Hong Kong Highlights
Last week Materia presented a special exhibition at Retail Asia Expo in Hong Kong. The show is geared towards retailers from across the Asia-Pacific region, and Materia showed some of the most fascinating materials to inspire designers, architects and retailers.
Highlights at the show included some materials that are truly new. Visitors were greeted by the 2,5D printing technique by Jannie Schmitz and Daan de Haan and OCE, which creates novel textures on a range of materials.
Other innovations, particularly interesting for retail, included the reused coffee material, Decafe, by Raúl Laurí Design Lab, interactive thermochromic films by Mindsets and the flexible ceramic foils Keraflex by Kerafol.
Audience favourite Newspaperwood is a literal reuse of old newspapers, by designers Vij5, and was responsible for quite some interest.
Els Zijlstra, Materia’s creative director, also gave a lecture at the show. She discussed how a good choice of materials can influence your brand and sales with her talk on Smart Materials mean Smart Sales.
She dealt with various topics:
– Smart senses, about the sensorial and emotional relation and attraction between material and man;
– Smart responsibility, about sustainable materials and re-used products;
– Smart story, about how special materials can strengthen a brand;
– Smart interaction, about materials that respond to changes in the environment, such as temperature, pressure, UV radiation, magnetism, energy and so on. In each case the material’s response is different: it might change colour, translucency, hardness, or size.
Materia’s presence helped bring new materials that are particularly relevant to the perception of space. The experience of materials and their attraction help bring a design material its appeal. Of course, it must also be said that so too does its price. Each of the materials on show has its own story. Discover them all here.
This edition was the fifth for Retail Asia Expo. The show is quickly establishing its place as one of the most influential retail trade fairs in the Asia-Pacific region. Over 150 suppliers from around the world showcased the latest technologies and solutions at the fair. These were split into two areas: Retail Design & In-Store Marketing and Retail Technology.
Find out all about Materia’s upcoming events here.