Return of the Make: Designs of the Year 2014

The future of design is analogue! In part, at least. Kate Moss’s favourite app may have taken centre-stage at the Designs of the Year 2014 exhibition, but the annual Shad Thames showcase also hosts a range of new products that are shifting innovation out of nano-spaces and back into the tangible, tactile world. 

Classic materials and simple engineering flourish in Barber & Osgerby’s new Bodleian Library chair : a three-legged oak piece that will grace the University of Oxford’s newly-restored Weston Library from October 2014. It’s held together by a vertical timber ‘backbone’, intended from behind to echo the look of the spine of a book on a shelf, while a canted edge where the legs meet the floor (borrowed from their revolutionary Tip Ton chair design) physically tips you closer to what you’re looking at without your having to change position. Luxuriant.

Benjamin Hubert’s Ripple table is similarly stolid. It’s made of a revolutionary new corrugated plywood which makes this 2.5m article weigh only slightly more than a pair of small cats (9kg). This makes it the first heavy duty dining table designed to actually feel good to lift. And why not? In a celebration of the tactile qualities of materials, why should the designers have all the fun?

Lauren Davies’s Alchemist’s Dressing Table pushes this thought into new realms. One of the star pieces of this year’s exhibition, it’s a large-scale cosmetics chemistry set that conspires to make a maker out of you, using a range of distillers and plates for mixing rose and witch hazel floral waters, combining essential oils, and burning your own kohl. The tools themselves are made of maple, cork and borosilicate glass, such that everything about this piece begs to be touched, smelled and sensed. 

The aim is to re-engage consumers with the experience of raw materials in a world which increasingly sees this experience outsourced. As Davies puts it, without a physical relationship to the things we use, wear and inhabit, we’re missing out: ‘I think we should enjoy a process, rather than seeing it as something we have to get done really quickly. And there’s lots of evidence that smells, for example, can affect mood. There’s something amazing about being able to keep a scent after a flower has died. If I were to try and describe magic, I think that’s as close as it gets.’

Designs of the Year 2014 runs until 25 August 2014 at the Design Museum, Shad Thames. Read our full preview here .

Want to see more? Members enjoy full access to all Culture Whisper's arts previews, exclusives and features. Click here to take our cultural quiz and get a month's free trial