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Decoptimism: The New Interior Design Trend for This Spring
As salient examples of this trend in commercial furniture and interior design, a recent article in Architectural Digest mentions the predominance of earthy and light colours in several of the current international catalogues and in important design projects.
However, this same article also identifies an undergoing shift towards a completely different trend for the last third of 2021 (and perhaps also spilling on to the next year). This new trend revolves around the thoughtful incorporation of playful and ludic hints and details through the use of colour highlights, textures, geometric forms, and eclectic shapes. The main ethos behind this trend is one of subtle optimism—an optimism that is not necessarily flashy or strident, but rather serene and welcoming. Perhaps we can coin a fittingly playful term for it: Decoptimism.
As we discussed in a previous post, this past year has involved a lot of time spent indoors, making the experience of our domestic spaces more important than ever. As Melbourne wades through its 6th lockdown, perhaps it’s a good moment to stir some positive vibes into your home with some of the playful design pieces available in our Spanish furniture catalogue.
Home Lighting as a Path Towards Decoptimism
As we mentioned above, Decoptimism can be achieved through delicate gestures. What better way to do this than through home lighting? Floor lamps, table lamps, and bedside lamps can all help instill an optimistic vibe to your home, both through their use of light as well as through their design itself. Take, for instance, the Party pendant hanging lamp designed by Estudio Savage for Almerich. This is a very particular lamp: it successfully manages to combine the qualities and materials of a top-tier designer lamp with a design that is reminiscent of those clustered light bulb garlands that are used in parties and street festivities.
The Tribeca pendant lamp takes a somewhat similar path in terms of design inspiration. However, it opts to dial down a bit on the cheekiness and step up on the sleekness and elegance. Designed by Jordi Llopis for Almalight, this designer lamp also reminds us of a light bulb garland, but definitely the classiest we’ve seen yet! Instead of bare lightbulbs, the light sources on the Tribeca are covered by spherical shades made from alabaster. This stone (which has a long tradition of use in Spain) has a unique texture that is beautifully revealed when backlit.
The Uniquely Playful Commercial Furniture of BD Barcelona
Another catchy piece of Spanish furniture from our catalogue that will surely stand out in your living room is the Dreams Cabinet, designed by Christian Zuzunaga for BD Barcelona. Besides being a functional and sturdy cabinet (built with fiberboard and finished with an outer layer of printed glass), placing this piece in any room would amount to nothing short of an artistic intervention. This is not surprising if you consider that, besides designing commercial furniture and textiles, Zuzunaga also has an established career in the art world. An important part of his artistic discourse is based on investigating the aesthetic potential of pixels, and in the Dreams Cabinet he has taken these explorations even further. As it was the case with the Tam Tam lamp, the Dreams Cabinet comes in different versions, ranging from the quirky to the exuberant.
The all-black cabinet is the most subdued of the three. As it is hinted by the name, the cabinet is mostly black, with a few tasteful splashes of colourful pixels. From here on in, things start to get a bit more startling. The monochrome version is covered head to toe with grayscale pixels. The pixels themselves have a size which makes it seem like you are looking at a low-resolution picture, creating an optical illusion right in the middle of your living room. The colour version takes a similar path, but it swaps the grayscale for pixelated clouds bright colours (pink, yellow, blue, white). The final appearance looks like something made with a zoomed-in airbrush Photoshop tool. Quite a statement!
The next piece of Spanish furniture from BD Barcelona encapsulates the most humorous and cheeky side of Decoptimism. Who better than Jaime Hayon to design a Monkey side table—literally a monkey holding up a plate—and still manage to make it sleek and classy. This modern coffee table bears all the marks of Hayon’s own personality and background: former skateboarder and graffiti artist, he has established himself as one of the most eclectic and multidisciplinary designer-artists today (take a look at his Mediterranean Digital Baroque exhibition, for instance).
Ping Pong and Foosball With RS Barcelona
Why not take the playfulness of Decoptimism a step further with pieces of Spanish furniture you can actually play with? Both of these one-of-a-kind tables have already been featured a couple of times in our blog. The first of them is one of our all-time favourites. We are talking about the You and Me ping pong table, a Spanish furniture design piece conceived by Antoni Palleja Office for RS Barcelona. What keeps us coming back to the You and Me table is the way it manages to seamlessly hide a ping pong table inside an elegant dining table. If a friend who owns the You and Me table were to invite you to a fancy dinner party at their place, you could easily spend the entire afternoon without noticing that the table you had your meal on could have morphed into a fully functional ping pong set up within a matter of minutes. Additionally, the You and Me table has two versions, one to be used indoors and the other one meant to be used outdoors. The latter is one of the best pieces of designer outdoor furniture we have come across. Talk about versatility!
Rafael Rodriguez’s RS4 foosball table wears its gaming clout directly on its sleeve. As a top-tier wood-and-steel foosball table, the RS4 is hard to beat. The steel body also comes in a wide variety of colours to choose from: gray, yellow, terracotta, and blue. The RS3 dining foosball table, on the other hand, takes its cue from the You and Me table, adding a 1cm thick tempered glass tabletop so you play between dishes, or eat between scoring goals. If this wasn’t enough to make it stand out from the rest of foosball tables out there, the RS3 is also fully customizable: you can choose everything, from the colour of the field to the player lineup and even real-world team uniforms. We can hardly think of a better way to add some playful light-heartedness to your home interiors than with this piece of Spanish furniture.
As you can see, AJAR’s catalogue has a lot to offer if you’re looking to enhance your home with carefully selected pieces of designer furniture that will brighten your days and imbue your domestic surroundings with a healthy dose of optimism and light-heartedness.