In October 2016, the SUITE NY team visited three of Europe’s most prestigious fairs: Biennale Interieur in Belgium, Dutch Design Week in The Netherlands, and Orgatec in Germany.

We first arrived to Antwerp where we met with Beatrice de Lafontaine, owner of Belgian accessories manufacturer When Objects Work.

Beatrice took us on a tour of notable shops and restaurants of Antwerp. Later we visited the office of our dear friend Vincent Van Duysen where we met with his head of product design, Bertrand Lejoly.

We then took a drive outside the city to tour the showroom of famed antiques dealer, Axel Vervoordt.

The next day we made our way to Biennale Interieur, a highly curated modern design fair that takes place every other year in the Belgian city of Kortrijk.

Here are some highlights:

The next day we had some time to enjoy the beautiful city of Bruges! Bruges has most of its medieval architecture intact, making it one of the most well-preserved medieval towns in Europe. The historic centre of Bruges has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2000.

The beer, chocolate, and moules frites aren’t bad either!

The next day we traveled to the city of Eindhoven for Dutch Design Week, a nine-day event with exhibitions, workshops, seminars and parties at many venues. The initiative started twelve years ago as a non-commercial fair where design, industry and business could talk to each other on ‘neutral’ ground. Since then, the event has grown rapidly each year, now the biggest design event in Northern Europe with more than 295,000 visitors from home and abroad.

We stumbled upon the studio of Bart Hess, an artist/product designer who is doing amazing things with wax and latex. His website is definitely worth checking out.

After a fascinating few days in Eindhoven, we drove to the ancient city of Cologne to attend one of the world’s most prestigious contract furniture fairs, Orgatec.

Our visit began with a trip to the famous DesignPost, a curated collective of top contemporary furniture manufacturers. There we met with our friends at German manufacturer Zeitraum, who were launching an exciting new design.

The Rail table is a casual, modular table system perfect for the contract market designed by up-and-coming design duo Kaschkasch.  This is the second design by Florian Kallus and Sebastian Schneider for eco-friendly Germany furniture manufacturer Zeitraum.

The next day we visited the Orgatec fair which was in full swing by the time we arrived. The leading international trade fair for the modern working world recorded a considerable increase in visitor numbers in 2016, up more than 10 per cent with over 56,000 visitors from 118 countries. The trade fair’s theme, “Creativity Works” ran through the presentations by its 671 exhibitors. Here are some of our highlights.

No trip to Germany would be complete without a helping of strudel.