Interior Design Fair
Budapest Sportarena
2024. S/EPTEMBER 20-21-22.
The latest furniture, lighting, textiles and ceramics from well-known and emerging Hungarian designers await you at this weekend’s Hello Hungarian Design exhibition at S/ALON BUDAPEST.
2022 was the first time that new products by Hungarian designers have been shown in comprehensive curated spaces. The concept was then inspired by Bauhaus stylistic features and especially by the fabulous textiles of Anni Albers. With her experimental approach to materials and her imaginative treatment of wavy lines and geometric patterns, Albers not only promoted textile art but also abstract art in the 1920s.
This year’s Hello Hungarian Design exhibition, inspired by the elements of nature earth - water - fire - air, presents objects by more than 40 designers, based on the interior designs of Tímea Tóth.
Earth is perhaps one of the easiest to integrate into interior design. By using wood and stone surfaces, you can feel close to nature and create a homely atmosphere. Water, with its vibrant and playful bluish tones, can easily open up any space and have a calming effect. Fire is the most powerful element. If you don’t have the space for a cozy fireplace, terracotta, red, black and other deep shades are the colors to choose from, with a range of inspiring accessories in this year’s selection. An airy space is particularly appealing with its simple and clean lines. The use of white, ceramics, glass and metal can get you there. At S/ALON BUDAPEST’s Hello Hungarian Design show, you will find alternatives for each of these elements and moods that you can even use to spark up your own home decoration, while supporting local designers. Find out more about them in our article!
AKVA Wallpapers is a designer wallpaper brand launched in 2022, backed by the vision of Éva Molnár. Her experience in interior design, her love for nature and her self-taught watercolour painting and pattern design take on a unique form in the wallpapers she designs and creates. You can see her Wildflowers and Mexico wallpapers live at this year’s exhibition.
Nóra Szilágyi, Máté Guthy and Róbert Kristóffy graduated together from the MOME design course in 2022. Their joint project is At Least - a home training bench, which aims to make training and sport more accessible in everyday life. As well as providing an effective home workout, the training bench fits into the interior of any modern home.
Glass designer Anita Darabos has worked with almost every type of glass: from decorative, coloured glass windows to sculptures, small pieces, decorative and spectacular interior design elements, she has tasted practically every genre of this material. After completing a master’s degree at the College of Fine and Applied Arts, she has mastered almost all glass techniques, from cold to hot.
DBE Furniture is an open marketplace for sustainable and innovative design objects. It promotes a new paradigm to change the way we see, design, manufacture and market products. The furniture offered on their marketplace is customizable, made from sustainable materials and manufactured locally.
Zsuzsanna Deák has been working with glass since 1996, and her fascination with the material has not weakened but only grown stronger. This year, her Re-built Glass Door, a sliding door made of recycled glass and born from the fusion of glass and ceramics, was nominated for EDIDA in the Sustainable Initiative of the Year category.
Dorka Borbás works as a problem-solving designer with applied art, so she mostly deals in specific commissions. Initially, she was mainly involved in architectural glass: she was commissioned to design and create overlights, partitions and individual mirrors. Later on, the demand for unique and exclusive glass decorations and awards grew and has provided her with a very varied and exciting professional world ever since.
FészekRészek offers a range of flat-pack furniture in the world of interior design and material culture that is environmentally friendly and easy to assemble at home by anyone. It works with waste minimization and natural materials to create pieces that will serve as planet- and user-friendly companions for years to come, while combining usability with design. The furniture parts are held together by the laws of physics, i.e. the pins, so there are no screws or glue during assembly.
Demeter Fogarasi sees furniture as personalized objects that populate spaces. His furniture reflects his passion for creation and childlike playfulness. The Elephant in a Pond Table at Hello Hungarian Design is a glass coffee table inspired by the work of Shiro Kuramata. The transparent geometric shapes are brought to life by the playfulness of light. The robust form of the legs contrasts with the lightness of the material, making the object both delicate and elegantly strong.
The Glassflow brand comprises unique, luxury, handcrafted, mirror-reflective glass panels, illuminated glass objects and glass artworks. It is designed and executed by Melinda Soltész, a designer awarded the BKIK Hungarian Craftsman of the Year Award. The brand is complemented by unique, reflective glass artworks and lighting objects, which debuted at last year’s S/ALON BUDAPEST.
HANNABI creates personalized, ergonomic sofas in a system that can be easily designed - even from home. Each of their sofas is a numbered individual piece, carefully handcrafted from the first to the last stage. Like that well-tailored suit you never want to part with. In addition to the Hello Hungarian Design showcase, you’ll also find Hannabi in a separate interior with TOTHBORI Home at the event.
As a programmer, Dávid spends a lot of time in front of the computer, which he loves, but that doesn’t exhaust the creative energies that have been with him in various forms since childhood. His work is characterized by experimentation, each creation leading him to new ideas. His decorative pieces are inspired by his years in Copenhagen. He is interested in simple, clean forms and their distortions. The Danish capital, apart from being the center of Scandinavian design, has a wealth of interesting graffiti. He also evokes these on the surface of his decorative objects: the neon and chrome colors of the spray paint used for graffiti are applied on the vases.
Debóra Horák, the designer of HORA design, is a ceramicist whose work aims to reflect the materialization of visual trends. The utilitarian objects she designs are inspired by industrial buildings, chimneys and pipes - a world of forms representing the style of industrial architecture, monumental spaces and imposing systems of exciting containers lined up next to each other.
The aim of itthon. is to revive our vanishing craft heritage and bring it closer to modern life. The joint brand of designers Adrienn Király and Bálint Szalai is itthon., which aims to expand the opportunities for craftsmen living in Vojvodina, drawing on the traditions of the region. Their products are small-scale home accessories that subtly blend traditional craft techniques with contemporary design. The brand’s latest collection of cast iron cookware earned a nomination in the Product of the Year category at this year’s EDIDA.
With nearly 20 years of experience behind her, Brinkus-Vándor Kata has put her brand on a new footing in 2022. From this renewal process, KATA BRINKUS ATELIER was born. The creative workshop produces small series carpets and interior design objects in addition to individual design tasks. The unique and tailor-made Handtuft pieces are all artistic creations, produced by the designer in unchanging quality and delivered to customers all over the world.
Multifelt represents the artistic processing of the multifaceted felt in Hungary. They have been making beautiful objects from their high wool felts for decades, and together with the Co&Co team they started a joint development in 2023, resulting in the range of Kilim lamps. With a natural material, we almost desire the feel of it, so they focused on physical contact in the design process.
Sabrina Komár is a visual artist who graduated in 2020 with a master’s degree in textile design and also works in the field of experimental photography, where the two fields often intersect. In her textile design, she likes to collide the traditional with the modern, reflecting on the world we live in. Her unique rugs and textiles made from natural materials are characterized by geometric shapes, unique solutions and dopamine-enhancing colors. At Hello Magyar Design you can take a closer look at Hypnopompia 03 and 05 textiles.
Komok is a collaborative furniture brand founded by architects, creating timeless small series and unique furniture. They work with selected designers and workshops to create sustainable, functional, simple objects. Their close relationship with architecture is fundamental to their approach to design: they pay attention to structural and technical detail, seeking a balance between sensible functionality and aesthetic quality. The Struktúr furniture collection, launched this summer, and the new member of the Capsule lamp range, d390, can be seen live for the first time at S/ALON BUDAPEST’s Hello Magyar Design show.
KOMONKA Textile is designed by Móni Kovács. Her handwoven textiles are characterized by unique surface treatment and special use of materials. Her MOMENT Textile / turquoise, shown in the exhibition, aims to capture the moment with its crumpled surface. The texture of the textile is created by the collision of shiny and matt, soft and hard fibers. The shine of the metallic fibers and the meeting of the cotton yarns create a unique play of light, evoking the glow of the sun and the purity of water within the closed walls of the home.
Daniella Koós’s design is minimalist, typically based on the aesthetic representation of functions and scales within an object, but not without playful solutions that reinforce practicality. Last year, you could see two of her new collections at the event as part of the International Year of Glass collaboration, and this year you can check out her compact seating.
IO Studio, a furniture and design company, presented its first independent collection, Burnt Geometry, in 2022. The joint brand of Gábor Bella and lead designer Annabella Hevesi was built on a balance of opposites, with the collection’s 4 product lines paying homage to geometry, function and old masters.
The beauty of a glass sculpture often lies in its simplicity: the repetition of identical elements unfolds together into a whole, which, when made of glass, gains an extra dimension.
Since graduating from the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design in Budapest in 1985, László Lukácsi has been working as a glass sculptor, currently with his son Boldizsár Lukácsi. He participates in international exhibitions and conducts workshops all over the world. The Hello Hungarian Design show will be elevated by one of his multi-layered, polished sculptures.
The LVG brand offers custom and small-scale designed carpets, fabrics, wall textiles by textile artist Gabi Lőrincz V. for residential, interior design and commercial projects around the world. All LVG textiles are the result of serious professional work based on the joy of experimentation. The designer with more than 30 years of professional experience offers the best handmade rugs in domestic as well as in cooperation with foreign manufacturers with a long history.
In the work of Imre Bárczi an important role is given to the processing of the treasures of the cultures that have developed in the Carpathian Basin over thousands of years, and to the transformation of these treasures into a form that is appropriate for today’s world. These rustic shapes can be an eloquent ornament of both modern and authentic architectural spaces. In addition to their aesthetic value, they can tell a story about the additional meaning hidden in their representations, thus serving not only as decorative elements but also as meditative elements for their future owners, expressing a sense of belonging and a way of thinking.
NORNA was launched in 2022. The design process is shaped by two people - Petra Pinezits and Alexandra Takács - and the brand was born out of their shared passion for timeless furniture. Nominated for EDIDA Product of the Year, their NAMI recliner tells a story about the material environment of postmodern sci-fi films, which is both pessimistic in its vision and evocative of the sublime, the stunning, which is displayed in grandiose spaces. The furniture, born for this theme, demands space for itself, the curved forms forming a reclining surface that almost "elevates" the user, suggesting a kind of distancing, a sort of dehumanization.
Oleant’s philosophy is as unique as its light boxes. Their sophisticated clientele expect a team with creative vision, quality products and impeccable customer service. It is for these very reasons that these factors represent the pillars of their company.
Since 2013, Rita Koralevics has been dedicated to recycling and reimagining paper with her brand Paper Up!, exploring the potential and uses of the material. Objects with handcrafted traits always show a new face of paper’s diversity.
Patinás Lámpa has been manufacturing copper lamps since 1981. Each piece is made according to the customer’s wishes, whether it is a chandelier or a wall arm. In addition to many domestic and foreign commissions, the company boasts some of the most beautiful references in Hungary, where they have produced or renovated unique lamps that are in keeping with the era - such as the Orchestra Academy, the Opera, the Money Museum or the library of the Parliament. In addition to the well-known classic, Art Nouveau and Art Deco lamp collections, the family business will also be presenting modern pieces in a stand-alone interior at this year’s S/ALON BUDAPEST.
After her studies in design and art theory, Rebeka Rácz started to work as a self-taught ceramist. Her objects are at the border between design and art, both sculptures and utilitarian objects. She uses one of the most ancient techniques, the method of tape application: the process of making the objects is visible on the monochrome, homogeneous surface of the objects, leaving visible the irregularities inherent in the hand-application, which the artist does not intentionally obscure. The colorful glazes highlight the varied and unrepeatable textures. Her objects, rich in subtle irregularities, are unique, each one a single piece.
REBLE’s first collection, Table R, is a harmonious blend of history and innovation, born from the recycling of marble and stone slabs. The design of the product was inspired by a simple, ancient block, which was also a basic element of architecture, but by disrupting the closed element, an object was created that reveals its internal structure, showing a solid form when viewed from one side and an airy frame when viewed from the other. The steel complements and contrasts with the marble, symbolizing a poetic dialogue between man-made materials and natural stones. The supporting steel plate both helps to preserve the marble’s graphic surface and ensures the object’s stability. The nominee for the EDIDA Sustainable Initiative of the Year category will be exhibited alongside S/ALON BUDAPEST at the Museum of Fine Arts this season.
Tünde Ruzicska is an outstanding creator of Hungarian gastro-ceramics. She creates high quality, individually designed serving collections for fine-dining, Michelin-starred restaurants and new wave bistros, tea houses and cafés. It is important to her to maintain a personal touch, to meet the needs of the client and to maintain her own creative character. She also works in parallel on autonomous fine art projects. She makes her own ceramics using traditional craft methods, because she firmly believes that handmade objects with their timeless value help us to slow down and live in the moment. For her, design is a harmonious balance of material, form, function, aesthetics and sustainable technology.
Anett Sáfrán creates objects from porcelain and high-fired clay for home use and catering establishments. Her design work is informed by both the wonder of nature and urban exploration. The essence of her ceramics thus lies in the fusion of modern geometric forms and organic surfaces that convey the joy of exploration and touch.
Interdisciplinary designer Dávid Salamon is interested in the combination of technology and poetry in his work. In 2014 he graduated from the Technical University of Budapest with a BSc in Computer Science and in 2023 he graduates from the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design with an MA in Design. In his design practice he creates collectible design objects, interactive museum exhibitions and kinetic installations. As a versatile designer with a background in both art and engineering, he defines design as the intersection of poetry and technology.
SARAKELE STUDIO creates exciting yet timeless minimalist objects and interiors with sustainability in mind. Its experimental and forward-thinking approach extends beyond form to the use of materials and production methods, seeking to combine the traditional knowledge of master craftsmen with contemporary and innovative solutions. It pays great attention to localism, encouraging factories to consider their environmental and community impact.
The REPETA collection, created in collaboration with Concrazy, offers a range of interior concrete products for hospitality outlets, from entrance to washroom, both indoors and outdoors. A selection of pieces from the EDIDA Sustainable Initiative of the Year nominated collection can also be found in the Hello Hungarian Design exhibition, along with the GEOM collection. The latter showcases innovative and durable use of new materials - the vase is made from natural stone made from shell debris and recycled glass, the table from a biocomposite material based on flax fiber. The collection is the result of a collaboration between the studio, French brand Boutures d’objet and Marion Duzan.
Bence Sárkány creates unique solid wood furniture. Combining comfort and functionality with clean forms, he creates value that spans generations. Most people, when they think of a rocking chair, see an old grandfather slowly rocking in it. Bence wanted to subvert this image and replace a traditional rocking chair with something that is not only timeless, but that reaches out to all generations with its nostalgia. And so Ringa was born.
SHELFIE is a DIY design furniture family. It is a shelving system like a building cupboard, designed with the main goal of enabling young people who cannot or do not want to pay the price of designer furniture to buy individual and unique looking furniture for their home. Its elements can be assembled in almost infinite variations, and the vertical support panels are always narrower than the shelves, giving the finished cabinet a unique 3D look.
Jázmin Strohner creates unique, disc cutlery to order. She prefers to design in minimalist, angular shapes and subdued colors, but if the project requires, she can also realize softer, more natural lines with elegance and taste. She is currently designer and contractor for a ceramics studio in Zurich. In addition to porcelain, she is increasingly interested in designing cast porcelain objects, which require a completely different way of thinking and formal approach due to the different techniques used. Jasmin was a nominee for this year’s EDIDA Young Talent of the Year, we can expect fresh and exciting innovations from her in the near future.
Szandra is mainly involved in interior design works as a designer of light installations, graphic glass and building signage. In her previous works, she has combined the use of light sources with different materials - metal, veneer, precious stone, acrylic or glass - always resulting in new lighting effects. The light installation Möbius, presented at Hello Hungarian Design, is the smallest unit of a system of interweaving identical elements, suitable for installation in public spaces. It is expandable, allowing for countless variations.
VPI’s main profile is the design and manufacture of concrete public furniture. They strive for an innovative approach to public spaces through constant experimentation and the search for new ways of doing things. They are the leading manufacturer of concrete street furniture in Hungary and also distribute their products in several European countries and the USA. Their latest mobile bicycle storage system, called MONÓ, designed by Péter István Varga and Márk Nagy-Mihály, competes with fences, light poles and stop signs. It is a quick and space-saving solution for the safe storage of one or two bicycles, as it is easy to install, does not need to be fixed and does not require a large space.
VUUV Works brings together artists and craftsmen to create limited edition and custom designed furniture and home accessories. All the while, it places great emphasis on fresh aesthetics, ethical working practices, sustainable and local use of materials, manufacturing and transportation. Their community is made up of 14 artists and craftspeople who work in complement to each other’s work or entirely independently. Their aim is to showcase the appeal and relevance of craftsmanship in Central Europe. This year’s Hello Hungarian Design welcomes Anna Lébényi inlay designer, Gergely Pattantyús glass artist, János Nagy Ádám carpenter, Jenő Köpf wood engraver, Krisztián Simon carpenter and Eszter Szilágyi hand weaver.
YOZA high-end design furniture and home accessories offer an alternative to the more mass-produced, well-known design brands with their unique structural solutions, functional/minimalist approach to design and use of high-quality materials. High-end products are made in the spirit of slow design and digital craftsmanship: both in form and production technology, they represent the state-of-the-art of traditional furniture craftsmanship.
In 2021, a young carpenter, Eszter Zelenai, came up with the idea that unique, fragile, but all the more valuable wooden veneers could become fully-fledged furniture in their own right. The half-millimeter thick natural veneer is able to transmit light only in such a way that the wood’s grain, pattern and coloring can be revealed in all its beauty. Pendant, floor and table lamps can be made from a variety of woods such as silver maple, birch, beech, satin walnut and Indian apple. A ZeBúra Design lamp is therefore an interesting interplay of wood and light that, in addition to its aesthetic value, creates a calm, natural atmosphere.
Get to know and support Hungarian design culture: join us at the Budapest Arena between 22-24 September, where we will showcase the products of talented designers and responsible manufacturers in beautiful installations. In the meantime, get your discounted tickets in advance here, follow us on Facebook and Instagram!
