
05.04.24
Saturday Selects
Week of April 29, 2024
A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: an exhibition that examines traditional Western wedding tropes, more fuel for the fire of our burning room divider obsession, an Amsterdam apartment with marvelous marbled mahogany paneling, and the perfect glassware for summer cocktails.
Interiors
Flexible workspace company Fora has opened an outpost in the revamped Henry Wood House, in London’s West End. This 1960s Brutalist landmark now features 70,000 square feet of office and co-working spaces with interiors by Nice Projects co-founders, Simone McEwan and Sacha Leong, who took cues from British artists and designers from the ’60s for their own designs. The seven-story building was constructed to house a hotel and the BBC’s Research and Development teams, and the original terrazzo floors were restored during the renovations. Meanwhile, light and bright finishes were added through the open workspaces, meeting rooms, kitchens, and other facilities. The result? A space that’s post-war period appropriate, but not pastiche, for London’s creative community, according to the designers.
The marbled mahogany paneling in this Amsterdam abode is *chef’s kiss.* Housed within a building in the 1910 Amsterdam School movement, the Collectors Apartment (spotted via Yellowtrace) is designed by DAB Studio to pay homage to the period. A rich, earthy tonal color palette, accented with ochre curtains, forms a perfect setting for the occupant’s collection of art and design. Let’s talk about the Massimo & Lella Vignelli coffee table. And those sconces. And the magazine stand… These sit alongside classics like Marcel Breuer’s Wassily Chair and the Cassina Soriana sofa, together providing a contemporary spin on a historic and influential style.
When we interviewed French architect Pauline Borgia last year, she spoke about how color was such an important part of her childhood and her design practice, Atelier Steve, and her secret to designing a small space. In this apartment, yellow is the star, with sunny walls, cabinets, open shelves, and bathroom tiles contrasting the checkerboard floors and backsplash in the kitchen. These create a backdrop for vintage furniture pieces, like a caramel-colored Michel Ducaroy sofa for Ligne Roset, and some very chic cafe chairs for the white Eero Saarinen Tulip Table. Some handsomely detailed millwork finishes it all off nicely.
Whenever a new hotel in New York City opens up, we’re always curious. So as soon as Firmdale Hotels, the group behind Crosby Street in SoHo and The Whitby in Midtown, announced their third spot, in Tribeca, we had to take a peek and it didn’t disappoint. The Warren Street Hotel’s bold (and we mean bold!) approach to color and pattern, is the work of Kit Kemp Design Studio. The 69 individually designed bedrooms, suites and residences are brimming with clashing fabrics — a nod to the area’s textile history — while unique artworks by sculptors Tony Cragg and Wendell Castle appear in the common spaces. Staycation heaven.
Discoveries
Perhaps for her next project, Kemp will use these color-blocked creations by Giulia Fauro Alessi? Using hues based on those popular in antiquity, like agate, indigo, and gold, as well as combinations that evoke Jupiter’s streaky and a winter’s sky — and even a Cowboy (Carter?) themed denim variation — each piece features a patchwork of different tones and materials. Bound to make a major impact on any wall.
We recently mentioned our affinity for room dividers, and this very elegant set of three from Belgian designer Nathalie Van der Massen is up there with the best. Made from natural materials like linen, oak and walnut — all found in her home country — the screens have an architectural quality and integrate a variety of weaves that offer different rhythms and transparencies. Each design in the REN Collection is available in a limited edition of eight pieces, along with an exclusive artist piece.
Axel Chay appears to have swapped phallic forms for triangles in his most recent collection. He repeats the wedge-shaped elements individually as wooden or velvet-upholstered stools, in a stack to form a totem-like shelving piece, and in sections at either end of a curved sofa base. Chay hasn’t totally abandoned his tubular metal signature, however, adding polished elements together for a wavy coffee table base, and grouping four pipes around a pole to form a floor lamp.
A quick throwback to last month’s PAD Paris, when Mumbai-based design gallery æquō presented its latest collaborations. They included chunky-shaped pieces in embossed metal by Linde Freya Tangelder of Destroyers Builders, a slender coffee table with one snake-shaped leg by Portuguese studio Garcé & Dimofski, a creation by ceramist Kristin Yezza, a hand-hewn seat in solid teak by Valériane Lazard, and a console and lighting developed by designer and æquō creative director Florence Louisy, who we recently spoke to about her work with the gallery.
We’re so ready to serve our summer cocktails in these super fun glasses from Casa Veronica — the first few designs in what promises to be an exciting expanding collection. Hand-blown by artisans in Jalisco, and influenced by the art of glassblowing itself, the trio includes two with bulbous bases in green or clear, and a third conical vessel wrapped in a green spiral. “These silhouettes are an exploration of transformation and alchemy,” said the studio.
This painterly wallpaper and fabric comes courtesy of MINNA. The Portals collection is a departure from the Hudson-based company’s typical wares in that it features several artistic patterns lifted from actual paintings by the brand’s founder, Sara Berks, available in various muted yet striking color combinations. Some are organized in grids and geometries, while others seem more freeform and random. All are decidedly delightful.
Exhibitions
A solo show of sculpture and photography by London-based artist Leo Costelloe, titled Special Day, examines the tropes and material cultures of the Western bride. The centerpiece is a refurbished 1930s mannequin wearing a traditional white lace bridal gown, who serves as the exhibition’s protagonist, while manicured blonde wigs are pinned to the wall alongside Polaroids of symbols of marriage, each positioned off-center in oversized etched-aluminum frames. Cutlery adorned with tiny bows and bouquets also feature, referencing the adage “Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.” At Neven, in East London, until May 18.
Tubes aplenty at No Discipline, the first solo show by New York and San Francisco-based design studio Office of Tangible Space (which closes tomorrow!) At Tribeca gallery Verso, the furniture and homeware in a variety of scales that aim to forge connections between humans and objects. The cylindrical shapes appear as table legs, armchair backs, and dining chair components, while extruded aluminum is used for wood-topped coffee table bases. Along with Office of Tangible Space’s debut in-house pieces, the exhibition also includes collaborations with Made By Choice, Poppy Prints, Thirdkind, Mondays, Ruxandra Duru, and Aelfie, as well as the amazing sculptural Pebble Floor lamp with Rosie Li.