When we founded the Noho Design District back in 2009, it was meant to provide a much-needed, well-curated platform for independent designers, whose numbers — particularly in America — had begun to surge. But it was also meant to add an extra dose of dimension and excitement to New York Design Week (or NYCxDesign, as it has since come to be known), which at the time was considered preeeeeetty lackluster, to say the least. By that measure alone, the first edition of Sight Unseen OFFSITE, our successor to the Noho Design District, was a massive success; word on the street was that this NYDW was the best anyone could remember, and we’re proud to have played a significant role, alongside Wanted, ICFF, Intro/NY, Herman Miller, Matter, Wallpaper, and several others.
Of course, Sight Unseen OFFSITE was a success in other ways as well, like the thousands of visitors who surged through this year, from design curators to celebs like David Byrne to top players at the likes of Proenza Schouler, J. Crew, and Alexander Wang. Plus the nearly 50 exhibitors who came away with sold-out booths and glowing press everywhere from T magazine to Refinery29. To that end, there were two questions we heard most often as the show drew to a close earlier this week: 1. Will you do it again next year? (As long as we find a great space!) And 2. How can I see photos of the show if I missed it? (By viewing the slideshow at right, the first of two recaps). Thanks so much to everyone who did attend, thanks to all of our exhibitors who helped us make design-week history, thanks to our graphic designers Kokoro & Moi and our PR team at Camron, and special thanks to our partners — General Growth Properties, Rockwell Group, Q+Q, Waggener Edstrom, and Interiors From Spain — without whom none of this would have been possible in the first place.
We can’t wait to do it again in 2015! After we get some much-needed rest, that is.
Kelly Behun Studio — founded by interior designer Behun with artist Alex P. White — added to its Neo Laminati line of graphic, op-art-inspired furniture.
It also unveiled a new line of unique woven rugs made from found remnants of fabric and evolved from a partnership with local craftspeople in Marrakech. The patterns from the rugs were printed on several of the chairs as well.
The brand new firm AMMA Studio — a partnership between interior designer Samuel Amoia and artist Fernando Mastrangelo — made its debut at OFFSITE.
Amoia and Mastrangelo cast their colorful stools, tables, and mirrors from unusual materials like rock salt, sand, coffee, silica, and pink Himalayan salt.
Five giant handmade wool, silk, and flax rugs in painterly designs by global design director Yasmina Benazzou were on view in Tai Ping’s booth.
Grey Area’s new Versa table consists of a universal base and interchangeable tops the gallery commissions from artists and designers. On view at OFFSITE were tops by Matt Jones, Chen Chen and Kai Williams, and Snarkitecture.
The gallery also showed off existing products like these Shelves by Snarkitecture and stunning new iridescent glass bowl by Katherine Gray.
Italian-born, New York–based designer Mario Milana used to work for Karim Rashid, but launched his own studio in Milan in April. New York got its first glimpse of his sculptural, geometric chairs at Sight Unseen OFFSITE.
Milana called the new pieces the Spring Collection, he says, because “every piece has some element of ‘spring’ or dynamism to it, moving with and adapting to the user, rather than the other way around.”
Interiors from Spain invited us to collaborate on an installation called “Sight Unseen x Mermelada Estudio [Loves] Spanish Design,” for which we curated a selection of our favorite Spanish furnishings and Mermelada created the setting. You can read more about the project on the site today.
We also teamed up with the design store Matter to exhibit the work of furniture designer Ian Stell, who wowed our crowds with his movable, transformable chairs and tables.
Stell says the pieces — like this chair made of wheels that spins 360 degrees — “require unexpected types of negotiation that are intended to provoke a shift in the behavior and/or perspective of those who encounter them.”
Rablabs is best known for its ubiquitous line of colored agate coasters, but at OFFSITE, designer Anna Rabinowicz showed off its full range of wares, from acrylic trays with zoomed-in malachite patterns to new tables with polished-stone and -crystal tops.
We had the idea ages ago for a pop-up prop-styling photo booth, and we finally got to make it happen, in partnership with Calico Wallpaper. They provided the gorgeous ombre backdrops, props, and stunning photography for the weekend.
They also provided an entire wall’s worth of blue-fade wallpaper from their new Aurora collection, which ran the length of our show entrance. Our colorful brand identity and signage, as seen here, was designed by the incredibly talented folks at Kokoro & Moi.
One of the biggest exhibits at Sight Unseen OFFSITE held the results of the project Field Experiments, for which designers Benjamin Harrison Bryant (New York), Paul Marcus Fuog (Melbourne) and Karim Charlebois-Zariffa (Montreal) set up a studio in a Balinese farming community and spent three months conducting design experiments in masonry, woodcarving, weaving, painting, kite-making, and batik in partnership with local craftspeople.
Emerging New York talent Katie Stout, who shows with Johnson Trading Gallery, showed a kind of mini-retrospective of her recent work, from the graphic rugs she’s been making in partnership with Colonial Mills to the series of lights she’s been hand-sculpting with collaborator Sean Gerstley.
We partnered with Print All Over Me — the online tool that allows people to create, own, and produce their designs by applying prints to seasonal collections of clothing and objects — to produce a special collection of clothing, furniture, and lighting by a group of 10 illustrators and designers we hand-picked for the occasion.
We asked Camille Walala, Louie Rigano, and Saskia Pomeroy to apply all-over prints to bombers, dresses, backpacks, and more (now for sale on PAOM’s main site). We also approached British graphic designer Damien Correll to add his squiggles to the leather sling of a new chair by Fort Standard (pictured above), while clothing designer Ellen Van Dusen lent one of her geometric prints to new outdoor seats by Eric Trine. Santtu Mustonen added a print to Seattle designer Erich Ginder’s Dot/Dash lamp, and Will Bryant created a series of beanbag chairs.
Print All Over Me also displayed a preview of its own collab with Snarkitecture, which will consist of various all-white surface treatments and materials — think marble, brick, and penny tile.
Refreshments at Sight Unseen OFFSITE were served from a canteen conceived and produced by the team behind the new food + design blog Mold. Their Future Food Cafe featured an exhibition highlighting new directions in food design and snacks incorporating insects, ancient grains and whole foods.
Adjacent to the cafe, we parked this shiny new backyard grill by Rockwell Group for Caliber Range Corporation, billed as a “ceremonial table around which friends and family can gather to cook and socialize.” The setup was complemented by an outdoor chair and table by Bend. Stay tuned for more on this grill on the site next week.
Also coming soon: More content devoted to another Sight Unseen OFFSITE partner, Q+Q, whose new line of SmileSolar watches made its debut at our show. Even David Byrne, who attended OFFSITE on Monday, stopped to try one on!
Sight Unseen curated a series of five pop-up shops to be part of our event, one of which was this Plant Shop run by the Brooklyn duo CHIAOZZA.
The artists were selling their collection of eccentric, handmade papier-mache plants to the public for the very first time.
We also invited blogger and Sight Unseen contributor Su Wu of I’m Revolting to curate and run her own ceramics shop, which started the weekend stuffed to the gills and ended it with nearly every piece sold out.
The selection included works by Julianne Ahn of Object and Totem, Dana Bechert, Laura Carlin, Jonathan Cross, Chie Fujii of ChieCo, Sally Hackett, Julia Haft-Candell, Lindsey Hampton, Jessica Hans, Natalie Herrera of High Gloss,Cody Hoyt, Juliana Hung of Jujumade, Jennie Jieun Lee, Matthias Kaiser, Andrew Kazakes, Katy Krantz, Helen Levi, Ian McDonald, Michael McDowell, Keiko Narahashi, Joanna Pike, Joseph Pintz,Takayuki Watanabe, Joey Watson, and Bari Ziperstein of BZIPPY & CO.
Housewares brand Field was founded last year by designer Jonah Takagi, who offered up timeless, American-made goods at OFFSITE designed by Oscar Diaz, Jonathan Nesci, Tomas Kral, and Daniel Emma.
Pictured here are a new trivet by Diaz and a pencil cup by Daniel Emma.
Everyday objects purveyor Kiosk offered a witty rejoinder to its recent forced evacuation from its longtime storefront on Spring Street in the form of this unmanned vending machine full of its wares. Luckily it still exists in its full-scale form as well, in a brand new space at 41 Union Square West, #925.
The vending machine contained metal clips, bottle openers, pens, notebooks, can openers, paper clips, pencil sharpeners, bubble pipes, vegetable peelers, key tags, lip balm, scissors, stencils, candy, trivets and darts.
Last but not least, graphic designer Joel Evey made a pop-up shop out of his recent project Objects, for which he commissioned works that play with the notion of function from RO/LU, Alex DaCorte, Chen-Williams, Brendan Timmins, and Eric Timothy Carlson.
Evey himself contributed the rock necklace pictured at left, which isn’t quite as heavy as it looks. Stay tuned for the second half of our coverage of Sight Unseen OFFSITE, coming this Tuesday!
We've had a special place in our hearts for Spanish design for as long as we can remember. After all, the very first scouting trip we ever took for Sight Unseen, way back in the summer of 2009, was to sunny Barcelona. (Don't even get us started on Design in Spain, the last full issue Monica and I worked on at I.D. Magazine, and one of our personal favorites, period.) So when the Spanish trade commission in New York asked us earlier this spring if we'd be interested in curating a selection of our favorite recent Spanish designs for Sight Unseen OFFSITE, the answer was an unequivocal yes.
By the close of Sight Unseen's four-day pop-up during the Noho Design District last year, we'd come to realize a few things. One: that we quite enjoy being shopkeepers — the merchandising of objects, the banter with the public, the satisfying swipe of each credit card through our handy Square readers. And two: that four days was not nearly enough. As we watched the objects we'd put so much effort into procuring move on to more permanent retail homes, we felt a vague sense of deflation, almost like a break-up, and we immediately began plotting for pop-up number two. Never, though, did we dream what would happen next: We were approached by Jade Lai, owner of the impeccably curated Creatures of Comfort store in New York and Los Angeles, to create a Sight Unseen pop-up in the gallery space of her New York store, which had previously played host to temporary outposts from the likes of Confettisystem, Textfield, and the Japanese housewares shop Playmountain. After months of planning, we finally debuted the Sight Unseen Shape Shop this Tuesday at a blowout party.
Back in March, we gave you a small taste of what was to come at Sight Unseen OFFSITE, our brand new nomadic design fair opening May 16 at 200 Lafayette Street in New York's Soho neighborhood. But a lot has happened since then! Most notably, we've brought some exciting partners on board and finalized our official lineup, which is now packed with more than 50 independent designers and forward-thinking brands, all of whom have been hand-picked by the editors at Sight Unseen. Open to the public May 16 to 20 — during the hours of 12PM to 7PM Friday and 11AM to 7PM Saturday through Tuesday — Sight Unseen OFFSITE is New York design week's most exciting platform for new ideas and talents. Check out a small preview after the jump of some of the works that will be on view during the show, then join us next weekend to see it in person!