20 must-see things at Design Miami 2025

Since Design Miami first launched in 2005, collectible design has been catapulted onto the global stage. This week’s been proof, with some 80 international exhibitors congregating beneath a sprawling tent in Miami Beach and with international arms of the fair in Paris and, in 2027, Dubai. The theme for the fair, which runs through Sunday 7 December, is ‘Make. Believe.’, a theme that is ‘a celebration of the extraordinary power of design to turn imagination into reality’, said Design Miami CEO Jen Roberts at the opening press conference.

All that creativity means there’s a lot to see, even if you skip the greater hurricane that is Miami Art Week, anchored by Art Basel Miami Beach. We’ve been on the ground all week perusing booths, special installations and galleries, and there have been a few stand-out things that caught our attention. If there’s a common denominator, it’s their ability to ignite the imagination and their sense of fun. How very Miami!

Move over Winky the Norwich Terrier: the crown for this year’s ‘Best in Show’ at Design Miami was handily snatched by Superhouse. For its booth, the New York-based gallery teamed up with San Francisco design practice Studio Ahead to create a fun-filled Wunderkammer of American-made furniture designed between 1980 and 1990. Works by Dan Friedman, Forrest Myers and more were interspersed between two towering Ionic columns, whose capitals felt like a squiggly riff on the overall postmodern theme. Wackier works – like an Alex Locadia-designed chair whose back is imprinted with Batman’s abs of steel – added just the right amount of wrong to a booth that felt absolutely right.

Miami’s sandy shores are typically dotted with beach umbrellas and hard bodies, but this year, something of an anomaly appeared – a bookshelf. Specifically, a 50ft-wide, rotating wedge-shaped bookshelf filled with 2,500 tomes. It’s the handiwork of English artist and set designer Es Devlin. Called ‘Library of Us’, the installation is a follow-up to Devlin’s ‘Library of Light’ unveiled at Salone del Mobile earlier this year. The shelf slowly revolves on a circular platform, where the public is invited to sit and contemplate words on an LED screen – selections from Devlin’s own personal library – and watch the ocean and the seaside towers slowly spin round. ‘You wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down,’ read one quip from Toni Morisson’s 1977 novel, Song of Solomon. Amid a week whose raison d’être is centred around exclusivity, this public-facing sculpture felt like a gift.

Why settle for white porcelain when your toilet, bathtub or sink could be iridescent? That was the theme of Kohler’s 2025 fair booth, which showcased Pearlized, a glimmering new rainbow finish created in collaboration with artist David Franklin. Pearlized was the result of a happy creative accident, created when Franklin was figuring out new ways to glaze his signature ceramic fish during an artist residency with the Wisconsin-based company. Kohler liked it so much that it has glazed a sink in it and tapped designer Harry Nuriev of Crosby Studios to design a glowing, meditative installation to celebrate it at the fair. Topped with a swirling school of Franklin’s shimmering fish and clad in mirrors, it made for a meditative moment amid the fair’s buzz.

When strolling through the halls of a large collectible design fair, a little aesthetic litmus test comes in handy: Would you have it in your own house? The answer is a resounding ‘hell yes’ when it came to these gorgeous Gerrit Rietveld chairs presented by Netherlands-based gallery Mass Modern Design. These beauties are original productions dating to the 1960s, but have been reupholstered in a swirling fabric, designed by Heather Chontos for Pierre Frey. They’ll set you back a cool $40,000 for the pair – chump change compared to the multi-million-dollar transactions across the street at Art Basel.

Fendi routinely brings some of the most exquisite works to Design Miami – and this year was no different. The Milanese house tapped Argentina-born designer Constanza Vallese, whose scale-spanning work encompasses everything from jewellery to furniture, to create a series of bronze furnishings and objects. Vallese, using lost-wax casting techniques, embellished the resulting chair, screen and bench with exquisite gilded blooms. A particularly delightful detail? Fendi’s signature selleria stitches, wrought in bronze, around the seat of a chair. Grounded on butter-yellow carpets loomed by CC-Tapis, the booth was a moment of understated richness.

New York ceramic artist Katie Stout took this year’s Design Miami theme, ‘Make. Believe.’, and ran with it, starting with a whimsical installation of frogs, crabs and other critters (they all function as public benches!) in the heart of Miami’s Design District. But the Design Miami tent held something even more fun – a carousel made from ceramic mermaids. Attendees were even invited to sit on it and take it for a spin.