09.22.16

Studio Visit

Bower On Becoming One of the Hottest Studios in American Design

Bower's products and furniture always feel just right for the moment in which they're made, somehow ahead of what's current but not so trendy that they'll soon fall out of fashion. That these sophisticated harbingers are made from an enormous Brooklyn woodshop with no A/C seems about right when you meet them.

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09.22.16

Eye Candy

We Outfitted Fashion Week’s Coolest Pop-Up With This Painted-Plywood Furniture

Refinery29's 29Rooms event is basically a funhouse of art and culture, where each room presents its own mega-Instagrammable moment. But what if you need a teeny tiny break from all that selfie-ing? That's where we came in. When Refinery asked Sight Unseen to curate the 29Rooms lounge area, we turned immediately to Bower, who came back at us just a few hours later with a sketch for this amazing collection.

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09.14.16

Excerpt: Exhibition

A Breathtaking Furniture Installation Staged Inside a Famed Brutalist House

When we named Jonathan Muecke to our American Design Hot list in 2014, the enigmatic Minnesota architect summed up his motivations with a 1963 George Brecht quote about seeking precision in objects — the same kind of precision, presumably, that he saw in the starkly angular 1974 Van Wassenhove House by Belgian architect Juliaan Lampens, where he recently spent a week making a new body of work for Maniera gallery.

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09.13.16

Sighted

Kelly Behun x Barneys: A Patterned Pop-Up, Where Maximalism Prevails

For Barneys New York, Kelly Behun and her team have created an immersive pop-up and capsule collection, on view through October 31st, that translates the studio's super graphic design aesthetic into a collection of items for the home. Called A Kook Milieu, the pop-up was inspired in part by the pattern and decoration–obsessed 1970s New York gallerist Holly Solomon, who was known for blurring the line between art and design.

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08.23.16

Sighted

A Brooklyn Furniture Studio Goes Minimal in Geometric Steel

When we first featured the Brooklyn design-build studio Uhuru, back in 2010, they were known for creating imaginative furniture collections out of salvaged materials, but their newest collection feels like a leap in a whole new direction. After finding success last year with a geometric blackened-steel console called Tack, they've expanded the series to include stools and end tables that would make Donald Judd proud.

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08.22.16

Excerpt: Book

Two Lost Donald Judd Interviews, Part II: On Color and Defining ‘Modernism’

Earlier this summer, when we happened to come across not one but two vibrant, late-'80s interviews with Donald Judd in the same week, we decided it was fate telling us to designate today Judd day here on the site, where we'd excerpt text from both. The second interview we're posting today comes from New York New Art, a 1989 tome that Monica unearthed at an antique mall in Nashville. The interview, with John Griffiths, took place at a Judd exhibition where the artist was showing new pieces in metal and perspex. It covers everything from why Judd began using color to whether the term "Modernism" actually means anything. Read on for more after the jump!

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08.18.16

Sighted

An Experimental Collection by a Studio at the Forefront of Seattle’s Design Scene

For their textile pieces, the Seattle-based studio Grain has been known to travel far and wide, working primarily with women artisans in Guatemala — after all, that's where founders James and Chelsea Minola first met and fell in love. But for their newest collection, the two stuck a bit closer to home: a rug woven by a textile mill near their alma mater, RISD; wooden trays and benches made in their Bainbridge Island studio; bottle openers cast in a Pacific Northwest foundry; and a glass series made in collaboration with John Hogan.

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08.12.16

Sighted

A Darkly Cinematic Furniture Collection, Rooted in Retrofuturism

Use Your Illusions is the third collection we've featured by the Sydney-based design studio Page Thirty Three, but it's the most cohesive by far, inspired by nostalgic visions of the future but rooted in the here and now and the studio's interest in ritual. "I love looking at how the future was forecast 50 years ago, and comparing it to how we live today," explains co-founder and creative director Ryan Hanrahan. "In most cases I like the alternate space-age visions that I saw on the big screen — or dreamt up as a kid — much more. I think a lot of what we design comes from these childhood obsessions."

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08.04.16

Up and Coming

This Brooklyn Designer is Doing Amazing Things With Industrial Rubber

In a previous life, Arielle Assouline-Lichten studied architecture at Harvard's Graduate School of Design, created graphics for Bjarke Ingels's Copenhagen office, built models for Snøhetta, and interned for Kengo Kuma. But she landed on our radar this spring after she began working for someone a little less famous: herself. This spring saw the launch of Slash Objects — a glamorous, assured debut furniture and object collection that mixes brass, marble, concrete, ceramic, and industrial rubber in endless combinations and at various scales.

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08.03.16

Sighted

Commune’s New West Elm Collection is a Study in California Cool

The American Trade Hotel in Panama, the Ace in Palm Springs, Heath Ceramics in San Francisco — for more than a decade, Commune has been the design firm behind these kinds of universally loved — and mega-Instagrammed — interiors. Slightly more under-the-radar are the Los Angeles studio's frequent furniture and object collaborations, which over the years have included everything from concrete tiles and rust-colored sofas to room fragrances and fireplace tools. But their latest collaboration brings Commune's distinct brand of California cool to the masses.

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07.25.16

Interiors

A Cult Milan Design Destination Gets Its Twice-Yearly Makeover

Here's something we're not sure why more stores aren't doing: Twice a year, the Milanese multi-brand furniture showroom Spotti gives over its entire space to longtime collaborators — and one of our favorite styling duos — Arianna Lelli Mami and Chiara Di Pinto of Studiopepe to remake however they see fit. This summer, the duo has created a interior called Instant Panorama for Spotti's renovated space — inspired, no doubt, by our Instagram-obsessed culture — that's set up in vignettes that are meant to be captured on film.

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07.17.16

Saturday Selects

Week of July 11, 2016

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: the new ceramics at the top of our wish list, resin and glass tables that channel the California Light and Space movement, and a dream-team collaboration by Philippe Malouin and Bethan Laura Wood, pictured above.

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