideas reach a wider audience. Every year cities all over the world showcase their best new furniture and product design at dedicated fairs, design weeks and festivals. Whether you’re a designer, a buyer, a journalist or a student, you’d love to be at every fair, meeting new designers and unearthing new trends for yourself. Fiera magazine will make you feel as if you were.

Content: Fiera Magazine – Issue 4

• As always the magazine opens with Kaleidoscope, everything editor Katie Treggiden saw across the four fairs, arranged in colour order. Every object is allocated a Kaleidoscope code which appears wherever that objects appears throughout the magazine, and finally links to a designer directory at the back of the magazine.
• Next we explore some of those objects in more detail: How It’s Made tracks the design and making process behind a project called Can City – Studio Swine’s attempt to extend the livelihood’s of San Paolo’s ‘catadores’ – those who collect waste for recycling, by creating a product they can make from the aluminium cans they collect and sell back to the cafes they collect them from.
• Another Studio Swine project is explored in Hair Highway. China is the largest importer of tropical hardwood and the biggest exporter of human hair. Following the “hair highway” the modern equivalent of the silk route, Studio Swine propose human hair as the sustainable material of the future.
• Meanwhile photographer Mark Cocksedge goes on the road with the press trip to Reykjaviík’s Design March. The resulting photo essay includes rarely seen behind-the-scenes photos of journalists at work.
• In the Opinion section, we explore some of the themes raised across the four shows in more depth. In this issue, curator of W: Women in Italian Design at Triennale Design Museum during Milan Design Week, Silvana Annicchiarico, seeks to redress the gender balance in Italian design history. “The stories of design so far told revolve almost entirely around a big black hole: the removal of the feminine,” she says. “The concealment of the presence and contribution of women. The subjugation of women to a persistent and stubborn masculine hegemony. As if women had never been there. As if they had stayed at home.”
• And Daniel Nelson examines the impact on the design industry of the repeal of section 52 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, extending the period in which the sale of replica furniture is prohibited from 25 years after it was first produced to 70 years after the designer’s death. The sale of replica furniture will become illegal as of 28 July 2016 – is this a triumph for the design industry, a tragedy for the everyday consumer, a creative opportunity, or all of the above?