site.btaExhibition on Contemporary Bulgarian Product Design Opens in Gabrovo

An exhibition of contemporary Bulgarian product design is on at the House of Humour and Satire in Gabrovo. The exhibition is organized by MD - a design, interior and architecture magazine, in cooperation with the museum and with the support of the North Central State Enterprise - Gabrovo, said Svetlana Mihailova, Head of the PR Department of the museum. 

Visitors of the exhibition can see 27 products by contemporary Bulgarian designers, six of which have been awarded the most prestigious international design award, Red Dot, the museum noted. Among the products is Martin Angelov's Halfbike, which is the result of an attempt to make the traditional bicycle as compact as possible: it gets rid of the seat and goes for a different steering principle that engages the full body, much like the movements of a skier. Angelov designed the innovative Halfbike together with his friend and business partner Mikhail Klenov. In 2015, its second modification was awarded the international Red Dot design award. It is sold mainly in the US and Western Europe, with interest recently increasing from Singapore, Japan and Hong Kong.

The exhibition also includes two of the most successful products created by the designer Petar Zaharinov, whose imagination is at the heart of the studio brands Praktrik, WallStack and DiFOLD. Among the exhibits, visitors will see a Praktrik studio table, for which the designer received the 2011 Platinum A'Design Award, and DiFOLD's foldable Origami Bottle, which expresses the brand's mission to make disposables a thing of the past and reveal new possibilities of reusable alternatives. The brand used its patented folding technology for the foldable bottle, which preserves the strength of the product and the comfort for the user, while also saving space and achieving zero waste in packaging. It was awarded the German Sustainability Award Design 2022 and the Red Dot design award for 2023.

The exhibition is part of a series of events related to the promotion of Bulgarian design and the successes of Bulgarian designers. The products are also featured in a book, Bulgarian Product Design 2000/2022 by the publishing house Bismar, which was released in June 2023. A total of 50 Bulgarian designers and studios with more than 350 products developed by them are included and presented in the book. More than 400 pages present furniture, lighting fixtures, vehicles, appliances, tools, toys, household items, dishes and many other products, the work of top Bulgarian designers, many of whom are winners of prestigious international design awards.

The exhibition is on until April 8, 2024.