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8 emerging designers you need to see at WantedDesign Manhattan 2023

WantedDesign Manhattan – America’s premier platform for emerging design talent – returns to the Javits Center in New York for 2023 together with its larger partner, the International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF)

New York City this week prepares to host two of the key events in the global design calendar. The International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF) is the commercial goliath, while WantedDesign Manhattan is more about nurturing and experiencing new talent. And this year, 67 emerging designers from 19 countries are showcasing their work at WantedDesign’s Launch Pad 2023.

Events such as Launch Pad – as with the Design Museum’s Ralph Saltzman prize in London – are absolutely essential showcases for emerging designers and can provide career-making opportunities at a time when it’s so difficult to cut through. They are equally important for interior designers and buyers hungry for new ideas.

“This year is particularly interesting as it represents such a diverse group coming from all parts of the world,” say Odile Hainaut and Claire Pijoulat, who founded WantedDesign back in 2011. “It translates into very diverse and original work offering fresh ideas and new design concepts.”

To book their place at Launch Pad 2023, all 67 designers demonstrated serious potential, but here are eight designers that we’re particularly excited to see at WantedDesign Manhattan 2023:

Studio Fou

Noor Light by Studio Fou at WantedDesign Manhattan 2023
Noor Light by Studio Fou at WantedDesign Manhattan 2023

In many ways, Studio Fou are everything you want an emergent design company to be: thrilling, future-focused, brave, dazzling and questioning. Even the product names invite further exploration: Muscle Chair; Spinner; Deep Stretch. Studio Fou describe themselves as “an interdisciplinary and ecologically driven architecture and design studio”, and their furniture as “living sculpture” – and while many of these pieces are still at concept stage, it’s good to see a company setting a high bar and already delivering pieces that are unlike any you’ll have seen elsewhere. We’ll be keeping a close eye on Studio Fou.

Dualismo

Another exciting emerging designer is Sabrina Canals’ Dualismo, based in Chicago. The designer’s Templo de Fuego collection is a liminal, otherworldly series of pieces that look like a manifestation of CGI, but they work brilliantly: they are disturbing yet beautiful; they shouldn’t exist, yet they do. Their sculptural lighting pieces hit similar – if more accessible – notes.

Joey Zeledón

The Coat Check Chair by Joey Zeledón at WantedDesign Manhattan 2023 in Effect Magazine
The Coat Check Chair by Joey Zeledón at WantedDesign Manhattan 2023

This might possibly be our chair of WantedDesign 2023. With a tubular steel frame and hot pink plastic, it’s dressed to kill – but it turns out that this is no ordinary chair. Joey Zeledón describes himself as “a designer who helps objects find their purpose in life”; and this chair – the Coat Check Chair – is actually made of hangers. You can sit on it – or use it to store them. Dig a little deeper, and you’ll find an industrial product designer who has worked with Google and Ford, and has a singular take on design. We can’t wait to see what he does next.

Michał Korchowiec

Light sculpture by Michał Korchowiec at WantedDesign Manhattan 2023 in Effect Magazine
Light sculpture by Michał Korchowiec at WantedDesign Manhattan 2023

Polish designer and artist Michał Korchowiec creates beguiling Space Age-infused light sculptures which he describes as being “all about love.” Made of combinable stages, each light is different. Switched off, they present as quirky, curvaceous objects, appealingly retro; switched on, and they glow with an unexpected palette of candy-like colours, somewhere between a Verner Panton installation and a 1950s atomic explosion.

Lincoln Chen

Klein Lounge Chairs by Lincoln Chen at WantedDesign Manhattan 2023 in Effect Magazine
Klein Lounge Chairs by Lincoln Chen at WantedDesign Manhattan 2023

We are very much liking these lozenge-shaped Klein Lounge Chairs by Californian designer Lincoln Chen. There’s something extremely attractive about the dimensions of the cushions and the functional steel tubing. They are classic, slightly retro, yet very much of the moment; and the Maharam fabrics are well-chosen and work perfectly. Also worth noting is the thoughtful Tellio range – modular furniture designed for small spaces, and easy to adapt around the owner’s lifestyle.

DOLO sculptural furniture by Lincoln Chen at WantedDesign Manhattan 2023 in Effect Magazine
DOLO sculptural furniture by Lincoln Chen at WantedDesign Manhattan 2023

And the DOLO sculptural furniture is marvellous; it’s described as “undefined furniture piece that people can use in any way they want” – which in lesser hands than Chen’s could merely be a word salad, but in this case is an intriguing and attractive object which really does fulfil on the promise: it could be a table base – or a plinth, or a stool – or a piece of sculpture. Chen has deservedly booked his place on the ‘one to watch’ lists.

Elham Nejati

Tehran-based industrial designer Elham Nejati creates beautiful sculptures out of marble and steel; and while great thought and work has clearly gone into each piece, the designer describes her process in modest terms: “I embrace nature as it is – I put no effort in changing it or to demonstrate it without any imperfections and flaws, I only mix it with my own thoughts. I hit rocks, and break them, and I allow them to show themselves with all their flaws and defects. Flaws are beautiful and accepting them is accepting what is true.”

Bumki Song

Incense tray by Bumki Song at WantedDesign Manhattan 2023 in Effect Magazine
Incense tray by Bumki Song at WantedDesign Manhattan 2023

Bumki Song is a South Korean industrial designer – currently based in New York – with the perspective that comes from working with major brands including Lexus and Miller. Interestingly, though, his work for those brands is uncompromisingly his, bearing his hallmark minimalist taste and use of classic materials such as brass, copper, rosewood and aluminium. The incense tray, above, demonstrates the thoughtfulness of his work, focusing as it does on the patterns the discarded ash make rather than the simple function of holding the stick. We forecast exciting times ahead for this talented and savvy designer.

 Liam McClure

Nickel-plated steel table lamp by Liam McClure  at WantedDesign Manhattan 2023 in Effect Magazine
Nickel-plated steel table lamp by Liam McClure at WantedDesign Manhattan 2023

Canadian designer and fabricator Liam McClure creates lamps, textiles and furniture, which he describes as centring on “material exploration… and the development of rule-bound, chance-based processes that seek to expand the communicative potential of the materials.” His nickel-plated steel table lamps (pictured) are things of ethereal beauty, born out of experimentation with paper-folding techniques.

WantedDesign Manhattan + ICFF will be at the Javits Center, New York on May 21–-23 2023. The Emerging Designers Showcase takes place on Sunday, May 21 at 4pm–5.15pm, ICFF+WDM Talks Stage Booth 1371

Read more: Design | Events | Makers + Artists |  Interior Designers I Interiors | New York