19 Greek Street
19 Greek Street

Opening on 13 September 2012, 19 Greek Street will be London’s hub for craft, excellence and socially responsible design. Established by Marc Peridis, Designer and Creative Director of the design studio Montage, this six-floor Victorian townhouse will be a centre for distinctive design storytelling bringing together handpicked pieces from international design studios, as well as housing the UK outpost of ESPASSO, the much acclaimed US specialists in modernist and contemporary Brazilian design.Fueled by an innate sense of curiosity and exploration, Peridis’ extensive travels through the world’s design hubs of New York, Miami, Sao Paulo, Berlin, Milan, have set the tone for the space. Its inaugural collection will showcase works by an international stable of established design talents alongside emerging newcomers. 19 Greek Street will feature both commercial and non-commercial pieces in exhibition and showroom environments, while also featuring a screening/lecture room and a workshop space where guests can engage with the process: the work behind the work. Peridis says of his decision to set up 19 Greek Street: “I am one of those people who plays with design like a child plays with his toys - with amazement and bewilderment, seeing an infinite potential in everything I find. This is design. So, for me, the idea was simple. I found a building that was looking for stories to tell, and I found stories that were dying to be told.”  At the heart of this new venture is ESPASSO’s dedicated two-floor area, featuring works by mid-century modernists Sergio Rodrigues and Jorge Szalzupin, as well as contemporary designers such as Etel Carmona, Arthur Casas and Carlos Motta all showcasing the comfort, sensuality and lasting appeal of Brazilian design. 19 Greek Street will also present commercial works from a range of international design studios all with a socially responsible slant. The Pallet Project by Danish London-based designer Nina Tolstrup is an egalitarian design that constructs furniture from the reclaimed wood of unused pallets. An organisation has now been set-up by Tolstrup in Lugano, Buenos Aires to help the locals emerge from this poverty stricken area through design training and development. Winners of the OneHundredDays competition for sustainable design, Amsterdam’s design duo, Social-Unit, will introduce the hotel version of their bed unit produced from recycled waste plastic, and used in Homeless shelters across the country.   Parisian studio Nocc will feature their HM Darwin furniture range, which can be printed from cardboard through a common template and assembled anywhere in the world to provide emergency furniture relief for homeless survivors of natural disasters. 19 greek street will be highlighting the sustainable “pop-up friendly” nature of these cardboard constructions in a completely new context. The top floor design studio / workshop will allow users to engage with the design processes of highly crafted pieces from the Australian collective Supercyclers. The A-joint by Henry Wilson is an intuitive and utilitarian joinery system constructed to connect a variety of standardised timbers allowing users to create their own pieces from work-stands, to tables, plinths, stools and shop fit-outs fixtures. Tamara Maynes, the undisputed queen of craft, will be launching an iphone app by which the template to her famous quilt light can be downloaded and users can create their own edition of the piece using recycled cardboard. With several book titles and over 100 projects published in print and online, she democratises design so that others can take advantage of her skill and enjoy the process themselves.Blakeborough + king will hold the launch of their stackable coffee shop chair made entirely of recycled coffee bags from Colombia.        The lower-ground level will be an exhibition space and screening room featuring a series of non-commercial works, each contributing to the contemporary design conversation. A few pieces from Marni’s range of 100 brightly coloured woven plastic chairs created by ex-prisoners in Colombia will be featured here as well as the Chair farm project: the brainchild of Berlin’s Studio Aisslinger demonstrating a harvesting process by which design can be “grown locally” and exported globally.        Also harnessing nature in the production process, German designer Markus Kayser uses the abundant and untapped supplies of the sun and sand of the Saharan desert to fabricate glass objects through a solar powered 3D printing device.           Montage will also use this space to feature its very first collection of wallpapers and patterns printed on cardboard furniture in collaboration with Nocc.          Honouring the values of craft, social responsibility, beauty and design storytelling, 19 Greek Street will be a space for design excellence, transcending and including the realm of aesthetics.