Introduction
Miami Design Week 2024 leans into its signature flair for spectacle. Celebrating its 20th edition, the event returns to its home city alongside Art Basel, solidifying its role in the global rise of the collectible design market. This growing interest, coupled with a renewed focus on craft—now a cornerstone of the design world—has shaped a narrative that feels both sophisticated and unexpectedly youthful.
Curated by New York-based writer Glenn Adamson, this year’s theme, This year’s theme, “Blue Sky,” invited designers to dream big, crafting ideas unconstrained by the usual limits of practicality.
While the city’s vibrant cultural melange offers fertile ground for innovation, this year’s highlights walked the tightrope between substance and style. Our article dives into the installations and collaborations that rose above the noise, exploring new materiality and intentional design.
1. Lucas Muñoz Muñoz: Raw Revival at Alcova
Spanish designer Lucas Muñoz Muñoz’s site-specific installation at Alcova Miami is less about refinement and more about reclamation. Arriving early to scour the city’s industrial leftovers, Muñoz pieced together a soundscape-cum-furniture collection from discarded concrete, raw wood, and construction scraps.
His S.S Series, Sound System 03 balances brutalist geometry with organic forms, presenting a bespoke sound system that doubles as sculptural furniture. It’s functional recycling with a playful edge, finding fresh perspectives in art and architecture.
2. "Liminal Cycles" by Crafting Plastics and Lexus
In a bold statement of possibility, ICA Miami’s sculpture garden hosted Liminal Cycles, an ambitious collaboration between biomaterial advocates Crafting Plastics and Lexus. Central to the installation is a UV-responsive sculpture inspired by the Lexus LF-ZC concept car, made entirely of bioplastics derived from sugarcane and natural fibres.
The piece reacts to environmental inputs—light, sound, and touch—mimicking the personalised adaptability of Lexus’ vision for Software-Defined Vehicles. Beyond its reactive skin, the installation introduces a fragrance collaboration with dilo and a limited-edition capsule collection of collectible objects. By placing this vision within Miami’s high-energy art week, Crafting Plastics redefined innovation’s intersection with material science.
3. Mathieu Lehanneur: From Olympic Flames to Flowers in Midair
Mathieu Lehanneur’s Flowers Season introduced a moment of quiet reflection amidst the energy of Miami Design Week 2024. Suspended ceramic flowers seemed to float effortlessly, striking a careful balance between gravity and imagination.
Alongside this, Lehanneur unveiled a collection of functional collectibles—a dresser, lamp, and cabinet—that subtly echoed his work for the 2024 Paris Olympics, where he designed the torch and brazier. These pieces, blending solidity with fluid motion, continued his exploration of nature and form, offering a thoughtful pause within the bustling design landscape.
4. Victoria Yakusha: Rooted in “Living Minimalism”
Ukrainian designer Victoria Yakusha unveiled her Grün Collection, a poetic exploration of her homeland’s rich landscapes and cultural heritage. Yakusha’s signature “live design” ethos finds expression here through clay, natural fibres, and organic biopolymers.
Among the standout pieces is The Land of Light, a series of sculptural forms embodying ancient animistic principles. The collection brings together heritage and functionality, firmly grounding Yakusha’s work in what she calls “a dialogue with the earth.”
5. Jaguar Type 00: A Concept Dividing Opinion
Jaguar’s new electric concept car, the Type 00, has sparked equal parts intrigue and skepticism. Draped in attention-grabbing shades of "Miami Pink" and "London Blue," the design strays boldly from Jaguar’s traditional lineage, sporting unconventional features like rear-facing cameras and a wraparound windscreen.
While some laud its ambition, others see the Type 00 as a branding misstep, veering into gimmickry. Is this the shedding of the past or the downfall of a once-beloved brand?
6. MycoWorks and Studio TOOJ: Material Experiments at Alcova
Wrapping up a banner year, MycoWorks presented a bespoke DUK Side Table in partnership with Studio TOOJ. Clad in their Reishi™ biomaterial, the piece exemplifies mycelium’s potential to blend craftsmanship with ecological responsibility.
Studio TOOJ’s Scandinavian design sensibility meets the rich texture of Reishi™, offering a compelling case for the biomaterial’s scalability in luxury markets. The tactile surface and organic growth patterns transform a simple table into a meditation on innovation.
7. Fendi x Lewis Kemmenoe: Quiet Craftsmanship in a Grand Space
Fashion house Fendi opted for a minimalist approach, presenting a serene booth that defied Miami’s penchant for excess. London-based designer Lewis Kemmenoe’s patchwork wooden furniture, sparsely arranged, evoked an air of quiet sophistication. Each piece balanced craft and modernity, embodying an understated dialogue between materiality and space.
8. “Pearl Jam” by Nicole Nomsa Moyo
In Pearl Jam, Nicole Nomsa Moyo transformed the Miami Design District into a living homage to South Africa’s Ndebele tribe. At its heart are over 1,000 hand-crafted earrings, intricately made by Ndebele women, suspended from the neighborhood’s trees.
The installation’s giant pearls and jewelry-inspired sculptures turned the streets into a tactile and cultural dialogue, merging bold aesthetics with a message about the universality of creativity.
9. Mindy Solomon Gallery: Blue Skies and Craggy Inspiration
The newly minted Best Thematic Expression Award went to the Miami-based Mindy Solomon Gallery, whose Patagonia-inspired showcase explored the untamed palette of blue, grey, and green.
The gallery’s standout pieces, like hettler.tüllmann’s rope chair with its animal-like silhouette, toyed with the boundary between furniture and sculpture. Equally captivating were Frances Trombly and Jacqueline Surdell’s textile works, which seemed to hang as though pulled from the cliffs of Patagonia itself—a visual echo of raw energy and haunting beauty.
10. Parley x Jenny Holzer: Surfboards as Sculptural Activism
Parley for the Oceans and visionary artist Jenny Holzer have made waves in the surf community with an extraordinary creation: ten gilded surfboards etched with the evocative phrase “THIS ECSTASY”, borrowed from Walter Pater’s The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry. These shimmering boards blur the boundaries between art, activism, and the thrill of the ocean.
All proceeds will fuel Parley’s AIR Station initiative in the Maldives, a groundbreaking program transforming plastic waste into innovative recycling and energy solutions, proof that beauty can spark change.
Conclusion
If Milan hinted at material possibilities, Miami took a bolder stance, with its signature flair for drama ever present. As Miami continues to cement its role as a hub for design, this year’s edition revealed a willingness to push boundaries, embrace cultural crossovers, and reimagine material possibilities.
The question now is not whether these bold ideas will resonate but how they might shape the future of design itself. Whether these experiments will achieve mainstream adoption remains to be seen.
