FEATURE
Unique Design X
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Unique Design X wrapped its third Mexico City edition last week at Expo Reforma during CDMX Art Week. Founded by Morgan Morris Sans in 2019, the nomadic fair explores the intersections between collectible design, functional art, fashion, and culture, treating each location as an evolving dialogue shaped by local cultural integrity.
Morris Sans launched Unique Design X after witnessing mountains of waste at Design Shanghai, where she previously worked. The experience fundamentally changed her approach. The fair now reuses timber, flooring, and curtains between editions, a sustainability model built directly from that visceral encounter with industrial-scale disposal. This year’s Mexico City presentation reused materials from previous years.
The theme drew from Bruno Munari’s idea that when the objects we use every day become art in themselves, we achieve balanced living. Participants included Carpenters Workshop Gallery, Marion Friedmann showcasing Mexican and Latin American designers, Esteban Tamayo’s collectible work, Seoul-based Nice Workshop reinterpreting industrial byproducts, and Radiooooo debuting their first physical jukebox.
Morris Sans describes the thread running through their editions as led by feeling rather than format, where each piece speaks to disrupting the unconscious way we move through environments. The fair refuses the traditional booth-based model, instead building something that responds to place and community.
We’re excited to see Mexico City’s design scene continue to grow, and grateful to learn more about the independent designers and makers building this ecosystem. The city has become a real hub for creativity across disciplines, and platforms like Unique Design X are helping strengthen those connections.
For readers who haven’t encountered Unique Design X before, can you explain what the fair is and how it differs from traditional design fairs?
Unique Design X is a curated commercial platform exploring the intersections between functional art, collectible design, fashion, and culture. Our inspiration and approach are rooted to the intangible moments objects evoke in our daily lives, we aim to breathe a new sense of presence within the spaces we curate and work we showcase. Our platform is an evolving dialogue examining the bounds of culture, objects, space, community, history, and their greater symbiotic relationship with each other.
This is your third Mexico City edition. What drew you to Mexico City specifically, and how has the fair evolved since that first presentation in 2024?
Mexico City is an established cultural landscape with a deep-rooted history in ritual and artisan legacy. In its recent contemporary moment, it is a clear hub internationally across cultures and mediums. We are deeply inspired by the ineffable pulse racing through this city that always seems to speak of possibility…the city is an ongoing painting. Unique Design X continues to evolve from our relationships and partnerships both in Mexico City and beyond. We are grateful to have new interest from fashion houses in the dialogues we are fostering. This year we are presenting the same philosophy and mission with expanded participants and an enriched community resonating with the intentionality towards pioneering further development and exploration of collectible design and functional art
UDX is described as “nomadic,” moving between cities like Paris, Shanghai, Savannah, and now Mexico City. How does this model actually work, and what challenges come with setting up in different places?
Our approach is rooted in an evolving commitment to immersion and allowing our editions to evolve from the local cultural integrity. We strongly believe in fostering a synthesis of experience that seamlessly interconnects different frameworks of creating, connecting and discovering across cultures. We are fortunate to have a global network of creative leaders that resonate with our vision across major cities we’ve held previous editions in and partner with us to create an authentic activation that aligns with the sense of place and our core philosophies across functional art and collectible design.
You’ve mentioned that your experience at Design Shanghai, where you witnessed mountains of waste, pushed you toward a more sustainable approach. What does that look like in practice when you’re building and breaking down a fair?
We partner with a local production team to ensure sustainable measures from set up & breakdown to signage to the vendors we work with. We aim to make every aspect of the fair intentional and want the conversation around waste and sustainability to continue to pave a new way for us to cultivate these experiences while honoring and respecting the cities we are co-creating with.
This year’s theme draws from Bruno Munari’s idea about objects becoming art in daily life. How do you select the galleries and designers who participate, and what are you looking for?
Our selection process is nuanced and led through a framework of emotive reckoning as much as it is about alignment. We look for artists who are examining visually and ephemerally the landscape of object, perception and experience. We look for this articulation through a vast range of mediums and approaches that are rooted in evolving our relationship to objects.
You’ve now established an advisory board that includes architects, artists, curators, and designers across multiple continents. How does this group inform your curatorial decisions, and has their input shifted the direction of the fair?
Our advisory board is emblematic of the expanding dialogues we are fostering. Our curation and our editions are not static; each member of our advisory board is an impactful edge in the cultivation of cross cultural and industry exchanges. Our direction is always carried and informed by the perspectives and acclaim brought forward by the innovators and leaders we trust and are inspired by. We see this as a living and breathing evolution, more perspectives and invitations perpetually being introduced as we continue pioneering this space of functional art and collectible design.
The crossover approach is central to UDX, bringing together skate culture, fashion, and art alongside collectible design. This year features everything from artist-designed skate parks to Radiooooo’s first physical jukebox. How do you balance these unexpected elements while maintaining a cohesive vision?
The thread of our editions is led by the synthesis of feeling that arises from the experience as a whole. Whether it is an arrangement of seating as a site specific installation, a handcrafted pottery inspired by Mexican ritual and craft or furniture that intermixes material in a poetic framework, each speaks the same language of noticing how it is disrupting the unconscious way we can move through environments and what arises in the mind, heart and body when we are surrounded by space and objects that speak to a different sentiment. The emotional landscape viewers experience is attuned from the liminal coherence found amongst the works on view.
You’re working to build a cultural bridge between Paris and Mexico City. Beyond the fair itself, what does that bridge look like?
It is one that openly explores the ideas of thought and process across cities and cultures. We are hosting events such as the French Mex touch, which will take place Saturday, the evening of February 7th, to celebrate 200 years of Franco-Mexican cultural exchange. We are excited to continue to bring these cultural frameworks to the forefront of our platforms and communities. We hope to inspire new connections that invite people to see the interplays across borders and to cultivate a growing curiosity for endless multicultural frameworks within art and beyond.
