Deliberately not geared to folks who occupy spacious family homes with sprawling back yards, DV, Vancouver's recent Interior Design & Urban Living Expo at the Vancouver Convention & Exhibition Centre, was aimed squarely at space-squeezed city dwellers. Even sofas that seemed sized only for condos whose ads coyly price them “in the 700,000s and up” were invariably sectionals that you could break up and position at will. What did come across consistently at this mega-exhibit was that, hey, even those of us who live in the heart of the concrete city want reminders around us of the nature we escape to on weekends.
A consistent, if unspoken, theme at the expo was the intuitive relationship between local artisans and the wood they work with. Andres Schneiter of MapleArt , for instance, likes to create furniture made with wood from a single tree. “It's a holistic approach to woodwork,” he said at the DV show, indicating pieces like a dramatic buffet and a bone-simple bench whose sinuous lines update art-nouveau curves. Other examples at the convention centre ranged from Rudy Zator's sculptural approach (604-732-3921) to Vûrv Design's modern linear style to Paul Tellier's contemporary spin on Charles Rennie Mackintosh .
Sustainability was another constant thread, with second- and third-year Emily Carr Institute students displaying their inventive projects on columns—and an entire floor—that were contrived from vertical sections of discarded cardboard cartons. It wouldn't last longer than the mayfly-brief life of the three-day show, after which the twice-used materials were destined for recycling, said student James Lee, who had created a prototype for a room divider made from layers of curved cork that resembled a scale model of a long hilly ridge. “It doesn't really fall into any category of furniture,” he said. (At about 30 centimetres high, it was low enough to sit on.) “The intent is to divide space without visually blocking it.” Lee intends the modular design for large public areas, “but it would [also] be great for a loft.”
A different take on sustainability was on display at the booth for the Carriage House (505 Railway Street, which recycles designer furniture, both samples and consigned, at up to 70 percent off the original retail price. “Anything that's good quality,” said proprietor Cinde Stevens, explaining that while most midcentury modern is already out there, she's currently getting a lot of '70s furniture in. If you have Shaughnessy tastes on an East Side budget, this is your place. Plonk a couple of crystal decanters on the sideboard, settle back in a Napoleon-worthy leather campaign chair, and admire your huge Murano-glass pedestal vase and matched pair of gilded five-branch candelabra. (All are in Stevens's current stock.) Bare boards are sooooo Point Grey, so don't forget floor coverings.
Mohammed Eill specializes in nothing but at his eponymous store (321 Water Street). For showtime, he had brought along some of his favourites, among them a glowing crimson diamond-design nomadic piece from Turkmenistan, an Afghan rug in woven and knotted camel wool in shades of honey and caramel, a staggeringly intricate piece from Turkey with 500 knots to the square inch, and a glorious Persian woven rug in spice colours. Be still, my fluttering Visa card. All of these are in mid–four figures or a little below, with that silken beauty coming in at 12 thousand. More accessible for most budgets was the Austin Powers–ish orange shagadelic rug ($600), from EQ3 (1039 Hamilton Street, and opening in May at 2301 Granville Street. Other notable soft furnishings were local company Koo Koo's Intercity towels, embellished with linen squares embroidered in black with what look like aerial views of highway cloverleafs and flyovers.
Grounded by multiple discoid legs and with circles cut out of their surfaces, the whimsically shaped and painted tables of Alex Nickbe combined contemporary style, humour, and references to the natural world. Swerving away from his signature wonkily angled furniture, Judson Beaumont of Straight Line Designsis going through his canine period with an Airstream-trailer doghouse and, literally making a visual splash, a Bad Table that rests on three legs and cocks the fourth in the air. Not meant to be taken home were the oversize white-nylon balloons, the largest more than eight metres in diameter, that broke up the DV display space. All were the work of SpaceAgency , a spinoff from an installation that last summer transformed a Gastown alley, said Oliver Neumann, assistant professor at UBC's school of architecture.
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