The Thursday night of Cologne's Interior Design Week traditionally sees everyone heading to Design Parcours Ehrenfeld, grabbing one of the many drinks on offer, and promenading the city's most diverse and creative neighborhood. Ehrenfeld is home to a variety of converted warehouses, owner-run shops, bars, clubs, and creative businesses—and, during this time of the year, draws in even more of the latter. True to its alternative vibe, a lot of the work on show blurs the lines between art, design and fashion; sustainable design and local manufacturing are also recurring themes.

Designers Fair at DQE is one of the busiest shows every year. Amongst the crowds, Vase & Leuchte by Miriam Aust caught our eye because of the clever integration of the plant as part of the design. The object is distributed by Dua Shop, who specialize in realizing small batch series together with designers and small factories.

Another lamp on show by Dua Shop was Like Paper, designed by Aust & Amelung. The delicate appearance juxtaposes the fact that these lamps are actually made from slewed concrete, which displays the properties of the paper cast it is made in.

For her label German Jeans, Eva Gronbach designs beautiful couture and accessories, partly integrating fabrics from used miner's overalls.

An abandoned house on Koernerstrasse hosted an installation by Jan-Marc Kutscher and F. Arndt Studio AU, featuring live chickens around a dinner table in a window, a favorite stop for many visitors. Inside the house, designers showed products with a focus on recycling and sustainability, like this stool/shelf combination made from adobe by Julia Torscher and Laura Quarz of ecosign.

Utensil Shop across the street presented Joerg Mennickheim's Raster in a new limited edition range of colors. Originally intended as a wardrobe, the modular system based on perforated sheet metal has extended to being used in kitchens and bathrooms by Joerg's clients.

Gronicles showed Dutch design from Groningen at Wohnbar Wunderbar. What looks like a mutant sleeping bag from the outside and the guts of a stuffed animal from the inside is Cozy Shelter by artist and designer Lambert Kamps. The igloo-like inflated structure provided a great hideaway from the hustle and bustle of the exhibitions, and was indeed very cozy.

Belgian artist Byram Tunez experiments with symmetry and asymmetry in his two- and three-dimensional steel structures. This installation was the central piece at Jack In The Box.