In our fourth year of producing the Noho Design District, we’ve learned a few things. Namely that while industrial, disused spaces have loads of charm, they also run the risk of leaking when those May showers hit. After two years of emergency sandbagging and climbing onto roofs in our galoshes, we decided it was time to go legit. So when we heard last fall that 45 Bleecker Street — which played host to Tom Dixon’s labyrinthine underground exhibition in 2012 — was about to undergo a gut renovation, to be reborn as a music events space called SubCulture, we knew we wanted in.
We decided early on that the space would be filled with up-and-coming talents for our Noho Next exhibition, which in the past has proved a bellwether for design stardom, featuring the likes of Jonah Takagi, ROLU, Fort Standard, Iacoli & McAllister, and Brendan Ravenhill. We have a feeling this year’s edition will prove no different. From Eric Trine, whose amazing, candy-colored work we found on Instagram (!), to RISD grad Misha Kahn, who we’ve been touting as the next Gaetano Pesce to anyone who will listen, to Seattle’s Ladies & Gentlemen Studio, who turn out the most consistently beautiful work of any emerging studio we know, this was our biggest and strongest showing yet.
(Special thanks goes to our sponsor Jawbone who helped the whole thing come together and provided a soundtrack to our four days in the Bleecker Street bunker. A dedicated post coming to that awesomeness next week!)
At 9AM on Thursday May 16th, this place was empty. By 10 o’clock the next morning, we’d filled it to the brim with the work of 13 emerging designers, and we’d styled a living-room space for sponsor Jawbone with the help of Ladies & Gentlemen studio to boot.
We’ll be featuring the Jawbone space more in-depth next week, but here’s a peek at the set-up. Three monitors showed videos by artists and graphic designers on a loop, while custom Big Jamboxes put out audio. All of it was nestled in a living-room space featuring furniture by Tom Dixon, Blu Dot, Kiosk, Brendan Ravenhill, Jonah Takagi, Paul Loebach, and Fab, as well as smalls by the likes of Chen Chen and Kai Williams (whose resin and foam works are shown here), Doug Johnston, Daniel Michalik, Fort Standard and more.
Shown here, from left: Scaffold Shelving by Jonah Takagi, couch courtesy of The Future Perfect, Scamp coffee table by Blu Dot, Geo Outline rug by Fab.com, Aura lights by Ladies & Gentlemen, and Can table by Paul Loebach.
Glittery objects and Flourite pedestals by Eric Trine.
Portland-based Eric Trine has made lots of versions of his Jens Risom-esque Rod+Weave Chairs — white with Technicolor for LA’s Poketo, rainbow sherbet for DesignMilk’s East, Meet West exhibition, and for us, green leather with brightly colored powder-coated frames. Trine calls them his Miami Vice edition, which is ironic considering he sold them on the last day of Noho Next to a woman from Miami. In the center are his Flourite Pedestals, based on an octahedron crystal structure.
Ladies & Gentlemen (at right) shared a space with fellow Seattleites Professional Associates, a partnership between product designer Erich Ginder and glass-maker John Hogan. In the foreground is Ladies & Gentlemen’s Mirage coffee table.
Among the offerings, Professional Associates’ Phaedra I and Phaedra II table lamps, which mix glass shades atop turned cork, marble, and granite scraps that have been laminated and polished.
Ladies & Gentlemen’s Maru pendant lights. Maru means round in Japanese, and this series explores different pairings of spherical and cylindrical shapes.
Their Maru wind chimes, part of the same series, were a collaboration with artist Nicholas Nyland.
L&G propped out their display with candlesticks by Nyland as well.
Pete Oyler and Nora Mattingly of Assembly had a terrific small booth at ICFF but showed their ash Tres Tables with us as well.
If Karl Zahn’s Sink lights represent the LED lights of the future, we’re on board.
Zahn also showed this Slab Mirror.
This was our second year working with Gabriel Abraham of Atelier de Troupe, and he seriously brought the goods. Not only did Abraham show his new oak and walnut Treto shelving system, but he also brought the results of his recent Lights Up exhibition in Los Angeles, which commissioned new lamps from artists like Matt Paweski, Michael Rey, and Jason Meadows.
MFA lamp by Michael Rey, made from charcoal laminate on plywood, yellow Plexiglas, and plasticine.
Designer and retailer extraordinaire Caitlin Mociun released her first furniture collection in collaboration with artist Genesis Belanger.
Belanger’s best known for making lifelike ceramics, from fingers to mustard packets, and she created props for this show as well, including the ceramic sandwich and hot dog shown here.
Probably the most photographed piece in the exhibition, this neon wedge table is by Misha Kahn. You might remember we showed Kahn’s work two Nohos ago — he was responsible for the googly-eyed metallic wallpaper, of course.
Monica scored this cement planter at the end of the show, but word on the street is that everything else was acquired by New York’s Johnson Trading Gallery. Congrats Misha!
Brooklyn trio Souda created a seriously gorgeous tablescape with their Kawa Porcelain vessels, which are slip-cast in reusable leather molds to create one-of-a-kind porcelain objects.
Kawa detail.
Another Portland favorite: Jason Rens, who packed up his Rason Jens line of sculptural furniture and objects into a wheelie suitcase. Rens’ case went missing in the luggage hold but thankfully showed up before set-up time began!
Rens, who works mostly in metal and wood, calls these “non-specific objects” but some of the shapes will have a very specific use sometime soon: They’ve been made into necklaces for the Sight Unseen Shop!
Brooklyn-based Pat Kim showed a suite of new work, including this beautiful dining table, a collection of mirrors, his new alphabet blocks for Areaware, and a tea set he designed for Tea Wing, a new New York City–based green tea purveyor.
The tea set includes a Chasen whisk, made meticulously by hand by a family in Japan, as well as a steam-bent white oak chashaku scoop, a felt-lined trivet, a tea bowl, and a removable serving tray in hand-dyed leather. Kim also designed a mobile cart for Tea Wing’s imminent debut at the New York workspace Neuehouse.
Mirrors and ash-fired planters by Pat Kim.
Fellow Brooklynite Brian Persico showed a suite of wood furnishings — including an incredible federal blue dovetailed chest of drawers — as well as an archery bow made from wood, animal tendons, and horns.
Last but not least, Brendan Keim showed his newest chandelier, in which each bulb of is individually controlled by an iPhone remote-control app. Tech perfection.
The question we get most often about curating and producing three years' worth of Noho Design Districts isn’t “Can you spare an invite to the VIP party” or even “How can I show my work with you?” but “How on earth do you two do it?” This year was our biggest and best event yet: We had two new hubs (the empty former print lab at 22 Bond Street and The Standard, East Village hotel on Cooper Square); two new international partners (London’s Tom Dixon took over the basement of the Bleecker Street Theater while DMY Berlin hit the American circuit downstairs at 22 Bond); and exhibitions so big that one of them stretched across two different venues (The Future Perfect’s showcase busted the seams of its Great Jones flagship, continuing up the street at 2 Cooper Square).
Each time we start to celebrate the end of yet another successful edition of our Noho Design District project — this one being our fourth, if you can believe it — it's not long before a certain realization hits us like a ton of bricks: We only really get a few short months to recover before we have to start the process allllll over again. We began planning in the fall for the 2013 edition of the show, which ran from May 17-20 and which we'll be recapping on Sight Unseen today and tomorrow, and it's almost impossible to fathom how much work could go into a four-day event that nevertheless flew by so quickly. There were spaces to secure (thanks, SubCulture!), flyers to finagle (thanks, Benjamin Critton!), and press-preview pastries to provide (thanks, The Smile!). And of course we had to find the perfect brand to partner with to help support all the amazing emerging talents we offer a platform to (thanks, Jawbone!). But in the end all that work would have amounted to naught had our exhibitors failed to bust out with some of the most stunning and inspiring designs we've ever shown, from the simplest concrete domino set to painstakingly elaborate chandeliers, light-up neon desks, and textile installations. In case you weren't lucky enough to join us for this year's event, we've put together a roundup of its highlights, the first half of which is featured in the slideshow at right; stay tuned for coverage of Noho Next, ICFF, and other offsite shows to come. And thanks to everyone who joined us this weekend!
When the Sight Unseen and Uhuru teams rolled up the grate and entered the Great Jones Lumber building on Monday, May 9, it was like déjà vu all over again — one full year after we'd closed the door on the inaugural Noho Design District, the space's vast rooms were as dark, empty, and beautifully raw as when we first laid eyes on them, but with half-disassembled wooden signs, wayward Macallan cups, and other stray remains of the 2010 festivities still intact. The weight of all the work that lay ahead immediately hit us: four long days of manual labor in order to breathe life back into the building, to transform it from its dormant state into the hub of the 2011 Noho event, where the work of more than 100 designers would be on display for four days.
