Kim Simonsson
The 18th edition of Design Miami once again brings together 36 outstanding design gallery booths and 14 “Curios” – small, focused presentations of cutting-edge design. It is a visually inviting, intellectually stimulating experience and busier than ever this year as, it seems, everyone everywhere is now ready to travel.
The fair takes place in Pride Park, opposite the Miami Beach Convention Center, home to the much larger Art Basel Miami Beach art fair which this year is hosting a record 275 art galleries along with assorted, associated artistic presentations including the nightly display of drone performances conceived by the design team Studio Drift.
Design Miami runs from November 30 through December 4, 2022, and this year’s exhibitors were invited to make presentations responding to the idea of how design, understood more broadly as innovation, might lead us as the fair explains, to a “better, more harmonious and more sustainable collective future.”
In response, some of the design dealers have sought inspiration in the present with adventurous commissions by living designers: at Wexler Gallery, Aleksandra Pollner’s Gleaning collection is made of discarded Styrofoam collected during COVID lockdown. Other dealers have looked to the past for guidance: Converso is highlighting custom-made vintage designs from key figures in 1960s Palm Springs Desert Modernism.
