INSIDE WORLD FESTIVAL OF INTERIORS
BERLIN, GERMANY
In a wonderful celebration that honoured the best interior spaces
of the year, from design hotels to restaurants, to offices and retail
spaces, INSIDE World Festival of Interiors took place from 15-17
November in Arena Berlin. The global three-day event managed
to combine awards, conferences and networking all in a ceremo-
ny replete with knowledge and inspiration. The esteemed IN-
SIDE is the sister festival of World Architecture Festival, which
was also held under the same roof.
This year’s theme fell upon the subject “Performance”, especially
in the seminars and talks given, which counted with the partic-
ipation of several leading names of the industry. Virginia Lung,
the Co-Founder of Hong-Kong-based One Plus Partnership, went
on to discuss about the coexistence of aesthetics and functional-
ity in interior design as well as the role of design in reviving the
cinema industry. Lung also talked about how design created a
complete movie-viewing experience in relation to One Plus Part-
nership’s Exploded Cinema in China, which was the recipient of
multiple categories at the 2015 festival.
Director of OHLAB/Oliver Hernaiz Architecture Lab, Jaime Ol-
iver and Co-founder of the Chinese Studio Neri & Hu, Rossa-
na Hu discussed about designing for collective experience, with
each one detailing their labour of work. In Oliver’s case, it would
be exploring the concept design of OHLAB’s Concept Store in
Downtown Miami whereas, in Hu’s example, it was talking
about the studio’s approach to creating ethereal spaces for the
recently concluded Suzhou Chapel in China.
Italian architect and designer, Fabio Novembre closed the sem-
inar with his keynote speech “Design as spectacle”. Novembre
also talked about the fluidity of art, architecture, design and
fashion that can be traced in his astonishing work.
As a whole, China-based interiors were clearly distinguished
in the shortlist with Australia coming in second as a notewor-
thy opponent. Nevertheless, the INSIDE World Interior of the
Year 2017 went to Produce.Workshop, Fabricwood, Singapore,
that also won for display, with Neri&Hu Design and Research
Office’s The Garage, based in China, being highly commended
while winning the Creative Re-use category.
Other victorious interiors from the event were a concept store in
Taiwan by WZWX Architecture Group, in the retail category; the
Centre Hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal by CannonDesign
and NEUF architects, regarding health and education. Heneghan
Peng Architects’ Airbnb European Headquarters in Ireland won
top honours for the office category while China-based Big Small
Coffee and Guestroom by Office AIO was distinguished in the
bars and restaurants one. The Civic, Culture & Transport win-
ning interior went to Perkins+Will for the Mary Rose Museum,
located in the United Kingdom and the residential category was
presented to SJB’s Cleveland Rooftop in Australia. Finally, the
Ir-On Hotel by Hypothesis Design Agency was the big winner in
the hotels category. To conclude, the event gave the spotlight to
the people and projects that are completely enriching the essence
of interior design and architecture.
