Revolutionary Designer Yves Béhar Announced as 2020 Interior Design Show Guest of Honour

Yves Behar
Photo credit: Justin Buell

British Bethan Laura Wood also joins IDS20 roster of global Keynote speakers

The 2020 Interior Design Show (IDS20) is welcoming San Francisco-based Swiss designer, entrepreneur and humanitarianism Yves Béhar as this year’s International Guest of Honour. The show has also confirmed multidisciplinary British designer Bethan Laura Wood as a keynote speaker, returning features and IDS Contract conference themes. IDS20, Canada’s largest contemporary design fair, takes place January 16-19, 2020 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre.

Recognized for advocating the value of design in business, Yves Béhar is the founder and chief designer of fuseproject, a multidisciplinary industrial design and branding firm; co-founder of August Home, the leading provider of smart locks and smart home services; and co-founder of Canopy, a boutique co-working enterprise. Béhar believes that integrated product, digital, experience design and brand design are the cornerstones of any business. He has collaborated with renowned partners such as Herman Miller, Movado, Samsung, Puma, Issey Miyake, Prada, SodaStream, Swarovski, Canal+, Nivea and many others, receiving international acclaim.

Béhar has pioneered design as a force for positive social and environmental change. His humanitarian work includes One Laptop Per Child, which has given 2.5 million laptops to children in developing countries and See Better to Learn Better, which distributes 500,000 free corrective eyeglasses to schoolchildren in Mexico and California every year. For each of these, he was honoured with the INDEX Award, making him the only designer to receive the award twice.

Béhar’s works are included in the permanent collections of museums worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Centre Pompidou and the Art Institute of Chicago. He has garnered over 300 awards, including the Design Miami/2015 Design Visionary Award, the London Design Museum’s Design of the Year, Cooper Hewitt’s National Design Award, IDSA Design of the Decade Award, IDA Designer of the Year and Conde Nast Traveller Designer of the Year. He was named a Top 25 Visionary by TIME Magazine and was recently named “Most Influential Industrial Designer in the World” by Forbes. 

Bethan Laura Wood
Photo credit: Perrier Jouet

Bethan Laura Wood

Bethan Laura Wood is a multidisciplinary designer known for her material investigation, artisan collaboration and avant-garde approach to colour, pattern and materiality.  Wood explores the relationships we make with objects in our everyday lives and questions about how they became cultural conduits. She has undertaken multiple residency programmes, including London’s Design Museum and the W Hotel in Mexico City. Wood has worked ongoing with the Nilufar Gallery since 2011 and has had her work commissioned by Moroso, Valextra, Perrier Jouet, Bitossi Ceramiche, Tory Burch, cc-tapis, Tolix, Rosenthal and Hermes, among others. Her work has been exhibited in museums around the world including, V&A Museum of Childhood, Swiss Institute New York, Daelim Museum and MOT, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo. 

IDS19
Photo credit: Interior Design Show

IDS20 Features

The Interior Design Show is also pleased to announce the return of three popular show features, Maker, Studio North & Prototype and Milk Stand, and the addition of Off the Wall/Off the Loom.

Maker

Returning for its sixth installment at IDS20, Maker spotlights the work of artisanal North American studios that produce their work for limited distribution. Curated by Design Milk, Maker regularly features timeless hand-made and hand-finished lighting, hardware, design objects and solid-wood furnishings of heirloom quality.

Studio North & Prototype

Studio North & Prototype is a marketplace of custom work and limited-edition collections, featuring over Canadian and international designers of the highest calibre. In Studio North, more than 60 independent product designers exhibit their custom and one-off creations (including furniture and lighting, glass and ceramics, textiles and décor objects) within a gallery-like setting, while Prototype lets designers unveil innovative and avant-garde pieces that often experiment with cutting-edge materials and techniques. Many of the emerging designers to launch collections at Studio North and Prototype—including MSDS, Jordan Söderberg Mills and Thom Fougere— have gone on to achieve international recognition.

Milk Stand

The design pop-up shop Milk Stand returns to IDS Toronto, curated by Design Milk. Milk Stand provides independent designers and makers a platform to share, showcase and sell their latest collections to the design industry at trade shows and design fairs around the world. Milk Stand will be designed by Toronto based design firm ROLLOUT, in partnership with Form Nation Design.

Off the Wall/Off the Loom

IDS20 presents Off the Wall / Off the Loom, a feature that highlights textiles and wall-covering focused on innovation and design. With over 47% of IDS attendees wanting to source textiles and wall-coverings right at the show, Off the Wall / Off the Loom will be a key IDS Design Hot Spot.

IDS19
Photo credit: Interior Design Show

IDS Conference

IDS20 is expanding its two-day conference to talk about the transformative power of design, covering four themes: Business of Design, Future of Work, Future of Living and Technology.

Business of Design

What do you need to start a business? How do you deal with growth, marketing, accounting and the customer experience? This conference stream will be a practical guide for running and maintaining a thriving business.

Future of Work 

We are in a time of technological evolution and demographic change. What will the office, and its inhabitants, look like in five, 10, even 50 years? This stream will gather stakeholders from the design industry and beyond to explore solutions for the pressing issues facing businesses and their workforce.

Future of Living

How will our public and private spaces shape our future? How do we design with empathy for humanity and our fragile planet? Are modern needs forming or fracturing our communities? This stream will uncover new ways of living and challenge the processes and policies we work within.

Technology

Technology is evolving in every industry, and change is constant. How do you create client trust in technology? How do you seamlessly integrate technology into space? How, when and where is technology best utilized? And how do you leverage new techniques to future proof your business? We are brokering conversations with futurists, innovators, leaders and disruptors on the transformative power of design and how it will change the way we live, work and experience our surroundings.

IDS19
Photo credit: Interior Design Show

IDS20 Schedule

Thursday, January 16

10 am – 4 pm – Trade Day + IDS Conference

7 pm – 11 pm – Opening Night Party Presented by PurParket

Friday, January 17 

9 am – 6 pm – Trade Day + IDS Conference

Saturday, January 18

10 am – 6 pm – Public Day + Design Classes

Sunday, January 19

10 am – 6 pm – Public Day

Metro Toronto Convention Centre, South Building, 222 Bremner Blvd, Toronto, ON M5V 2T6

IDS Contract (Halls F&G) and IDS Main (Halls D&E)

About Interior Design Show

From January 16-19, 2020, the Interior Design Show will return to Toronto for its 22nd year, showcasing hot-topic design trends and the most innovative of international and Canadian design. An incubator of ideas, the show hosts the most influential design minds of today and the future, curates feature exhibitions and collaborations, and is a platform to launch never-before-seen products. IDS is not just a fair – it’s a total design experience. Don’t miss the four-day event at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre this winter. Visit InteriorDesignShow.com.

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