East End addition to 100% Design

The organisers of interiors event group 100% Design are planning to launch an exhibition of experimental design in London’s East End next year, which will run parallel with its main show during the London Design Festival.

The international furniture and interiors show organiser, owned by Reed Exhibitions, is looking to appeal to designers at the avant-garde end of the spectrum to showcase installations, prototypes and one-off design pieces. The event will be called 100% East.

It will be held at the Truman Brewery on London’s Brick Lane from 22-25 September 2005, in a bid to become a ‘focal point for experimental and emerging design talent’, says 100% Design founder Ian Rudge. It will be ‘affordable’ for exhibitors and will be curated by Jimmy MacDonald of Undu Graduates. It is also likely to coincide with Designersblock.

The aim is not to rival Designersblock, Rudge explains, but provide a ‘professionally curated, organised and promoted alternative environment’ to 100% Design’s existing London events and ‘exhibitor access to the 100% audience’.

MacDonald adds that the show will be seeking to provide a dedicated space for some of the ‘more alternative’ exhibitors already featured in the show organiser’s Guaranteed Guide.

However, comparisons by designers between the two East End shows will be inevitable, because of the overlap of their target exhibitors and their timings.

Designersblock founder Rory Dodd is confident that the two shows can co-exist quite happily.

‘We never really created the show on the basis of products, but for ideas and innovation. We want to get away from this idea that design is just about stuff,’ he says.