MILAN, Italy, April 18, 2008 (AFP) - A bed suspended from the ceiling, a 100-percent recyclable chair: young guns and the established names are competing for attention at Milan's international furniture fair.

PARIS, April 13, 2008 (AFP) - He may be the global darling of design, but fast-talking hyperactive Philippe Starck wants esthetic considerations struck off the menu. Ethics are the order of the day, he believes, if the planet is to be saved.

PARIS, April 1, 2008 (AFP) - Designer Philippe Starck on Tuesday said he had been named 'artistic director' of France's upcoming EU presidency on the request of Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner.

'Bernard Kouchner wants the French presidency to have a very interesting, very creative profile,' Starck told AFP.

BERLIN, March 27, 2008 (AFP) - Renowned French designer Philippe Starck says he is fed up with his job and plans to retire in two years, in an interview published in a German weekly on Thursday.

'I was a producer of materiality and I am ashamed of this fact,' Starck told Die Zeit weekly newspaper.

'Everything I designed was unnecessary.

BRUSSELS, Feb 25, 2008 (AFP) - The EU Commission on Monday unveiled the winning 'primitive' design for a commemorative coin to be issued next year to mark the 10th anniversary of the launch of the common European currency.

PARIS, Feb 7, 2008 (AFP) - Whacky, wow-ish or just plain winsome, walls are stepping out from the background to become the darlings of contemporary design.

Like the urban graffiti everywhere outside, wallpaper is back livening up insides after long being ostracised as a dull, difficult-to-stick and even harder-to-peel-off favourite of the out-of-date elderly 'blue-rinse' brigade.

BRUSSELS, Feb 1, 2008 (AFP) - EU citizens were invited Friday to vote for the design of a special two-euro coin to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the launch of the common European currency, with a golden prize to lure entries.

ROME, Dec 31, 2007 (AFP) - Designer and architect Ettore Sottsass, the figurehead of 20th-century Italian design and founder of the influential Memphis Group, died on Monday aged 90, the ANSA news agency reported.

Sottsass died at his home in northern Milan of heart failure after suffering from flu.

ROME, Dec 31, 2007 (AFP) - Designer and architect Ettore Sottsass, the figurehead of 20th-century Italian design and founder of the influential Memphis Group, died on Monday aged 90, the ANSA news agency reported.

Sottsass died at his home in northern Milan of heart failure after suffering from the flu, ANSA said.

PARIS, Sept 23, 2007 (AFP) - Plumping on a lip-shaped sofa or giant foot, bedding down in a womb-room complete with bath facilities -- a ground-breaking Paris exhibition this week takes a fresh and often witty look at the inspiration behind two centuries of design.

'We have tried to approach design a little differently,' said curator Jean-Louis Gaillemin, an art historian and Paris university lecturer.