6 Emerging Design Trends AD Editors Spotted at Design Miami 2023

Earlier this month, the art and design world descended on Miami for a whirlwind six days of design reveals and pop-up installations at Art Basel and Design Miami 2023—and beyond. Scanning the city-wide festival is like taking a pulse of the creative industry, uncovering the forms, concepts, and materials inspiring artists and makers right now. AD editors’ report is in: Here are the six emerging design trends they spotted (and can’t stop thinking about) at Miami Art and Design Week.

Neo Art Nouveau

At the turn of the century, Art Nouveau style embraced the great outdoors for inspiration, twisting natural motifs like flora and foliage by using new technologies in the realms of metalwork, glass, and more. Now, over a century later, as we find ourselves at another moment of near-constant technological innovation, this style holds new resonance—and the pieces on display last week in Miami were proof. At Nina Johnson’s Miami gallery, the works in Katie Stout’s stunning solo show channeled the eerie, otherworldliness of early-20th-century decorative arts. In the exhibition, supersized vessels shimmer with bronze, glass, and colorfully glazed ceramic flora; a branch-like bronze chandelier sprouts glass blooms and frilly, tulip-shaped shades.

At Design Miami 2023, the Future Perfect showed Autumn-Casey’s technicolor riffs on Tiffany lamps, in which swatches of epoxy-coated fabric are hot-glued together, giving the effect of stained glass. Even Wendy Maruyama’s hand-painted quilt chest, on display in the Superhouse booth, feels like a contemporary take (and a reclaiming of the narrative) on the Japanese motifs that laid the groundwork for Art Nouveau. Meanwhile, over at Bernard Goldberg Fine Arts, the stellar originals still shine—like a bespoke glass mosaic fireplace by Tiffany Studios. —Hannah Martin

New Blandscape

For the last several years, the aesthetics around Miami Art Week have often revolved around the possibilities of technology—NFTs of glowing digital renderings, psychedelic algorithmic design, and bizarroland 3D-printed forms. While there’s still plenty of that to go around, some designers are balancing the scales by calling attention to a more everyday side of visual culture. Take Gyuhan Lee, who uses McDonald’s paper packaging as the raw material for a collection of sleek, showroom-worthy lanterns at Side Gallery’s Design Miami booth. A row over, Harry Nuriev (always one to check the highfalutin vibe of the collectible design show—see his trashbag sofa from 2022) puts a spotlight on one of the most recognizable American furniture pieces of all time. No, it isn’t a Knoll sofa: It’s a sectional La-Z-Boy-style recliner, upholstered in a tapestry like one you’d find at granny’s house.

Meanwhile, in the Fendi Casa booth, Bless takes visitors through the looking glass and into the Fendi Palazzo della Cività Italiana in Rome through trompe l’oeil scenography. Stroll past the photorealistic panels and you’ll find yourself inside a wood-paneled hallway, just like you would at the real place—or even in a back office, complete with harsh fluorescent lighting. Inside the latter, the designers present a wonderfully detailed intarsia blanket depicting a copy machine, stanchions, and an emergency fire hose. Bless founders Ines Kaag and Desiree Heiss have also put their own spin on the Peekaboo bag, surrounding the frame in a sheath that looks like everyday cardboard packaging. Masterfully executed by their makers, each of these pieces offers an antidote to the head-in-the-clouds techno-optimism you’ll all too often find in Miami—and reminds us how much can be done with what’s sitting right there in front of us. —Lila Allen

Sci-Fi Futurism

Futurist architecture is rooted in the embrace of technological and scientific advancements, environmental elements, and pure imagination. Add sustainability to the forward-thinking framework and opened are the gates to a better world. At ICA Miami, solar designer Marjan van Aubel reconceptualized the Lexus Future Zero-emission Catalyst (LF-ZC) electric car in an installation that used OPV sheets to harness solar energy through batteries in the base of the sculpture. Nature's bounty continued to power ideas at Twenty First Gallery, where artist Marcin Rusak fossilizes flower clippings in an abyss of black resin to create the surface of the Flora coffee table. (The Polish artist comes from a lineage of flower growers, so naturally that’s the foundation of his “unnatural” design practice.)

At Lisson Gallery, stainless-steel rods and laboratory lattice connectors restrained a World War II–era American silk parachute and formed calf leather. The evocative work by artist Elaine Cameron-Weir beckons an evolution of thought that is both erotic and elegant in the face of invisible structures and social contracts that need to be dismantled. And at Alcova, Objects for Objects gives renewed meaning to the term “prized possession” with the Trophy Room. Turning the metallic-wrapped awards into the etagere infastructure, the installation takes home the award for most original reuse, giving fairgoers reason to dust off their basement-stashed honors. —Sydney Gore

Gettin’ Twiggy With It

Designers in the 305 branched out in more ways than one this year. While some makers highlighted the natural grain and knots of wood—like Vince Skelly, whose idiosyncratic seats popped up in a jungle-like enclave with Birkenstock—others took a lighter-touch approach. At Design Miami, Sarah Myerscough Gallery out of London showed an array of arresting works with wood as the primary material, but one of them embraced the raw, wild side of it head and shoulders above the others. Full Grown, a studio represented by Myerscough and led by Gavin and Alice Munro, tames trees—what they call “carbon-sink 3D printers”—into the shapes of arm chairs. (You can even book a tour of their “chair orchard.”) This year, Myerscough showcased an exceptional willow design, The Goodall Chair, which appears to reel back on tippytoe, like a frightened pet. Elsewhere, Maximilian Marchesani makes his return to Alcova with a twiggy spray of a chandelier, which sets LED rods and colorful feathers into a tree bough. —LA

Bubble Economy

For more than a decade, a prototype of Buckminster Fuller’s Fly’s Eye Dome, designed as an “autonomous dwelling machine” in 1965, has served as an iconic selfie backdrop in the Miami Design District—its bulbous, futuristic form as eye catching as ever. But during Miami Art and Design Week, similarly cellular-looking shapes—many of which use technology to imitate natural form production—seemed to sprout from the ground all over the city. Near Fuller’s dome in the Miami Design District (and also just outside the Design Miami tent) Lara Bohinc’s pastel-painted cork forms, part of her Utopia series, bubbled up to provide seating and more for tired design hunters.

Over at Alcova, Forma Rosa Studio’s Caracoles stool at the “Uncharted” installation was digitally “grown” to imitate the fractal growth of botryoidal formations in nature. And at the Design Miami fair, similar silhouettes showed up at R & Company, where Jeff Zimmerman debuted Bubble Cluster with Spikes, and Southern Guild, where Zizipho Poswa’s sculpture Mam'uNoSekshin is topped with gleaming bronze orbs. —HM

Korean minimalism

Japandi may be having a moment, but Korean minimalism got its time in the spotlight at Art Basel and Design Miami 2023. Pillared by practicality, simplicity, and natural materials, the style took on fresh, contemporary interpretations at the fair. One case in point? Artist Gyuhan Lee’s paper bag lamps made from McDonalds packaging, which delighted spectators as they flocked over to Side Gallery’s booth. In addition to contributing to waste prevention through this creative process of upcycling, the young designer purposely obscures the logo as a symbol of mass consumerism. Looks like Noguchi might have some healthy competition. —SG