Professional development, discussion, inspiration, international trends – they are the source of successful, creative, modern solutions in the contract market. At Heimtextil 2020, interior designers, architects and experts from the hotel trade will be able to draw upon an even greater, more extensive range of offerings for their projects.
Every year, over 3000 exhibitors showcase their products and materials for the textile furnishings market at Heimtextil in Frankfurt. It is the world’s largest trade fair for home and contract textiles. Some 370 of those exhibitors specifically target with their products for the contract sector, interior designers, architects and experts from the hospitality sector, who will find precisely the kind of solutions they are looking for in the cornucopia of textiles at Heimtextil.
The range of products in this area will be accompanied by a multi-faceted programme of specialist lectures, given by internationally renowned experts, themed tours of the show, a materials library and an exclusive exhibition format. Heimtextil will be including both the exhibits and the programme of events under the heading ‘Interior.Architecture.Hospitality by Heimtextil’. In 2020, it will be even more extensive and thus will, once again, become a hot spot for the contract textiles market.
For Heimtextil 2020, the ‘Interior.Architecture.Hospitality LECTURES’ will have, as their overarching theme, ‘Diversity’. In a series of top-flight lectures, internationally distinguished architects, interior designers and experts in the hotel business will present some of their projects and discuss issues relating to the current building scene and to interior architecture and design. The lectures will be selected and organised by well-known partners of the show, ‘AIT-Dialog’ and ‘hotelforum’.
The theme of the lectures for 2020 – DIVERSITY – picks up on the current social and cultural challenges faced by the industry. Diversity pervades all areas of our lives and is to be seen particularly in architecture and urban design. The debate about affordable housing, new concepts for domestic dwellings and changes to the fabric of urban society is more urgent than ever before. Libraries become meeting places and hotels constantly reinvent themselves as places for people to live long-term. And the younger generation of architects, too, are struggling with new ideas and unconventional approaches to a changing architectural scene. In the context of ‘Interior.Architecture.Hospitality by Heimtextil’, the individual event formats will deal with diversity at different levels within the fields of architecture, interior design and urban building. A rich diversity of materials, modern technologies and deliberate attempts to think outside the box open up countless possibilities.
Each day, there will be a different overall theme for the lectures.
Tuesday, 7 January 2020
DIVERSITY: Libraries as places of knowledge and social interaction The development of the cultural and media landscape in the digital age, when almost any item of information is readily available anytime and anywhere, means that libraries must reinvent themselves – conceptually and strategically as well as architecturally. But what exactly are the implications of this change for architecture and interior design? What expectations do users have and what new concepts are perhaps already waiting in the wings – maybe even across national borders? These are the questions that will be addressed in the lectures organised by AIT Dialog on the afternoon of the first day of the trade fair, in the lecture area in Hall 4.2.
Innovative technologies and their application in interior design will be the subject of the ‘Printed Interior Decorations Lectures’, which will take up most of the morning on the Tuesday of the trade fair. In the lectures, specialists in the field will discuss the opportunities afforded by digital inkjet printing for using one’s own designs to create personalised wall and floor coverings, as well as decorative fabrics for contract furnishings. The lectures will be held in collaboration with ESMA (European Specialist Printing Manufacturers Association), an association of European manufacturers in the industrial printing sector, and Thomas Pötz, an internationally recognised expert on inkjet printing and an experienced consultant on strategic issues.
Wednesday, 8 January 2020
DIVERSITY: Changing nature of urban dwellings
Whether people live alone or with others, whether they flat-share or house-share or live together in dwellings that house several generations, whether they live in some kind of mixture of partly rented and partly privately owned accommodation, or in collectively funded vertical stacks of partially prefabricated flats (sometimes referred to as ‘residential shelving’) - new forms of dwelling develop almost automatically from people’s needs and wishes, are then transformed by professionals into practical concepts and finally interpreted in architectural form. On the second day of the trade fair, the AIT Dialog lectures will open the door on a host of exciting approaches. The crucial question is: ‘What direction will these various types of home take in the future?’ (Lectures, Hall 4.2)
A trend seminar and workshop, run by the Association of German Interior Architects / Designers (Bund deutscher Innenarchitekten - bdia) on 8 January, will, under the heading ‘A Common Reality’, deal with the potential of interior-design textiles to foster moments of social interaction and conviviality. In this workshop, textile designers Felix Diener and Astrid Schaal, in collaboration with design journalist, Martina Metzner, will work with the participants not only to identify trends, but also to discuss the various functions of contract textiles. Those wishing to participate in this one-day seminar, which will attract an additional charge, need to register.
Thursday 9 January 2020
DIVERSITY: Space to live and socialise long-term
There is now a host of different types of temporary and affordable longer-term accommodation, ranging from budget hotels, private homes and platforms such as ‘Couchsurfing’ and ‘Airbnb’ to ‘micro apartments’ and ‘serviced apartments’. Architecture and interior design face an exciting task that throws into question the whole issue of frequent travel - not least with reference to the climate debate. (Lectures, Hall 4.2)
Friday, 10 January 2020
TALENTS: Stimuli and perspectives for the developers of tomorrow
Young architects always seek inspiration from both the unusual and the familiar, they think holistically, globally and with the future in mind, they test themselves, while always keeping the human being in the centre of the picture. Diversity and the wish for change is what the younger generation and their work is all about, whilst, in spite of all these efforts, they continue to respect the achievements of their chosen role-models – the established architects that have gone before. (Lectures, Hall 4.2)
The Interior.Architecture.Hospitality TALENTS session, on the Friday, is aimed principally at students, new graduates and recent entrants to the profession. They are invited to attend lectures by distinguished architects and interior designers, to make contact with both experienced experts and newcomers to the profession and to present their own visions for the future. In return, up-and-coming talents are often able to enrich the sector with fresh ideas, new perspectives and unconventional approaches to problems.
Alongside the varied programme of lectures, ‘Diversity’ is a theme that will, this year, find its way into the new Interior.Architecture.Hospitality LIBRARY, which is being organised for the first time. This is a library of textile materials that will translate the notion of diversity into physical, material terms. The library, in Hall 4.2 is intended as a resource for interior designers, architects and hospitality experts. It displays a selection of particularly promising, innovative textiles with specific functionalities, which will be selected, in advance, by a textile engineer. Visitors will thus have an opportunity to get an overview of the range of products on offer under four functional criteria (flame-resistant / sound insulating / abrasion resistant / water resistant). Every product on display will be identified with the name of the manufacturer, their stand number and its functional attributes. Gerhard Sperling, Head of the Technical Division of the Association of the Germany Home Textiles Industry (Verband der Deutschen Heimtextilien-Industrie e.V.), emphasises that “technically high demands are made on contract textiles in terms of functionality, such as, for example, their mechanical strength, flame resistant properties, ease of cleaning or acoustic effectiveness. The challenge lies in meeting these demands, whilst, at the same time, retaining the textile qualities, the variety of colours and the diversity of patterns. For this we need both a good knowledge of the technical aspects of textiles and new, innovative ideas. The samples that have been submitted for the library demonstrate that the home textiles industry is capable of delivering these ideas, even in a sometimes difficult environment.”
The Interior.Architecture.Hospitality EXPO in Hall 4.2 offers an exclusive platform within Heimtextil, designed to meet the needs and requirements of interior designers, architects and experts from the hospitality sector. At Expo, you will find selected exhibitors and their products and services pertaining to furnishings and equipment in contract settings: from textiles capable of fulfilling acoustic functions or with special abrasion-related properties to sunshades and innovative wall coverings. Exhibitors with displays in this area in 2020 include, for example, MP S.p.a (Italy), Rahmig + Partner GmbH (Germany), coverdec.one (Austria), Verseidag-Indutex GmbH (Germany), Marzotto Lab Srl – Div. Redaelli (Italy) and Feline B.V. (Netherlands).
One of the highlights of ‘Interior.Architecture.Hospitality by Heimtextil’ are the Interior.Architecture.Hospitality TOURS. On guided tours of the trade fair, interior designers and architects will introduce visitors to their favourites and to some innovative textile solutions in the contract sector. The tours will have a variety of emphases and will be overseen and organised by AHGZ/hoteldesign, AIT-Dialog, architektur international, the Association of German Interior Architects / Designers (bdia) and World-Architects. They specifically target interior designers, architects and experts from the hospitality sector. On the last day of the trade fair, the bdia will be issuing a special invitation to students, to join them on a tour of Heimtextil, to visit selected suppliers of contract textiles. The tour forms part of the Interior.Architecture.Hospitality TALENTS, an initiative for the up-coming generation in the architecture and interior design segment, who will be the centre of focus on the last day, both for the tours and the lectures.
It will generally be necessary to register in advance to take part in these tours.
The Interior.Architecture.Hospitality DIRECTORY (previously: Contract Guide) lists all the exhibitors at Heimtextil, who are offering textiles and furnishing solutions for contract environments. It provides a practical overview of the products and services on offer at Heimtextil for the contract sector. The directory is free of charge and will be available at the trade fair. It can also be downloaded via the online exhibitor search in digital format. The stands of the 370 or so exhibitors in the directory will be identified in the Exhibition Halls.
Alongside all the things on offer that have already been mentioned as part of ‘Interior.Architecture.Hospitaliy by Heimtextil’, visitors in 2020 can also expect to find the well-established Heimtextil Trendscouting by AIT. This is a special distinction, awarded by experts for experts. Readers of the acclaimed architecture magazine AIT can apply to become trend scouts in the run up to Heimtextil. AIT-Dialog will choose around 50 – 70 trend scouts from amongst interior designers, architects, planners and experts in the hotel trade who apply. On the first day of the trade fair, they will seek out new generations of innovative products, textile-based room dividers and sunshade systems, wall coverings, wall papers and upholstery fabrics and will document the details of their chosen product highlights. These nominations will serve to identify some clear trends and innovations, which will then be ranked in order. On the second evening of the trade fair, following the meeting of the adjudicating panel, there will be an award ceremony for ‘Heimtextil Trendscouting by AIT’, at which the winners - and those singled out for special mention - will be announced.
www.heimtextil.messefrankfurt.com
