Every year, a group of design-magazine editors chooses the ICFF’s best-of-show products in 16 categories. On the awards committee this year: Anniina Koivu of Abitare, Rita Catinella Orrell of Architectural Record, Catherine Osborne of Azure, Stefano Casciani of Domus, Sam Grawe of Dwell, Karen D. Singh of Interior Design, Gilda Bojardi of Interni, Chantal Hamaide of Intramuros, Susan S. Szenasy of Metropolis, and Arlene Hirst of Metropolitan Home.

And the winners are… Read more…

Among the usual more established attendees at ICFF, there are always a few refreshing and hopeful first-timers. This year Jenny Lemieux and Leo Corrales, of the Canadian-based Hero Design Lab, stood out for their resource-saving outdoor collection. Called Hero 365, the line consists of a clothes-drying rack and a rainwater collector made from powder-coated, recyclable metal with a cheery ’50s pattern. Lemieux and Corrales set out to refine two everyday objects that were badly in need of a designer’s touch. “The rain collectors you see are all those plastic, orange things that look horrible in a home environment,” Lemieux says. “And I’ve always had to buy a million drying racks because they fall apart. So we wanted to make something that would basically last forever.”

Her sturdy drying rack features swing-out bars as well as a pull-up drying table for those items that need to lie flat. (The designers are still working out some kinks but hope to have it production within the next couple of months.) The rainwater collector ($275) holds 45 gallons of water in a collapsible plastic bladder and has a place at the bottom for hanging your watering can. Harvested rain can then be used for washing your car or tending your garden—without drawing on your local water supply. Both pieces will arrive flat-packed from Canada.

Subtle magic: Naoto Fukasawa’s Hiroshima dining chair

There is no such thing as a perfect chair (or a perfect anything, for that matter) but Naoto Fukasawa’s Hiroshima dining chair is, if not perfect, then perfectly sublime. The chair is part of a larger collection the great designer did in 2008 for Maruni, the Japanese furniture company.

Every detail here is poetically resolved: the curve of the arms, the graceful tilt of the back rest where body meets chair, the subtly tapered legs, the ever-so-slight curve of the seat, even the small but perceptual space between the seat and front legs, which gives the chair a kind of visual lift. It feels grounded and graceful and light, simultaneously.

On Sunday morning at ICFF, as Asian music wafted through the ancillary hall where a terrific exhibition honoring Japanese design was installed, a small group of us stood around this humble beech chair, staring at it, wondering how something so simple and quiet could be this…powerful. And yet powerful feels like the wrong (Western) word here. “It doesn’t scream at you,” said Walter Hawkins, admiring the chair, “but it does speak to you.”

After two full days at the ICFF, some people—I’ve heard—have to fight off an uncontrollable urge to head home and take a nap. Still, our party photographer managed to spend a few minutes cruising the Meatpacking District’s Design 09 cocktail-crawl finale last night.

The Design Within Reach showroom on 14th Street was hosting an exhibition of architectural models by the Swedish architecture and design firm Claesson Koivisto Rune.

The models were illuminated by CKR’s task lamp for Wästberg, which was inspired by a dentist’s light.

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Council has been one of my favorite new American manufacturers. They work with designers like Arik Levy, Khodi Fez, Monica Förster, and Nendo. This year, the San Francisco–based design duo Mike and Maaike debuted their Divis table (named after the nickname of a street in San Francisco that the designers take when they need to go to Council’s offices). They designers challenged themselves to see how natural processes could inspire the industrial manufacturing process. According to Mike Simonian, their design draws upon the idea that wood is a naturally anisotropic material—so the table highlights the random splitting and cracking found in wood. Here, the rectangular top is split by the supporting legs of the table, which creates a surface that appears to be cracking. It’s available in natural poplar or a slightly more expensive black-stained-ash version.

I’m making the rounds of booths specializing in bath fixtures and furniture, and the first thing I notice is … GOLD. Usually we’re awash (pun intended) in chrome, but several lines are introducing brassy finishes this year.

Sink and fixture from Kohler

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This morning I had a chance to check out the fourteen companies exhibiting at this year’s Spanish pavilion. Here are a few of my favorite products.

MO is showing some new pieces by PearsonLloyd. The Delta desk (above) comes in three colors, and it’s available with or without drawers. Read more…

Pierre Paulin is having his moment. Although he left Paris to retire to a secluded life in the French countryside, he now seems, at age 82, busier than ever. I first met him and his wife in January at Ligne Roset’s exhibition in Paris, where he was showing a collection of furniture. He’s already collaborated with Ligne Roset and Artifort; now you can add Magis to the list. His Flower chair for Magis makes its North American debut at ICFF. The injection-molded piece, available in North America through Leif Petersen, is made of transparent polycarbonate (available in clear, smoke grey, or brown) with colored seat cushions. While plastic chairs sometimes feel a bit flimsy, this one weighs more than 20 pounds, so it has some heft. It wasn’t easy to get right: Magis’s founder, Eugenio Perazza, had to do at least ten prototypes, and he drove to Paulin’s house in the country more than twenty times (for an estimated total of about 25,000 miles on the road). Magis is also showing the new Grcic 360 stool, which I can only describe as … fugly.

There’s lots to take in at the Italian Trade Commission’s New York Ceramic Tile Center. The sprawling booth includes samples from a number of designers. Here are a few favorites.

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At the Metropolis booth this year, we’re asking fairgoers to write their “blue sky hopes” on a piece of paper that can then be cut and folded to create a pinwheel—a nod to the 2009 Next Generation winners, who propose retrofitting electrical pylons with wind turbines. We’re posting the pinwheels on the booth wall and, at the end of the fair, we’ll give away a magazine subscription to one lucky participant. Read more…