The Future of Design

It's late Friday afternoon, and Ambra Medda is holding court in an appropriately artsy condo overlooking Central Park. Tin pieces from Richard Tuttle's Alphabet series hang above the sofa, and every surface is stacked high with art books. At 25, Medda is stunningly young to be orchestrating such a complicated and ego-driven event, but remarkably self-possessed and erudite on the history of design and its place in the culture. No surprise, perhaps, since she was born into the business: Her mother had galleries in Milan and London, where she showed an eclectic mix of contemporary designers and Italian historical design. "As a child, I was dragged to every auction and warehouse she went to," Medda recalls.

After studying Chinese at London University, Medda planned to move to the Far East and work in contemporary art. Instead, she found herself in New York, privately dealing and curating shows with her mother's inventory. She found Manhattan stimulating but the city's hard-edged, money-driven art scene off-putting. A trip to Florida for Art Miami Basel in 2004 sparked a relationship with Craig Robins, 43, whom she had known for years--and in whose New York apartment she is now sitting.

Robins, president of Dacra Development and a passionate art collector in his own right, is the real-estate developer responsible for the rehabilitation of 18 blocks of dilapidated buildings into the Miami Design District, home to dozens of furniture and design firms. Over Bellinis at the 2005 Venice Biennale, Robins, Medda, Keller, and several top dealers vowed to mount a design show equal to Keller's art fair. And before you could say "la dolce vita," it all came together--through the divine alchemy of big money, boldface names, and glam parties--to create a new paradigm: design as the cooler cousin of the stuffy art world. As Medda puts it, "designers are the new rock stars." Even Robins was transformed. "After this show," he says, "design and art became one in the sense of something I would collect. It shifted even my consciousness."

This summer, the show promises to be even glossier, set in an old Elizabethan church, with three added galleries and a new award, Designer of the Future, for the British firm Established & Sons. That group, which is being honored for its ability to manage the entire creative process--from nurturing little-known designers to manufacturing and selling their work--has explicitly adopted the fashion-industry model. "As a manufacturer," says Alasdhair Willis, its CEO, "we're the first to offer high-quality, high-volume production pieces at lower price points, and then high-end edition pieces--at far, far higher prices--for the collectors and curators who go to places like Design Miami Basel."

That top-tier market has exploded in the past 12 months, Willis says, with collectors ready to pay prices close to those in the contemporary art market. Case in point: A prototype of Pritzker Prize–winning architect Zaha Hadid's Stealth-bomber-like Aqua table recently sold at auction for a staggering $300,000, which is considered a steal by the cognoscenti. "In the collectors' world, $300,000 for an iconic piece is a relatively low investment," says Willis. "They know the market is there, and it will increase in value."

For the broader market, Established & Sons offers a cut-rate mass-market Hadid at $23,000. And if that's still too rich, just being a design voyeur has its own rewards. "There's nothing wrong with going to see things that are sublime and not available," says the Museum of Modern Art's architecture and design curator, Paola Antonelli. "It's education. And it will inspire you when you shop for things you can have."

That education has been slow in coming to these shores. Accustomed as we are to the bland output of High Point, North Carolina--the epicenter of conventional furniture--Americans have lagged our international peers in embracing sophisticated design in our homes. But it wasn't all our fault.

"I'm sorry to sound like such eurotrash, but in Europe, people have always had an appreciation for design," says Antonelli. "Not in the sense of contemplating a chair for three hours, but as a normal part of everyday life." Americans, she says, have been hampered by the long-standing practice here of keeping the best stuff barricaded in design centers, accessible only in the company of a decorator. "That never existed in Italy," she says. As good design has become more available, Americans' taste, she says, has concomitantly improved.

Medda thinks the interest is driven, in part, by the fact that Americans are drawing inward. "Design is your life behind the curtain," she says. "It's the door handle you turn every day that makes you smile, the toothbrush holder, the table you fell in love with when you were with your husband. It's a way of expressing yourself, with your home as your own little museum."