Though your Sight Unseen editors have been in major curation mode for the past two weeks, we’ve also had day to day work to do as, you know, journalists. So for five days during our Sight Unseen OFFSITE event last week, Monica and I set up camp on the Astroturf-covered bleachers of the MOLD Future Food Café, where we caught up on emails and posted stories to this very site. It was the perfect vantage point from which to view our own event: We could see friends and VIPs on their way in, and we could overhear people heading to the elevator, on their way up to the second floor. The most common refrain we heard? “Oh my God, there’s more upstairs?”
So much more — the second floor of Sight Unseen OFFSITE played host to no fewer than 36 independent designers (and one dog named Loopy), who hailed from places as far as Mälmo, Sweden, and as near as Red Hook, Brooklyn. Each designer was hand-picked by us, but we never dreamed when we began curating it exactly how vast the range of work on show would be.
See Part 1 of our Sight Unseen OFFSITE recap here, and stay tuned for more Design Week coverage coming this week. Thank you again to our graphic designers Kokoro & Moi and our PR team at Camron, and special thanks to our partners — General Growth Properties, Rockwell Group, Q+Q, Waggener Edstrom, and Interiors From Spain — without whom none of this would have been possible in the first place.
The year-old, Brooklyn-based studio Bower created a stunner of a booth, showing off their tinted Shape Mirrors — which debuted at this year’s Arch Digest Home Design Show — as well as their beautiful new Moire and Contour tables, which they were finishing in the days up to the show.
Brooklyn-based artist collective Fort Makers delved into the world of ceramics with a colorful collection of tiled furniture. The forms and colors, they say, were inspired by Art Deco, altars, and Matisse’s chapel in Vence, France.
We snagged recent SU subjects Visibility — founded by Joseph Guerra and Sina Sohrab — who showed a collection focused on domestic utility: outdoor chairs, hand mirrors, coatracks and the prettiest new porcelain kitchen set.
Calen Knauf and Conrad Brown of the Vancouver studio Knauf and Brown debuted their Standard collection, which consists of a movable “floor coaster,” a modular table light, and a vanity mirror that all require user interaction.
Seattleites Jean Lee and Dylan Davis of Ladies & Gentlemen collaborated — and shared booth space — with glassblower John Hogan. And though this may sound cheesy, each item in their display was like a little jewel — small and sparkly and wonderful.
Among our favorites: Ladies & Gentlemen’s Forward/Slash light next to one of their mixed-metal kinetic sculptures.
And from Hogan, a prismatic iridescent glass sculpture.
Super popular booth by The Principals, who riffed on two kinds of historical icons for their colorful display: The Dead Chair Table series repurposed iconic chairs as table bases, executed in insulation foam; their Brancusi Studies explored “scale and camouflage by shrinking famous sculptures and masking them in colors so flamboyant they disguise the geometry.”
Syrette Lew of Moving Mountains art directed two friends into her space: Lew created the mirror and shelving unit while Lisa Yoneno contributed the rug and Andrew O. Hughes the candlesticks.
Detail of Yoneno’s rug.
Hughes’s gorgeous candlesticks took a tumble early in the exhibition and one broke; luckily the Brooklyn-based glass artist was able to melt the damaged pieces and start all over again.
Rosie Li used a trompe l’oeil fabric panel as the backdrop for her triangle Stella light for Roll & Hill as well as a brand new series of exploded pendants and tripod table lamps.
Eric Trine’s color explosion featured new Rod + Weave chairs in brass and blue, custom neons, collab chairs with Dusen Dusen from the Print All Over Me exhibition downstairs, and pieces from his recent Alley Oop collaboration with Will Bryant.
Brooklyn-based Huy Bui easily had the most technologically interesting space — his new Moss and Fog coffee tables are “essentially an enclosed ecosystem that self-automates a fog/cloud based on a programmed environmental sensor using an Arduino micro-controller. Within the unit lies a bed of moss and air plants alike. The table is part of the Plant-In City modular system and it can connect/stack with other plant-in city terrarium units, allowing the fog/clouds to hangout or traverse from one unit to another.”
Bui also debuted these mini terrariums.
Fredericks & Mae had all kinds of new product up their sleeves: wind socks, linen towels, darts, tassels, brushes, and more.
Tassels made from synthetic hair; the Brooklyn-based duo also debuted tassels made from tinsel.
Christian Swafford and Lauren Larson of Material Lust expanded on their Geometry is God series. The space featured a new ladder, hand mirror, vanity, and candelabra in their signature monochrome.
Brenda and Robert Zurn drove up from St. Petersburg, Florida with the contents of this beautiful booth packed into their van. They also flew up two of their five kids to be on intern duty during the event!
DAMM’s Florida-inspired Terrace lamp.
Misha Kahn collaborated with artist Anne Libby on this series of painterly concrete tiles.
They shared a booth with New York designer George Venson of the wallpaper company Voutsa. His Birds of Paradise papers start life as watercolor paintings.
The Michigan-based macrame guru Sally England debuted a brand new series of metallic wall hangings called Black Gold.
Brooklyn designer Farrah Sit’s Graphite collection, which provides indoor plants with their own light sources. Each hanging planter is composed of an outside brass framework and a gemlike glass-panel interior.
The glass in Sit’s planters was also blown by Andrew O. Hughes.
Brooklyn-based Chris Wolston just got back from a year in Medellin, Colombia, where he was living on a Fulbright grant. The premise of his investigation there was to find inspiration through observing manual and manufactured modes of production — comparing, for example, the techniques and materials used in traditional Colombian pottery to those of an industrial terra cotta brick factory. The body of work shown here investigates the relational value of materials, including furniture pieces made with clay from that brick factory.
Brit Kleinman debuted her company AVO and its Painted Plains collection, which uses cowhides and bold graphics to create a juxtaposition between material and pattern. Every rug in the Painted Plains series is hand painted in Brooklyn.
Brendan Mullins of the San Francisco studio Whyte showcased experimental versions his Ascension Chairs and was even weaving versions of the seat on-site.
The collection from USA-OK, a brand-new company formed by Chicago-based friends and collaborators Ray Doeksen and Mike Dreeben. USA-OK grew out of a simple question: How can two guys without a big development budget produce an affordable, good quality, comfortable American-made chair? The solution developed around a process called brake forming: a group of standardized, low-cost operations with which skilled American workers in Chicago can efficiently cut and form sheet metal into precise, complex shapes.
Brooklyn-based Haptic Lab, known for its graphic signature kites, debuted a handmade rug by Dain Mergenthaler, Alayna Rasile and Kristin Culmo, as well as kites by Emily Fischer and a collaboration with Fort Makers.
Berlin-based furniture designer Katrin Greiling teamed up with graphic designer Parasto Backman to create a new line of 2D-inspired rugs called Chorin. “The three designs in Chorin’s first collection translate elements of illustration and architectural drawings into fields of color and line,” the designers write. We’re especially partial to the yellow!
Rich Brilliant Willing showed their entire new line at the Javits center, but created a site-specific installation of their new modular Palindrome light at OFFSITE.
The trio shared space with Los Angeles–based Mimi Jung of Brook & Lyn, whose gradient mohair wall hangings are based on the hues of twilight.
Swedish designer Jenny Nordberg shipped a crate over from her recent exhibition Recompositions, which focused on taking rejected furniture and objects that were no longer wanted and dividing them into smaller building blocks with which to create new objects with new functions and meanings.
Pablo Alabau’s graphite and pine Metafisico stools explored the different compositions one can create using the same block of wood cut seven different ways. His booth partner Rachel Griffin of Earnest Studio, introduced Fragments, a series of bowls and lids produced from stone industry offcuts.
Brooklyn-based Brian Persico showed a number of handmade furniture pieces and objects including bows, carved wooden items and formed metal objects. The credenza is made from a single piece of Japanese floorboard.
Brooklyn-based Pat Kim explored the application of mother of pearl — the super chic material found its way onto candleabras, bookends, and the amazing pearl-embossed basketball net shown here.
Brooklyn-based Paul Mignogna of Stillmade debuted a collection of beautifully made residential furniture in wood.
Lastly, Montreal-based Zoe Mowat showed new designs based around the idea of storage: walnut, steel, colored ash, marble, and leather pieces, including 33 1/3, an ode to the common milk crate for storing LPs.
When we founded the Noho Design District back in 2009, it was meant to provide a much-needed, well-curated platform for independent designers, whose numbers — particularly in America — had begun to surge. But it was also meant to add an extra dose of dimension and excitement to New York Design Week (or NYCxDesign, as it has since come to be known), which at the time was considered preeeeeetty lackluster, to say the least. By that measure alone, the first edition of Sight Unseen OFFSITE, our successor to the Noho Design District, was a massive success; word on the street was that this NYDW was the best anyone could remember, and we're proud to have played a significant role.
We've had a special place in our hearts for Spanish design for as long as we can remember. After all, the very first scouting trip we ever took for Sight Unseen, way back in the summer of 2009, was to sunny Barcelona. (Don't even get us started on Design in Spain, the last full issue Monica and I worked on at I.D. Magazine, and one of our personal favorites, period.) So when the Spanish trade commission in New York asked us earlier this spring if we'd be interested in curating a selection of our favorite recent Spanish designs for Sight Unseen OFFSITE, the answer was an unequivocal yes.
Back in March, we gave you a small taste of what was to come at Sight Unseen OFFSITE, our brand new nomadic design fair opening May 16 at 200 Lafayette Street in New York's Soho neighborhood. But a lot has happened since then! Most notably, we've brought some exciting partners on board and finalized our official lineup, which is now packed with more than 50 independent designers and forward-thinking brands, all of whom have been hand-picked by the editors at Sight Unseen. Open to the public May 16 to 20 — during the hours of 12PM to 7PM Friday and 11AM to 7PM Saturday through Tuesday — Sight Unseen OFFSITE is New York design week's most exciting platform for new ideas and talents. Check out a small preview after the jump of some of the works that will be on view during the show, then join us next weekend to see it in person!
