DESIGN EXCELLENCE FROM COAST TO COAST
Homegrown and home-inspired designers and artists are putting Canadian talent on the map. Check out some of our country’s domestic creativity and ingenuity — a sampling of the good things to see and people to meet next weekend at IDS2016.
Vancouver Mario Sabljak, mariosabljak.com
Musing over the design of a sustainable chair that could live indoors or out, Mario Sabljak wanted to do something different.
“Everyone is using reclaimed wood. I did some research and started looking at aluminum composite, which basically all modern buildings are clad in,” he says.
The result is Oval Chair, made with a low-density polyethylene core sandwiched between aluminum sheets braced with stainless steel tubing and finished with a cushion made of recycled tires.
“The first thing people ask when they see it is if something metal can be sustainable. They don’t realize that everything can be taken apart and recycled after the life span of the chair has ended.”
Winnipeg Kenneth Lavallee, knnth.com
Kenneth Lavallee’s focus on painting, drawing and silkscreening shifted when Thom Fougere — creative director for EQ3 — asked him to design a quilt for Assembly, a Canadian-centric line that the Winnipegbased design retailer and manufacturer was planning.
“I am Métis, so the issue of missing and murdered aboriginal women is a big one,” says Lavallee.
It’s especially important to his mother, who worked at an aboriginal organization. “She filled our house with aboriginal art (including) a beautiful star blanket I looked at every day of my life.”
Lavallee’s design is more reinvention than replication, but his mother is clearly a fan.
“She keeps asking, ‘when can I buy one’?”
Toronto Yusuf Mannan, yusufin@gmail.com
Yusuf Mannan came to Canada three years ago from India, where he’d been making furniture for some 15 years.
After establishing a niche for himself in custom kitchens and cabinetry, he’s going out on a design limb to launch a modular, multi-purpose storage system.
A believer in fusing form and function, Mannan combines an old-world understanding of materials and construction with modern technology.
He believes the Canadian market is eager to embrace well-designed pieces that will last.
“People here appreciate things that are well-built. So I’m really keen for them to see this work, and hopefully to find someone who could make it in higher volume, which will mean a lower price point,” says Mannan.
Ottawa Ian Murchison and Rohan Thakar, thefederal.co
Ian Murchison and Rohan Thakar — partners in Ottawa design house The Federal Inc. — have appeared regularly as exhibitors at IDS.
This year they’ll be showing the prototypical Eponi, a small rocking horse made out of copper cabling.
“When people see a material on a product they don’t expect to see, it changes the way they perceive it,” says Murchison.
As for the returning IDS exhibit Studio North & Prototype, Murchison calls it “a great playground for designers; an affordable way to explore ideas and get them in front of people.”
Montreal Zoë Mowat, zoemowat.com
Zoë Mowat was delighted when Winnipeg-based retailer EQ3 asked her to contribute to a line of Canadian design products.
Even more thrilling, she says, was realizing that they wanted “a piece that was very much in my own style, my own vocabulary” — a language defined by strong sculptural forms, geometric shapes and bold colour.
“I love mixing that all together to find a nice balance, and to create something that’s easy to live with,” she says.
The opportunity to get her design in front of a wider audience is another bonus.
“Not many companies are supporting local independent Canadian design. I’m used to self-production, so this is amazing for me.”
Halifax Omar Gandhi, omargandhi.com
A rising star in Canadian architecture, Omar Gandhi has secured — among other recognition — a spot in 2014 on Wallpaper Magazine’s list of top 20 young architects in the world. He’s based in Halifax and says the maritime landscape has cemented his ideas on the necessity of connecting natural and built environments.
“I think people sometimes don’t realize how much design affects their lives. But then they start talking about the cottage they visited as a kid or the house they were a teenager in. Immediately, you start to see those connections and the way in which people interact with spaces, and how they remember them.”