The 2020 Interior Design Show (IDS20) is welcoming San Francisco-based Swiss designer, entrepreneur and humanitarianism Yves Béhar as its International Guest of Honour.

Recognized for advocating the value of design in business, Béhar is the founder and chief designer of fuseproject, a multidisciplinary industrial design and branding firm; co-founder of August Home, the leading provider of smart locks and smart home services; and co-founder of Canopy, a boutique co-working enterprise.

Béhar believes that integrated product, digital, experience design and brand design are the cornerstones of any business. He has collaborated with renowned partners such as Herman Miller, Movado, Samsung, Puma, Issey Miyake, Prada, SodaStream, Swarovski, Canal+, Nivea and many others, receiving international acclaim.

His humanitarian work includes One Laptop Per Child, which has given 2.5 million laptops to children in developing countries and See Better to Learn Better, which distributes 500,000 free corrective eyeglasses to schoolchildren in Mexico and California every year. For each of these, he was honoured with the INDEX Award, making him the only designer to receive the award twice.

Béhar’s works are embraced in permanent museums collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Centre Pompidou and the Art Institute of Chicago.

He was named a Top 25 Visionary by TIME Magazine and was recently named “Most Influential Industrial Designer in the World” by Forbes.

The contemporary design fair takes place January 16-19, 2020 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre.