The Latest Review: Interzum 2013

As many of you know, Interzum is a biennial show held in Cologne Germany. This year it hosted 53,000 visitors from 148 countries with the highest proportion of international visitors to the show ever at 7%. There were 1,512 suppliers from 62 countries on show.

It’s a very different show to Eurocucina – the well known show which is part of iSalone held in Milan Italy – where the emphasis is on beauty and design in terms of the overall project. The emphasis here is definitely on the individual products and surfaces with the idea of how to use them left firmly in the court of the designers. Feedback from the KBDi tour group included a range of "wow", "fantastic" and "enlightening" as well as a healthy dose of "my feet hurt" and "my brain is full!"

Trend spotting – there were some stunning new surfaces such as:

1. An acrylic glass that won a "Best of the Best" for Intelligent Material & Design at the Interzum design awards 2013, with many stunning and creative designs in the range.

2. Fenex NTM, a smart material made from resin with features of low light reflectivity, making its surface extremely matt and fingerprint-resistant, yet soft to the touch.

3. Athlon, a compact high pressure laminate with a strong double-sided decorative surface designed to meet the most demanding specifications for interior applications. It’s a robust, stable and durable product suitable for contact with food. It’s also easy to clean thanks to the low porosity of its surface, which avoids dirt accumulation (image unavailable).

There are plenty of handle manufacturers and almost every stand had a coloured version – many circular in shape. It’s really interesting to see this consistency across many brands and there are some gorgeous examples of a range of colours being used in this way. Many featured low light reflective surfaces which were extremely matt and fingerprint-resistant (image unavailable).

LED lighting was everywhere with a depth of maturity and application not seen before. LUX Smart Glass was one example. Lux is a light-technical fabric which interacts with LEDs. When the high-tech material is backlit by LED light, fascinating three-dimensional luminous structures are formed.

And not to out done the hardware manufacturers were showing off many new products as well such as Legrabox from BLUM a new box system with a sleek and straight-cut design. The innovation comes in two lines: Legrabox pure with metal sides to produce a uniform look and Legrabox free with large design elements of various materials.

And from Hafele Finetta Spinfront, a pivot-system for sliding doors which utilises two leaf-doors that completely hide the sliding/pivot doors from sight. This provides free access to the entire interior of a cabinet or cabinet front and the space in front up to 2800mm wide with just two fittings.

The KBDi runs a tour to Europe each year providing designers the opportunity to see the best on offer and to reenergise their creativity. The last tour was in April 2014 to iSalone Milan which included Eurocucina.

 

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KBDi
Website kbdi.org.au
Phone 1300 253 223

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