In this movie produced by Dezeen for Biennale Interieur, Joost Vanhecke introduces this year's festival and explains why it runs a workshop for the 20 young designers selected for its Interieur Awards.

This year is the first time that Biennale Interieur has run a free workshop for the winners of its awards programme, which took place over a week at Domaine de Boisbuchet in France.

"What we do here is something that no other festival or fair in the world is doing," claims Biennale Interieur project manager Vanhecke. "Biennale Interieur is doing it because it's a not-for-profit organisation and we want to really give chances and possibilities to a new generation of designers."

Biennale Interieur, now in it's 24th edition, will present a showcase of international design in Kortrijk, Belgium, from 17 to 26 October 2014.

"The unique identity of Biennale Interieur is the mix between culture and commerce," Vanhecke explains.

"We have more than 250 brands on show and we have a large cultural programme, which is this year curated by Joseph Grima of Space Caviar."

The Interieur Awards programme is an integral part of the show, which gives young designers and architects an opportunity to present new projects at the festival.

Winning products this year include Minale-Maeda's Keystones project, a set of 3D-printed connectors that combine with standard wooden parts to make a range of furniture, as well as Phytophiler by Italian studio Dossofiorito, a plant pot with a range of appendices to enable plant lovers to observe their flowers more closely.

"The workshop is divided into two groups," workshop leader Jörg Mennickheim explains. "On the one hand I'm helping the designers work on their prototypes, to bring them to finished objects."

He adds: "There's another group that have already finished their prototypes and they're working on the exhibition design for all the designers' work at the biennale in Kortrijk."

The exhibition design concept the 20 young designers developed throughout the workshop was to create an optical illusion so that, when viewed from a certain perspective, all 20 products will seem to be encompassed by a circle.

"We have a huge strip [to design the exhibition in]," explains Alessandro Squadrito of Minale-Maeda. "It's really long. So the idea was to have a single point of view where you can see the final image of every product all together in a circle."

Levi Dethier of Belgian studio LeviSarha, who will present a customisable bookshelf called Perimeter at the biennale, says that being able to design the exhibition enabled each designer to make sure their work is presented in the best possible light.

"We are working together to really try to make the exhibition about our objects," he says. "I think it's a great opportunity to show ourselves and our way."

For Livia Rossi of Italian studio Dossofiorito, the collaborative nature of the workshop is what really stuck out.

"It's been really stimulating to work all together because you have 20 people with very different attitudes and different ways of thinking," she says. "So it's really challenging, but also really beautiful."

Biennale Interieur will run from 17 to 26 October 2014 in Kortrijk, Belgium.

Dezeen are media partners for Biennale Interieur 2014 and will be bringing you all the latest news from the event.

The music used in the movie is a track called Honey in the Mud by Jordan Mitchell. Additional footage of Biennale Interieur 2012 used in the movie is courtesy of Cnocspot.