As one of the world’s most renowned trend forecasters, Lidewij Edelkoort has worked in industries from design and fashion to food, architecture, beauty, communication, and retail for almost five decades. In fact, Edelkort helped pave the trend forecasting career pathway. Founded in 1986, her company Trend Union produces trend tools for strategists, designers and marketers across the globe.
This year, she was one of the key speakers of The Forum’s 2023 programme at Downtown Design. Here, Edelkoort speaks exclusively with CID about the emerging design trends across the Middle East, and what’s shaping commercial spaces.
As a global trend forecaster, you are across every corner of the globe.
What excites you most about the design industry in the Middle East?
Since the Middle Eastern design discipline is being developed under our eyes we assist at a movement of birth and beauty, where roots are recovered, and traditions rekindled mixed with modern life’s recipes for wellbeing. More elaborate and inlaid materials as well as curvaceous forms will bring a more opulent tendency for interiors with the great return of textiles in upholstery, tapestry and rugs.
This region will profit more from future trends than any other one, since fantasy is in the DNA of the people. At the same time, we see enormous hospitality projects mushrooming the area, often with too much likeness and sameness, victims of the rapid growth processes. Luxury hospitality will be demanding more integrity and style, less bling in the future. Originality as in origin will be a key.
From the production of sustainable surface materials to Saudi Arabia’s giga-projects, how can you see design developments of the Middle East influencing other parts of the world?
For the moment, these productions are designed for the region using often bland citations of other major developments in the US or Asia. In my view, they are not singular enough to travel elsewhere or let us travel to you. It is important to know that to be an international brand, one needs to be very local.
A deep brainstorm with designers and architects born or located in these ancient desert countries needs to be organised to give shape to a more indigenous culture of Bedouin origin. The recent Biennale of Architecture in Venice has shown how African architecture is born from and faithful to African origins, the same will become true for many regions. Global goods will lose out in the end.
How is the pandemic continuing to shape the world of design and lifestyle – and how will it continue to shift trends in the realm of commercial design?
The shift is enormous and therefore I call this the Great Disruption. Virtually everything has changed with a focus on less and more flexible work, more creative activities and taking care of mental health.
People are leaving the big cities in favour of smaller cities and countryside. Holidays are retreats, hotels become almost clinics, providing care and health food and meditation classes. Small and short city holidays of a day or two help people escape and fall in love again, while young families make active trips with hiking, biking, safari and surfing.
Offices are becoming empty in major cities and will become green areas, including city bio-farming. Where malls used to thrive parks will take over to bring nature to people’s doorstep.
There is a lot of conversation around the influence of AI on design – how do you see tech advancements informing design in the coming years?
Many people are using and will use of course its rapid intelligence for design and architecture, calculating and solving problems in seconds. In many cases, the expressions will be slick and futuristic, sometimes robotic so this will influence the world of design for a while, creating an alien aesthetic.
As climate change and environmental concerns become a more pressing matter, how will these issues inform design trends?
Well, buildings will have to be flood, fire and quakeproof, which is a big agenda. As we also already observe many design trends handle issues of sustainability and recycling. But this is largely not enough. A new movement for a design that lasts and lives with us for the long run will come to the fore, using noble matter and proven shapes. As a second way to be modern again, we will surely use what I call Another Intelligence to mimic materials and functions from other living beings, be it animals, insects, or plants.
What might 2024 and beyond have in store for surface materials, colours, shapes and forms in interior design?
It is hard to make the new trends concrete and the materials talk since there is an enormous variety of finishes and variations. Not one surface will be left alone, with no flatness, just tactility and movement which gives even modest materials a lot of appeal. Materials will be carved, hammered, crumpled, lacquered, oxidized and inlaid, just like ancient oriental products used to be. Therefore, shapes will be unruly and sculptural, one-of-a-kind and amazing.
Colours will be tinted neutrals, rusted metals, terra cotta stone wear, abstract colours and bizarre brighter tints. Mosaics will dominate the ceramic sector and correspond to a Middle Eastern allure. As an outsider trend, we see young designers manipulate cardboard and papier mâché for lightweight playful items, as if the child in us is steering our intuition. We will assist in a period of more fantasy and materiality which will give more value to design.