We will be showing three of our products in Milan (if in town check out our favourite Luigi Moretti building on Corso Italia) this year, in production by the new British company Decode: the Ribbon coatstand (featured by Elle Decoration in last year’s “What is Good Design?” display at Selfridges), the Slicebox table and a new barstool called Tripod.  The Decode stand is at the Design+ exhibition at via Tortona 20 alongside 4 other UK brands: Anglepoise, Innermost, Modus and Timorous Beasties.  Decode is clearly in good company for its debut exhibition. 

Other works on their stand will be by Jethro Macey, Viable London and Jonathan Prestwich, as well as our own collection of SETCAST bone china tableware..  The VWBS crew will be in Milan, of course, for the whole week and especially on Wednesday night when Icon magazine are sponsoring a party at Design+.

Still abroad, VWBS recently designed a cloud-like installation for the opening of the new Space design store in Kuala Lumpur, Benson’s home town, back in February.

The sculptural canopy was created from a simple everyday object, the polystyrene cup, and plays with ideas that are our current interests, such as modularity, light and materiality.  Fortunately, the weather was good.

Back in the UK, we are working on a new house in one of south London’s hidden squares.  Our aim is to convert a small semi - derelict garage into a 120 square metre house on three levels with a roof terrace.    

We have kept the circulation on the perimeter of the building so that each floor has a different layout and aspect.  The planning application is off to the council so we hope we can leave our mark on this 19th century conservation area. 

Voon Wong has been back in Singapore recently as the lead judge for the Singapore Furniture Industry Council annual Furniture Design Award to promote young designers and students.  The winner of the Young Designer’s category from 530 entries (these judges have to work hard for their lunches) was by another, but younger, architect and designer, Lui Honfay.  His CD shelf Quadra, is a regular grid that is distorted in the centre to allow for CD cases of different sizes. It’s a very good idea. Nendo’s Ribbon stool won in the open category.  On his return, Voon was on the first commercial A380 flight into London, which indirectly leads into our next story.

A number of our Slicebox tables have been installed by Coexistence into the VIP lounges in a smart walnut veneer at the new Terminal 5 building at Heathrow Airport.  Our problem is that these particular VIP lounges are not really intended for the likes of us and our current group of friends, so we won’t get to see them.  Please contact us if you do get the privilege to use them – you’re the kind of person we want to know.

We are now very fortunate to be working with the cool company Merchant 4 based in the Tribeca area of New York to sell our Setcast series of bone china tableware products throughout the US.  It’s a bit of a shame about the current state of the exchange rate, unless you are on a shopping trip over there.
Their contact email is info@merchant4.com

Architecture Foundation Summer nights

We have been invited to be a speaker during the 8th series of AF talks for emerging architecture practices on August 20th.

DATUM : KL 2008

Benson and Voon are also conducting seminars at this interior design event in Kuala Lumpur in early July, which is one of the most important Malaysian design events of the year.

Grand Designs Live :

VWBS will also be participating on Decode’s stand at the 9 day exhibition at Excel between 03 – 11 May.   See us at stand L80 in the Interiors zone next to the Icon stand.