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.
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!
How could we have possibly known, when we first decided to host an exhibition of California design during our third annual Noho Design District, that we would be blessed with four straight days of glorious, Los Angeles–style sunshine? (Followed, of course, by a day of downpours, but more on that tomorrow.) Springtime in New York is a fickle beast, and when we first began to plan how best to use the gorgeous second-floor terrace space we’d been given at the new Standard, East Village hotel, we said a prayer for mild climes but also engaged in fretful what-ifs with our hotel ambassadors, talking of contingencies like awnings, tarps, and the possibility of moving everything — save for a nearly 50 square foot teak and rubber fort constructed on-site by Matt Gagnon — inside.
At the London Design Festival in 2009, Apartamento magazine collaborated with local furniture wunderkind Max Lamb on a show called “The Everyday Life Collector.” The title referred to Lamb’s father, Richard, who had spent more than 15 years surrounding himself with British studio pottery, of which 400 examples were on view. But while age might have given him a leg up in the volume department, it turned out that the elder Lamb wasn’t the only one with the collecting bug: Max, too, admitted to joining his dad at flea markets from time to time and almost never coming home empty-handed. So when we had the idea to start a new column called Inventory — for which we’d ask subjects to photograph a group of objects they found meaningful — we turned to Max first, and he didn’t disappoint. He sent us 10 images of the collections on display in his live-work studio in London, then gave us a personal tour.