Prague’s Designblok 24: what’s on at design’s most playful festival

In September 2024, Prague’s famous funicular cars made their last journey up Laurenziberg to the Petrin lookout. Relics of the late communist era, they had witnessed head-swerving change and enabled new generations of international visitors to appreciate the spires and domes of this incredibly beautiful city. New cars, by Anna Marešová Designers, will make their debut in 2026, but in the meantime, just for fun, the designers got together with Czech construction-kit company SEVA to make a scale model anyone over the age of six can operate.

The model cars were available this week in the newly renovated Prague City Museum, a flagship venue of the Designblok 24 festival (2-6 October 2024), the city’s 26th. And they went some way toward reflecting the local design community’s ingenuity and upward trajectory – not to mention the central theme of ‘youth’.

Designblok 24 highlights: Prague gets playful

Well attended to the point of venue overflow, the quarter-century juggernaut gave visitors a feeling for Prague’s grand, glorious architectural heritage – from the neo-Renaissance Museum of Decorative Arts to the baroque Riding School at Prague Castle, and the art deco Almanac X hotel, a festival sponsor that exhibited pieces by homegrown designer Qubus – and provided entrance deep into every corner of town, reached by the handy £1 tram.

Yet the playful spirit of the participants was hardly suppressed. On opening night, the few who weren’t in black wore wild, Haribo hues. We saw organisers blowing bubbles and children playing with painted-wood toys. Two student exhibitors hauled in an installation of winter sleds crudely patched together, in the style of festival speaker Ron Arad, from cast-off indoor seating. Furniture rollouts, often highbrow, contract-oriented events, managed to amuse and delight – like the three-legged chair and two-legged table by Casa Moderna at the Prague Museum.

In the same room, one festival-goer mounted a massive rocking horse made from LD Seating components. The biggest stunt was outside on the grounds, where a DJ spun techno while visitors tiptoed through a mobile hall of mirrors, displaying ten original glass works from top Czech designers, reflected to infinity.

Music kept the mood light in every venue, probably because well-crafted speakers have become a major statement in hospitality design recently. We saw wood audio furniture by Ekustik and robot-shaped speakers by Superfine Stuff – pieces that could anchor a decorating scheme. In keeping with the theme, Lappa came along with its iridescent acoustic panels, as a courtesy to the neighbours.

Among those who brought serious ingenuity to the whimsical proceedings was the team at Bastion Florence, who banded together after winning last year's Diploma Selection. This year they highlighted a new development called econitWood, made from sawmill waste – wood chip and pulp – which they 3D-printed into surprisingly cool, sustainable furnishings. Ceramicists were enjoying a moment, too. Milan Pekar cast his ‘knitted’ tables and bowls in woven configurations, inspired by a time-honoured technique by which clay was moulded in woven baskets. And Karolina Kucerova achieved a pliant softness with her range of cloudy porcelain, dubbing the technique ‘material empathy’.

Unsurprisingly the glass-design contingent continued to steal focus. At the Riding School, the material was bubbly, beveled and, in the case of Rückl’s ethereal vessels, blended with raw stone. Over at the Museum of Decorative Arts, glass innovations sat among several colourful, characterful vestiges of 20th-century craft. Sculptor Hana Hillerova showed a range of pendant lamps infused with precious metals – the kind often used in sunglasses. Her silver- and gold-based ‘Night & Day’ lamps exhibit cool, mossy ombré tones by day and fiery warmth at night.

Heavy ceramic coffee cups by brothers David & Simon Valovič had slanted silhouettes, as if to suggest forward momentum. Their sturdiness allowed them to stack, one atop the other, as high as you’d like. It seemed apropos for a nation on a trajectory.

Designblok 24 runs 2-6 October 2024. The exhibition ‘Bóda Horák: Biosphere’ will remain on view at the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague until 28 October 2024, designblok.cz