LONDON—The venue for this year’s DesignArt London, a weeklong selling fair devoted to modern and contemporary design, now in its second year, is Berkeley Square, a sought-after residential address in London’s fashionable Mayfair district. Rows of large London Panes, planted in 1789, dominate the plaza. Though largely invisible once inside the fair tent, their hefty trunks nevertheless subtly intrude, creating fake pillars that evoke the material (wood) and form (organic) of many of the key pieces on this 40-gallery-strong showcase.

Representative of the latter quality, and also one of the fair’s highlights, is British sculptor Marc Quinn’s first foray into design, a limited-edition series of brilliant white Carrara marble furniture pieces inlaid with colored stone, which the artist describes as “icebergs frozen in time.” Offered by London’s Carpenters Workshop Gallery and limited to an edition of 8, the centerpiece of Quinn’s “Iceberg” series is a desk-and-chair set priced at $162,000. Despite the cautious mood at many of the fairs in London, one enthusiastic collector snapped up all five pieces in the series (which also includes a console, table, side table, and bench) shortly before the fair officially opened on Tuesday, October 15.

Arguing the case for wood as the modernist material of choice are two vintage bookshelves, one a unique jacaranda piece by Brazilian furniture maker Joaquim Tenreiro, dated circa 1954, the other a pair of “trade quality” walnut shelving units by Italian “Neo-Rationalist” designer Franco Albini, from 1957. Offered by New York’s R 20th Century, the $150,000 Tenreiro piece was acquired by directors Zesty Meyers and Evan Snyderman from the private owner who commissioned the unit. Although mass-produced, Albini’s modular “anti-gravity” units, which use vertical compression for stability, carries an equally substantial asking price, $87,000. They are being offered by HP Le Studio of Paris, winner of this year’s Moët Hennessy-DesignArt London Prize for the best stand. Neither of these pieces had found a buyer by Thursday afternoon, the second full day of trade.

In a week when Frieze Art Fair is London’s main cultural attraction, the organizers of DesignArt London are keen to highlight “the symbiotic relationship between design and contemporary art.” The link becomes obvious once the similarly brash color palettes at both venues reveal themselves, but there is an equally compelling case to be made for the relationship between furniture design and architecture.

As signaled by Tenreiro and Albini, each of whom had close links with architects, Oscar Niemeyer and Gio Ponti respectively, the convergence of architectural and artistic disciplines is evident from the moment one steps into DesignArt London. David Gill Galleries, a London-based concern occupying a prime spot at the entrance, is showing a range of recent furniture pieces by Zaha Hadid including a $47,000 shelf and $134,000 sofa, both made from an aluminum substrate covered with a glass fiber shell and lacquer finish. Hadid’s Dune Tree, a stand-alone shelving unit, commands the booth's highest asking price, $200,000, with two of the edition of 12 having already found buyers.

The extreme curvilinear forms and lateral spread of Hadid’s works, which look as if they were design-tested in a wind tunnel, have made her a leading purveyor of a soft-edged design aesthetic that is at once kooky and conceptual. It is fitting, then, that she should appear alongside another maverick and visionary, Buckminster Fuller. Directly opposite Gill's booth, Sebastian + Barquet, who recently expanded their New York operations to include a London showroom, are offering a collection of five Fuller mobiles, one an original prototype edition produced for his original Minnesota dealer priced at $68,000. Despite his recent retrospective at the Whitney Museum, Fuller had not achieved any sales midway into Thursday.