Glancing Backwards to Look Forwards Pt.4

Looking shiny glass, steel and polished ceramics up and down like a whisky-soiled rockstar coughing blood in Justin Bieber’s face – rickety industrialism, excessive clutter and a distinct aversion to touching up paint jobs were high on the list of interiors we most lusted over in 2012. As we continue to use our favourite features from the last twelve months as a barometer for trends we want to see shape 2013, beat-up post-industrial ramshackle is our latest focus.

Whether it was the barely-touched refits of former industrial units at Eindhoven’s Radio Royaal and Restaurant Stork in Amsterdam, the reappropriation of gritty car garage to hip-hangout at fellow Dutch restaurant Hotel de Goudfazant or Tate Modern’s The Tanks – formerly home to 1.1 million gallons of oil – the hijacking of derelict or disused spaces to offer new inspiring cultural and entertainment venues continued apace in 2012; whilst the trend for over-embellished, undeniably beautiful shambles was really catching our eye.

Vancouver’s Tacofino Commissary, with its chaotic lighting installation from Omer Arbel, and the Southbank Centre’s Festival Village (designed by architectural practices Lyn Atelier and TILT, the centre’s in-house team, and over 200 volunteers) had us entranced by beguiling pandemonium, whilst brothers Blom & Blom and Czech designer Ondra Bumbalek wowed us by breathing life into industrial war-time objects.

Discarding order in favour of anarchic beauty, choking the last breaths out of minimalism and rule – here’s to designers, makers and thinkers in 2013 continuing to defy aesthetic convention in this delightful manner.