NEW DIALOGUE
The anchor event of NYCxDesign – the ICFF (International Contemporary Furniture Fair) – is more of a rambling marketplace than a design show these days, where an established audience of international buyers has turned it into a commercial enterprise specialising in selling booth space at the highest margins. Here, you’ll find Tom Dixon next to decorative skateboard decks designed by a Californian trust-funder or a collection of wrought-iron owls.
This year, the New Zealand furniture and lighting brand Resident, which has previously showed at the ICFF, went independent, leasing a 280-square-metre space in Nolita for the month of May to Designer of the Year. Enormously well received by the American design media, the move laid the groundwork for a US market, and for James and co-founder Scott Bridgens to bring back the tightly edited show in 2019.
