Fabian Freytag is Ambiente Designer of the year 2025. With "The Lounge – Shades of Space", he presented an installation at this year's Ambiente that elegantly blurs the boundaries between public exhibition grounds and private retreat.
For Fabian Freytag, every room is like a canvas that he fills with meaning through his installations. The architect and designer created the twelve-metre-high, light-flooded Galleria 1 with its wide sightliness as a temporary stage set with three fabric-wrapped tents: A red bar serving Italian cocktail classics. An emerald green kiosk, which was more performative like a "Wes Anderson Store" and sold small trays.
And the large, royal blue lounge, in which Freytag staged the theme of hospitality as a museum. 'From the very beginning, it was important to me that there was a contrast between inside and outside', he says. 'Anyone entering The Lounge should be whisked away into a parallel world.'
A sacred retreat full of contrasts
Opulent curtains that dissolve upwards create a portico-like entrance area with a surrounding band. 'I wanted to create a kind of temple', says Freytag. 'A sacred space that is both sublime and inviting.' According to the designer, looking behind the curtains makes visitors feel a bit like voyeurs, as if they are crossing a private boundary. In this way, the concept of The Lounge also plays with the contrast with exhibition stands, which are dependent on the view from outside.
'Hospitality – the act of entertaining and receiving guests – will become much more private and intimate in the future' , says Freytag. This is the idea behind The Lounge: a room divided into many small compartments. These compartments are reminiscent of the enfilade of classical buildings. 'Frank Lloyd Wright emphasised that rooms need an interplay of narrowness and expanse. You have to be condensed, compressed, in order to experience liberation', explains Freytag. 'That is what this is all about: First this naked view into the hallway: just fabric, reduced and minimalist – and then, when you turn the corner, the opulent scenery unfolds as a contrast.'
A play with space, time and emotion
While the vintage furniture on display comes from a well-known Berlin design and furniture collection, all other products – bowls, glasses, champagne coolers, corkscrews and candlesticks – come from exhibitors such as Gabriella Seres and Reflections Copenhagen. Fabian Freytag has carefully selected them to create a harmonious dialogue between old and new, between past and present. 'It was important to me that the products had something imperfect about them, for example, that they were handmade.'
Ambiente will once again be the meeting place for the international design scene next year and will take place from February 6 to 10, 2026. The winner of the title "Ambiente Designer of the Year 2026" will be announced in autumn.
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