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!
A Dacron and Kevlar canoe by Colgate Searle and Mathias Pliessnig was the centerpiece of a travel-themed design show curated by Jonah Takagi of Field in collaboration with Various Projects.
In the front of the same space, BondToo and C’H’C’M hosted a joint pop-up shop with works by everyone from Bookshop to byAMT to Tom Dixon.
For the second edition of Modern Craft at the Merchant’s House Museum — curated by Sight Unseen — textile designer Dana Barnes was one of seven designers to insert their contemporary craft objects amongst the original artifacts of the 1832 townhouse.
Fort Makers artist Noah Spencer contributed both stick-like and geometric LED line lights in various shapes and woods.
In the main Merchant’s House parlor, Eric Timothy Carlson and Aaron Anderson created caltrops and chevaux-de-frise from custom tie-dyed wood.
In the downstairs parlor, a trio of bookshelves by ROLU for Table of Contents stood sentinel.
Designer and glassmaker Andrew O. Hughes created a series of handblown vessels — as well as an adorable table lamp — in various shades of uranium glass, including the signature neon chartreuse.
Upstairs in the bedroom, a Meg Callahan Dye Quilt was on display in lieu of the 19th-century comforter, while a series of Doug Johnston baskets featuring a new stitched embroidery technique sat clustered on the floor.
The American Design Club took over the basement of The Standard, East Village hotel for their new show, Trophy: Awards We Live With. The fare included tables by Karl Zahn, urns by Louie Rigano, and an amazing cactus totem by Elisa Werbler that took first place in the group’s competition (which was judged in part by yours truly).
At Plantworks — a gardening store, nursery, and neighborhood institution — Sight Unseen hosted the show “Mixed Greens,” featuring images of plants by interiors photographers including Handmade Modern‘s Leslie Williamson (pictured).
A triptych by Where We Create’s Paul Barbera lined the doorway, surrounding a picture of puppies we couldn’t remove (it’s a quirky kind of place — we embraced it).
Just inside the door were a series of three works each by Laure Joliet (left) and Debbie Carlos (right).
For our third Japan Premium Beef meat invitational (after Sam Baron and Balloon Factory), we invited the Philly ceramicist Jessica Hans to create a series of vessels she finished with a distinctly meat-like texture.
Brooklyn designer Kyle Garner of Sit + Read debuted an outdoor sling chair from his new line of furniture outside Inventory magazine’s new shop — for which Garner also did the interiors.
At Billy Reid, up-and-coming Greenpoint trio The Principals launched a new set of concrete dominoes called Bare Bones, which only cost $55. The first edition is co-branded with Billy Reid.
The designers themselves (minus the guy in the front right seat) gave the dominoes a test run before hosting a day-long tournament on Saturday afternoon, for which four lucky winners got either custom trophies, Billy Reid gift cards, or both.
One of the biggest launches of the weekend, though, was the very first line of furniture by the hip California interiors firm Commune, produced by Environment and on display at their showroom now. The collection includes a daybed, modular storage units, and a stunning wooden dining table with copper-lined legs.
Vitsoe celebrated the re-launch of their 620 Chair by Dieter Rams — which has been completely re-engineered — with a reading room stocked by Dashwood Books. If only we’d had more time to take advantage of it…
The Future Perfect’s new spring items included the Axial lights by Bec Brittain and Sedimentation vessels by Hilda Hellström that lined the store’s front window. (Hilda’s smaller Sedimentation coasters, meanwhile, are now available in the Sight Unseen shop!)
The store also hosted a special installation of Heath Ceramics to highlight the Los Angeles company’s work over the last 10 years.
After showing in Noho for the past two years during the NDD, we were excited that Lindsey Adelman finally officially set up shop in the neighborhood, having commandeered a private showroom on Great Jones that she opened to the public for the weekend.
Among the items on display was her new Spike chandelier, pictured at right.
Model Citizens also set up shop on Great Jones, albeit temporarily, with a show of work by more than 20 designers.
At stopTHINKshop, Given Goods, miLES, and TYTHEdesign curated a pop-up shop with sustainable and ethical designs by folks like Debra Folz, Sylvia Heisel, and Alder.
The Antagonist Art Movement created a new ground mural in the alley at Extra Place for the Fourth Arts Block; the alley is also home to the aforementioned Inventory store and the taco joint Oaxaca, so it’s kind of a fun little hangout spot these days.
Also combining food and design was this display of skateboards by Daniel Moyer, which hung from the ceiling of the Great Jones Cafe.
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).
Even non-New Yorkers know Soho, the swath of land below Houston Street in Manhattan, colonized by artists in the '60s and now the domain of the rich and the retail-obsessed. Noho, on the other hand, still flirts with obscurity, despite having been home to some of the city's most legendary artists — Robert Mapplethorpe, Frank Stella, and Chuck Close, to name a few — as well as its first Herzog and de Meuron building. Sure, as an emerging neighborhood with several hotels on the rise, its streets are often crisscrossed with ungainly spiderwebs of scaffolding, but beneath that lies a creative energy so strong we at Sight Unseen figured it would be the perfect place to create a new satellite destination during New York design week: the Noho Design District. All of the elements were already there.
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.