Ambiente 2020: Frankfurt’s consumer goods fair delights with design ideas, sustainability

Visitors flocked to the latest Ambiente edition between February 7-11. Photo: Pietro Sutera/Ambiente fair.

Agenda.ge, Mar 20, 2020, Tbilisi, Georgia

A celebration of design ideas, home decoration and consumer goods marrying usability with aesthetics descended on Frankfurt’s sprawling Messe exhibition grounds last month, with agenda.ge in attendance to explore the Ambiente fair.

Within the walls of massive Messe halls dotting the central downtown, design studios, aspiring professionals, customers and the media congregated to the 2020 edition of the exposition that opens its doors to around 4,500 exhibitors from more than 90 countries annually.

 

Structured into themed displays, the Ambiente offered visitors to find items and inspiring design approaches in Dining, Living and Giving sections.

 

While the former was centred around HoReCa (hotel, restaurant, cafe) industry, kitchen ideas and related products, the Living and Giving themes of the show were about everything from living room furniture to handcrafted decorative objects and ideas for presents. Our lens were mostly focused on the latter two categories for the 2020 fair.

 

 

A Dining section display hosts visitors during Ambiente 2020. Photo: Pietro Sutera/Ambiente fair.

 

A recurring theme throughout designs and their application found at the fair was sustainability - from biodegradable material to reusable objects, exhibitors brought their creations with ecological attitude in mind.

 

Looking to cover the massive fair and its creatives we selected highlights from the show - from up-and-coming design students to established brand names and companies bringing novel approaches to existing conventions.

 

While origins of inspiration for involved designers and their visions for products varied, what we saw at Ambiente was summed up by professor Mark Braun, of Berlin-based Studio Mark Braun, as “beauty meets relevance”.

German Design Graduates

 

A notable spot in the Living & Giving expos of Ambiente was taken up by young creatives of German Design Graduates, a platform introducing and supporting emerging professionals.

 

Marie Radke and Jonna Breitenhuber of the University of the Arts in Berlin, as well as Karlsruhe-based Shanmei Yao, represented the platform at this year’s edition in person, while information on works by a myriad of other graduates could also be found at the GDG stand.

 

 

The Soapbottle design by Jonna Breitenhuber seeks sustainability by packing personal care liquids in a dissolvable shell. Photo: Tornike Khomeriki/agenda.ge.

 

At her own corner of the show, Breitenhuber was presenting Soapbottle - her approach to sustainable packaging. Working as a vessel for liquid, the bottle itself is made of soap with the quality of being degradable.

 

Made of natural ingredients, the material of the shell dissolves with usage of the liquid inside. After the latter is used up, the bottle can be used as a soap or detergent.

 

The young designer said she was inspired to take the food industry’s practice of the product itself being turned into packaging and adapt it to hygiene products.

 

Working on the idea through her master’s thesis, Breitenhuber saw it as an opportunity to tackle the issue of near-absence of plastic-free packaging for personal care products, an issue for sustainable use.

 

 

After experimenting with soap as a packaging material she came up with the bottle with which “waste can be completely avoided”. Users can make sure the Soapbottle dissolves at a measured rate by hanging it in shower, which ensures the package dries efficiently after use.

 

Another kind of challenge was tackled in exhibited works by Marie Radke, who was also introduced by GDG. The creative was at the fairgrounds with her furniture collection for a more thoughtful but also fun use for worn clothes.

 

Familie Hempel is a homage to the classic pile of clothes on a chair. A special chair where you put your clothes that are already worn, but are still not ready for the washing machine,” a summary for the products said.

Comprised of a stool, a pouf, a bench and a high-seat, the creations positioned at her stand translated the usually-ignored laundry process into a newly-packaged practicality.

 

 

Furniture, living room products and accessories

 

Moving on to established studios and producers of consumer goods for living rooms and decorative home use, visitors could find items from names such as Fundamental and Rohleder on display.

 

The former, a Berlin-based name working on products “inspired by the mathematics of nature”, had bowls of variable shapes and geometric patterns at their stand.

 

Titled Gravity Tray, one of their most eye-catching works was “inspired by sci-fi fantasies of bending the space-time continuum”, which enabled users to shape it into various angles through an uncanny approach to how its parts were locked together.