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Li Edelkoort trend seminars at Design Indaba

17 Feb 2011

Li Edelkoort, the Paris-based trend forecaster, educator, curator and publisher who has fostered design's creative talent as chairwoman of the Design Academy Eindhoven between 1998 and 2008, will present her Trend Seminars in association with Design Indaba and Woolworths on Saturday, 26 February 2011 in Cape Town and Monday 28 February in Johannesburg.

Photo by Erwin Olaf

Seminar on shopping

The first seminar looks at reinventing retail for the 21st century winter and 2012/13 fashion, textile and retailing trends. So far this century doesn't yet have its own shopping innovation and environment. The fashion industries keep delivering drops until we shop and against all odds the status quo of retail seems to project business as usual far into our future - the inner mood and mentality of shops has not yet been reinvented and is in need of creative and conceptual thinking.

Mood marketing will replace all other research disciplines trying to improve and rekindle the relationship with consumers in the future and therefore will require very different store environments and shopping mentalities. Shopping will need to become a trip within our inner selves to satisfy our complex needs and wishes and therefore needs to be addressed in a truly innovative manner, to reach the consumer on another, more private level.

Textile, fragrance, flowers, candles, books, food and design all get together to communicate. Imagination, improvisation, intelligence and humour are needed to redefine the shopping experiences of tomorrow.

Landscaping interiors

In the second decennium of the 21st century, design will become primitive and organic, lending from basalt boulders, colossal pebbles, undulating dunes and waving pastures, mimicking our natural habitat. Food will be enjoyed low and lounging, moving images will be screened lazily stretching out on pillows and carpets, beds will become islands of pleasure and daybeds will act as pedestals to invite people to rest and lay low. Computers will follow us wherever we go.

Like contemporary caveman we will experience our habitat as a place of gathering and enjoyment, of rituals and feasts and of centred and therefore contented being. Furniture will take a more sculptural and abstracted form acting as a functional object yet also as a sphere to contemplate art as an everyday requirement elevating the design discipline to another, higher plane.

Using natural materials in fusion with manmade matter these abstracted pieces of sculptural strength invite the consumer to landscape their interior much as if it was a garden, a field or an open urban space. Landscape architecture is therefore the source of inspiration.

Now interior design will become like landscaping interiors, laying out the carpets as fields, distributing abstract furniture like pebbles and rocks, targeting bedding as if it were a linen field and designing wallpaper resembling a lush tropical jungle, weaving textiles as if it was a flower meadow. The consumer becomes the garden architect of his choices and will give form to a more creative and mobile interior landscape.

Ticket concessions, students, conference delegates

Tickets are available through Computicket and at Design Indaba Conference from 23 to 25 February for conference delegates. Special offers will apply to bona fide students and conference delegates, as a concession due to Edelkoort's long time association with Design Indaba.

~~The audience may not film, photograph or tweet on Twitter at this event.~~ After a public outcry regarding this on Twitter on Saturday morning, 19 February 2011, Edelkoort has capitulated and attendees are now free to tweet. Her rationale for banning tweeting is that it distracts people from concentrating. Please note that Design Indaba itself fully encourages tweeting.

Updated at 10.56am on 21 February 2011.