Top image: Peaceful Dove by Alphonso, winner of the Spot Design Award

For a chance to get intimate with some of Asia’s most innovative lifestyle, product and furniture designers, Hong Kong-based design website buyMeDesign, in partnership with Design Hotels, brought its signature event to New Majestic Hotel in Singapore. Provocatively titled “In Bed with Designers”, a unique experience where visitors could get up-close and personal with some of their favourite designers, the event from 13 to 15 March showcased bespoke textile, home décor and furnishings cleverly incorporated into the stylish room settings of a boutique hotel.

Designer pop-up shop at New Majestic Hotel

“Partnering up with buyMeDesign was a natural decision,” says Carsten Lima, Asia Pacific Area Director for Design Hotels, “It’s all about connections and exchanging ideas, about becoming cleverer and learning from one another. This partnership has become a strong platform to reach out to the young and rising talent and to bring creative individuals together in one event.”

Bags by Belta Studio

Folk Culture Series by JR Studio

While In Bed With Designers is a yearly recurrence in Hong Kong, it was the first time that the organisers at buyMeDesign were bringing the concept to Singapore. As a main attraction of the event, more than fifty emerging designers from all over Asia had set up their product displays inside the rooms of New Majestic Hotel, allowing visitors to freely explore each room at their own pace and chat with the designers about the exhibits along the way. This was also an opportunity for designers to meet and network with industry professionals and buyers in a relaxed environment and show how their products and inventions could interact with the interior spaces in which they were ultimately meant to be housed.

Alur collection by Budiman Ong for Ong Cen Kuang

Journeying from room to room and immersing oneself in the atmosphere of creativity was a unique experience that brought many visitors and designers together during the course of the three-day event. Clever integrations of lifestyle and furniture products with the quirky settings of the hotel rooms took the featured designs out of their usual context of showrooms and store windows and placed them into the framework of typical, everyday environments. One of a kind couplings included the metal and wood Folk Culture Series chairs and side tables by JR Studio, which were displayed on the wood-clad outdoor hotel balcony, stackable and reconfigurable HK1 planters by blackmilk that added a splash of greenery to tables and nooks and niches, and repurposed and upcycled lighting fixtures by Jonas’ Design that brightened up the corners of one of the hotel rooms.

Hk1 planters by blackmilk

Kiss Light by Catherine David Designs

A culminating point of the dynamic event, the Spot Design Award ceremony provided recognition to the most outstanding designs with the top prize going to the Peaceful Dove lighting fixture by Alphonso. The entries were judged on a variety of criteria that included design philosophy, innovation, functionality of the pieces, price, aesthetics and durability.

Spot Design Award ceremony