05.19.17

Sight Unseen OFFSITE

Our 2017 Show Is Open For Business!

Our fourth annual Sight Unseen OFFSITE officially opens for business today at noon! Please come by the ground floor of 100 Avenue of the Americas in Soho to check out new furniture, lighting, ceramics, and objects by 24 of our favorite independent designers and brands — from Iacoli & McAllister to Atelier de Troupe, Home Studios to Elyse Graham — plus a virtual-reality interiors experience by Tom Hancocks for the online art purveyor Twyla, an interactive installation by The Principals and Calico Wallpaper, two up-and-coming talents presented by Levi's Made and Crafted, a lounge by West Elm, and a group exhibition curated by Sight Unseen that features the work of 25 amazing international designers. Hope to see you there!

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04.17.17

Sight Unseen OFFSITE

Join Us for our 2017 Sight Unseen OFFSITE Show!

Today we're excited to share the details of our fourth annual Sight Unseen OFFSITE show, taking place May 19–22 on the ground floor of 100 Avenue of the Americas in Soho. The 2017 event will be even more focused than in past years on individual presentations: Pared back to just 25 participants, each will have a larger exhibition space in which to show a collection of more elevated work. Sight Unseen’s editors have also chosen a select number of up-and-coming talents for a standalone group exhibition.

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05.20.16

Sight Unseen OFFSITE

Take a Tour of the 2016 Show, Part II

This year's show was, as always, meticulously curated to ensure both the highest quality of designs and a variety of experiences. We had pop-ups where visitors could buy chocolate, cosmetics, fragrances, ceramics and smoking accessories; we hosted our second annual lunch cafe by Sunday Supper, this year in collaboration with Baked by Lexie Smith; we partnered with Homepolish to create and style a lounge using furniture by the show’s designers; and we had mega-Instagrammable moments in the form of Bower’s infinite hall of mirrors, kinder MODERN’s Design Chess matches, Land of Nod’s supersized play room, Eric Trine’s pink toilet, and Leong Leong’s foam-roller TOPO installation for Ford, which throughout the weekend became a jungle gym for our littlest Sight Unseen fans. Here's Part II of our tour.

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05.19.16

Sight Unseen OFFSITE

Take a Tour of Our 2016 Show, Part I

Since Sight Unseen OFFSITE began three years ago, we've held the fair in three different locations, and people often ask whether that nomadic spirit translates in practice to something of a logistical nightmare. The answer, of course, is yes, and yet, each May, there's a huge payoff: Our space has informed the character of each year's show in an immeasurable way, and this year's fair was no different. See what you missed firsthand in this part one of two tours of our 2016 show,

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05.16.16

Sight Unseen OFFSITE

These Norwegian and American Designers Spent Six Months Collaborating on Skype

For the Norway x New York booth at Sight Unseen OFFSITE, we set up a cross-cultural exchange pairing 5 entrepreneurial American studios (Ladies & Gentlemen, Bower, Farrah Sit, Jonah Takagi, Assembly) and 5 up-and-coming Norwegian ones (Vera and Kyte, Bjørn van den Berg, Silje Nesdal, Hallgeir Homstvedt, Morten and Jonas), who spent the past six months working together via Skype and emails on a long-distance collaboration, with the aim to develop an object or series of objects that utilized an American workshop for fabrication.

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04.25.16

Sight Unseen OFFSITE

Get Ready to Experience Leong Leong’s Epic Infinite Sound Bath for Ford

Christopher and Dominic Leong, brothers and founding partners in the New York–based architectural office Leong Leong, have since 2009 developed a practice shaped by an understanding of architecture as a discipline in constant dialogue with other disciplines, such as art, film, and music. Their installation for this year’s edition of Sight Unseen OFFSITE is no exception: TOPO is an immersive and experiential landscape — created in partnership with ARUP and inspired by the design thinking behind the Ford Edge — that turns a flowing field of more than a thousand foam rollers into a kind of musical instrument, using acoustic actuators to pick up ambient sounds and translate them into a sonic soundscape.

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03.31.16

Sight Unseen OFFSITE

Here’s a Sneak Peek at Our 2016 Show!

Today we're excited to share the details of our Sight Unseen OFFSITE 2016 show, presented in partnership with Ford Motor Company and taking place May 13–16 on the 15th floor of the iconic Grace Building, a beautiful 20,000 square-foot space with floor-to-ceiling views onto Bryant Park below.

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02.17.16

Sight Unseen OFFSITE

Join Our 2016 New York Design Week Show

Each May, Sight Unseen produces and curates one of the biggest, most important fairs held during New York Design Week: Sight Unseen OFFSITE. This year we're stepping things up a major notch, with double the exhibition space — inside the historic W.R. Grace building — and an even more ambitious curatorial program, presented in partnership with Ford. The show runs from May 13–16, and our exhibitor application process is now open.

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05.22.15

Sight Unseen OFFSITE

A Tour of the 2015 Show: Part II

...In which we show you the rest of the incredible work we presented this year at Sight Unseen OFFSITE, which took place at Hudson Mercantile and featured the work of more than 100 designers, who hailed from places as varied as Los Angeles, Vancouver, Indianapolis, St. Augustine, FL, Detroit, Seattle, Montreal, and, of course, Brooklyn. If you happened to miss it — or if you just want to relive the glory — check out our slideshow after the jump, which features all of the studios that exhibited on the 6th floor of our show.

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05.22.15

Sight Unseen OFFSITE

A Tour of the 2015 Show: Part I

As anyone who's ever made an album knows, sophomore efforts are by far the toughest to pull off. And so, even though we here at Sight Unseen have been putting together a major Design Week showcase in some way or another since 2010, this year marked only our second outing as Sight Unseen OFFSITE, which debuted last year to enormous fanfare and praise.

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05.15.15

Sight Unseen OFFSITE

The Making of the Principals’ Dynamic Sanctuary for Ford

Sight Unseen OFFSITE opens today, and front and center at this year's show is an undulating structure that, from a distance, looks incredibly mysterious — its walls are made from an unusual material, and they periodically emit a strange, pulsing blue glow. As you approach the structure, you first pass through a very narrow entryway that obscures your view of what's inside, but once you arrive there — well, that's the magic of the Dynamic Sanctuary, an installation by the Brooklyn design studio The Principals that's a kind of poetic metaphor for the design ideas behind Ford's 2015 Edge vehicle.

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05.12.15

Sight Unseen OFFSITE

Designing for The New Escapism

Months ago, when we first began chatting with Ford about what a partnership for our Sight Unseen OFFSITE event this weekend would look like, we alighted on a phrase Ford had used to talk about the spirit that their new Ford Edge vehicle embodies: They called it the new escapism, which involves designing pockets of personal space that might help to bring a sense of calm and balance to everyday life’s otherwise volatile pace. From that nugget evolved a framework for both the Dynamic Sanctuary installation we commissioned from The Principals (above) — which uses light to visualize users’ biorhythms, creating a calming oasis during the hectic schedule of New York design week — and the programming we’ve created surrounding it.

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