With three curated digital stages and the materials.cologne conference, interzum @home organiser focuses on the key developments in furniture and interiors.
What are the hot topics in the furniture industry? What surprising innovations do the supplier companies have in store? And above all, what lies ahead – what business deals, what needs and what environment should the industry anticipate in the future? The digital event programme at the virtual interzum @home seeks to answer these questions on its various stages.
Experience trends digitally and live – that’s what the on-demand content in the 30 specialist talks and workshops from eleven countries is all about. Top international speakers like Javier G. Fernandez (Singapore University of Design & Engineering), Steffen Salinger (CEO of Artemide) and Professor Harald Kloft (Institute for Structural Design, TU Braunschweig) will provide inspiration across disciplines.
After all, at interzum @home, it is not business alone that takes absolute priority – the “food for thought” offered to stimulate the future entrepreneurial success of the industry is also important when it comes to the success of the digital edition of interzum.
Katrin de Louw (Trendfilter) will curate the interzum Trend Stage – the top platform for all design-relevant trends affecting furniture design and interiors in the next five years. Social trends have just as important a role to play as new technical possibilities when it comes to driving market developments.
In addition, this virtual stage will showcase everything relating to materials, surface and colour trends, environmentally friendly and sustainable products as well as concepts for the interior design of tomorrow and beyond.
On the Green Smart Materials digital stage, the future-oriented agency Haute Innovation, founded by Dr Sascha Peters, will present sustainable materials innovations and smart technologies with great potential for the industry – such as textured paints for wooden surfaces, 3D-printed wooden windows or street furniture that can remove fine particulates from the air. Many aspects of the transformation of the consumerist culture into a circular economy will also be examined. A total of 32 lectures are planned, and 30 speakers from ten countries – including Finland, Israel, Mexico, Singapore and Vietnam – will provide the latest insights.
With growing public awareness of sustainability, the circular economy and carbon footprints, the reuse and recycling of worn-out mattresses is also gaining in importance and is therefore the focus of the “Mattress Recycling” stage curated by publishers Ferdinand Holzmann Verlag. The sobering fact is that around 35 million mattresses are currently disposed of every year in Europe alone, whether sent to landfill or incinerated. That is why the network centred on the Möbelfertigung trade journal for the furniture production sector is bringing the mattress industry’s big names to the digital stage – including Auping, Agro International, BASF and Mattes Ammann. The stage will also be supported by a host of international industry associations, such as the German Mattress Association and the US-based International Sleep Products Association (ISPA). All audience members can expect an exciting mix of lectures and panel discussions.
The primary focus of the ‘materials-cologne’ platform and conference for design and innovation will be on materials and sustainability. In cooperation with interzum @home, the event’s founder Martin Beeh aims to use specialist lectures by international experts on materials-related topics and several so-called master classes to reach out to an audience of, above all, designers, architects, interior architects and decision makers from innovative companies. “To mark the interzum supplier fair’s debut as a purely digital trade fair format, we will broadcast a brief daily summary of the highlights of the lectures and master classes online at materials.cologne.TV,” says materials scientist and designer Beeh, describing a new, additional feature of the conference.
An overview of the event programme is available online here.
