Design Dialogues For Decorex 2026 With Alex Dauley and Grant Pierrus of AEVEN Collective

The Interior Design Business

Grant Peiris and Alex Dauley discuss the 'A Seat at the Table' concept for the Decorex 2026 Bar, designed to foster community within the int

Key takeaways

• The DecoreX 2026 Bar concept features a single, large U-shaped table with 70 different chairs.
• An open call was launched in partnership with London Craft Week and the Craft Council to find makers and artisans.

Main topics

• Decorex 2026 Bar Concept
• Industry Networking

Notable quotes

The table represents the industry, the chairs represent all of us in the sector; we're all different.

Conclusion

The episode illustrates how intentional, community-focused installatio

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) I'm Grant Peiris. I'm a co-founder of Avon, which is a platform for the creative sector. I also run a marketing consulting agency called Peiris Agency and avid fan of the interior design sector. Speaker 2 (0:14) I'm Alex Dawley. I have run an interior design practice for the last 12 years. I am co-founder of United in Design and co-founder of Avon with Grant. Speaker 1 (0:30) The day after we launched, there was an email in our inbox at 8am from Sam saying, can you get involved? And we, of course, said yes. We love DecorX. We said to Sam, we have some ideas, but you can't clip our wings, you know. Alex and I came up with this concept where it was very much mimicking what we're doing at Avon, which is about the community. And so the concept is a seat at the table. And essentially we have 70 different chairs. in the bar around the table and the table represents the industry the chairs represent all of us in the sector we're all different we all look at things differently and that's what all these different chairs represent I said to Alex you know this is a great concept we've landed on how are you going to turn this into a bar design yeah Speaker 2 (1:29) yeah and the concept is so strong that we knew very early on that we wanted it to be a community space. The design of the walls and the structure and all of that is set, and now we've set that. And the table itself, it's quite simple in its design. It's a huge table, just one table, sort of in a, well, like a U-shape, but with, you know, right-angled corners. Because often... The tables in those spaces are individual tables or tables that seat, you know, four or six or what have you. And, you know, when you walk into those spaces and someone's at a table and you feel nervous to then go and join that table. So we said, no, one table, 70 chairs. The whole point is that it is different. I've not wanted to put any kind of creative parameters on any of the makers that are. working with us we decided very early on as well that we weren't just going to use chairs from the brands that we know suppliers that we know we wanted to throw this out into the world basically and say this is our concept this is what we're creating if you are a maker a brand a supplier a craftsperson we would love you to submit a chair or a piece of art or a piece of sculpture that we would like to display in the space. Speaker 1 (2:59) And we partnered with London Craft Week and the Craft Council to get our open call all the way across the country. So we have people whose chairs are going to be in the room from Cornwall to the