The Trendbook compact

Photo: Koelnmesse

The new “Interior Trends 2011” are called “Emotional Austerity”, “Surprising Empathy”, “Re-Balancing” and “Transforming Perspectives”. The Trendboard sees the financial and economic crisis that was still very much the focus of last year’s debate as the catalyst for a dynamic development towards a sustainable product strategy. Whilst the guardians of good design style are slowly groping their way ahead by combining old forms with high-tech and pursuing formal severity with both passion and consummate ease, more progressive spirits are racing far ahead into a future that is better: lighter, more intuitive, full of new sensory perceptions and surprising form solutions. The snug comfort zone, which is actually meant to be a bastion of harmony, seems like an experimental counter-plan to a design culture geared towards prestige and quick consumption; it is full of self-built objects, a world where plain, functional normality is becoming a cult. And the otherwise so funky scene that sees design as a trend event is soft-pedalling and trying to convey its newly gained insights with the aid of archaic forms, simple solutions and it-products taken to cliché-like extremes ...

Topics:

• Title: Compact: The imm cologne Trend Book 2011
• Introduction
• The Trends: Emotional Austerity, Surprising Empathy, Re-Balancing, Transforming Perspectives