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The Post-WFH Office Trend Peaks With Day Job’s Home-Like L.A. Studio

Day Job’s offices, by 22RE, channel a residential vibe with lots of richly toned carpeting and furniture that’s more living room than boardroom. Photos: Yoshihiro Makino

In the direct aftermath of the pandemic, I participated in a couple of talks and online summits around the future of work, and the consensus at the time was clear: homes were the new offices, so designers needed to start focusing on refashioning contract furniture with residential spaces in mind. While that did, to some degree, bear out — case in point, my beloved Knoll Morrison Hannah chair — what I’ve found more interesting is the increasing degree to which public workspaces are being made to mimic private ones, like this gem we covered in 2023, or WSA in New York, or the new HQ for the Los Angeles creative agency Day Job, above. Apart from the odd task chair where necessary, these spaces embrace vintage furniture, seemingly unpractical textiles, and a general “step into my living room” aesthetic.

For Day Job, up-and-coming L.A. firm 22RE employed unusual details like carpeted and wood-paneled walls and midcentury lamps to “bridge the comforts of home with the needs of a cutting-edge studio,” making the space both more enjoyable for employees and more impressive to clients. The common room, with its low corduroy seating and terra cotta floor tiles, could just as easily be torn from a young tech entrepreneur’s Los Feliz house renovation; here, the Heath Ceramics–tiled kitchen with a stainless steel–topped island just so happens to be at one end of a conference room. I’m hoping to be a WFH lifer at this point, but once Petra outgrows my living room, I’d definitely shortlist 22RE to craft me a corporate one.

Resin, Coffee Grounds, and Light: Estúdio Rain’s Material Alchemy Evolves

Table lights, wall lights, and a coffee table made from plant-based castor oil resin, by Brazil’s Estudio Rain. Photos: Giu Ramaglia

For 7 years, the Brazilian design duo Estúdio Rain have been researching and working with plant-based castor oil resin, a material developed by the University of São Paulo that’s mainly used in civil construction for waterproofing or varnishing. In the pair’s hands, over the course of two prior collections it has been cast in graduated-thickness molds, or draped around metal armatures in thin sheets, to create ethereal sculptural lighting that would have been right at home in the California Light and Space movement. This year, Rain released the third edition in their so-named Ricino series, which introduces a new element: colors. Where the first two series hewed to the material’s natural amber hue, this one adds greens, browns, and eggplants to the palette, achieved by mixing organic matter — including flowers, fruits, roots, algae, seeds, and sediments — into the resin, changing not only its appearance but its properties. “In the lighting pieces, natural pigments react with the resin to form micro-bubbles that enhance the diffusion of both light and color,” the studio explains. “In the furniture pieces, additives such as coffee grounds and powdered earth act as composite reinforcements, increasing rigidity and hardness.” It’s nice to be able to watch a research project unfold over time in various incarnations, especially with results as well-resolved as these.

From a New Sculpture Garden in Philly to a Miniature Circus at the Whitney, It’s a Very Calder Fall

Views of the new Calder Gardens cultural center in Philadelphia (photos: Iwan Baan and Tom Powel

If you’re like me and are long overdue for a trip to Philadelphia — best planned around the soonest Zahav reservation — now you’ve got one more reason to put it on the cal: The Calder Foundation has teamed up with the Barnes Foundation (the other great reason to go to Philly) to open Calder Gardens, an indoor-outdoor cultural space filled with the artist’s mobiles, stabiles, drawings, and paintings, some on public view for the very first time. The project has a lot going for it, not least an 18,000 square-foot Herzog & de Meuron building and pretty, untamed landscaping by Piet Oudolf to wander through, but the most interesting aspect for me is that there are no labels, placards, or QR codes on site. There are audio tours available for those who prefer it, but you’re moreso meant simply to intuitively experience the work, to let it speak to you in a personal way without any didactic text spoiling the moment. Which makes sense considering the physicality of the Gardens, where you’re immersed in nature as well as inside many of Calder’s large-scale sculptures themselves.

Once you’ve walked the Gardens, you can round out your experience with a totally different side of the artist’s work — the more intricately handcrafted side, which included his epic jewelry as well — at the Whitney museum in New York. It’s opening an exhibition on October 18 dedicated to the 100th anniversary of Calder’s Circus, a piece that lives in its collection and includes over 100 miniature performers, animals, and objects made from wire and found material bits. Calder constructed the piece from 1926 to 1931, and staged long, detailed performances with it for friends like Marcel Duchamp and Isamu Noguchi. At the museum, it will be on view alongside related works, through March of next year.

In Melbourne, Golden Brings Warmth to a Dramatically Sloped Modernist Home

Temple House in Melbourne, with interiors by Golden and architecture by J. Kidman. Photos: Sean Fennessey

It’s not often that I get a pitch from an interior design studio and feel equally wowed by the project’s architecture and landscaping, but I’m not surprised at all that the most recent such submission, Temple House, happens to be in Melbourne. I’ve been saying for years that Melbourne has some of the best contemporary architecture in the world right now — so many statement houses with interesting volumes and huge windows (my favorite) — and in many cases the interiors are equally directional. Temple’s interiors are by the local firm Golden, who tend to do very nice things with vintage furniture and large expanses of marble — in this case lots of travertine and a showstopping Verdi Alpi kitchen that’s been styled (by Tali Roth, in these photos) with the perfect abstract sculpture by artist Nabilah Norden. But then there’s the home’s envelope, designed by architect J. Kidman with landscaping by Plume: a dramatically sloping sand-colored roof that we assume inspired the home’s nickname, broken up with expanses of glass that flood the space with natural light, all surrounded by lush tropical foliage. We of course would never condone urban sprawl, but occasionally it has its benefits!

From Lasagna Tables to Blue-Stained Chairs, 16 Hudson Valley Makers Show Their Hand

Works by Nadia Yaron (chair) and Jonah Meyer (mirror and chandelier) at Woodworkers of the Hudson Valley. Photos: Joe Kramm

At the gallery Studio Tashtego in Cold Spring, New York, curator Julia Caldwell has taken on a daunting task: assembling a survey of contemporary woodworkers based upstate, a talent pool that surely, at this point, must number well into the hundreds. In Caldwell’s new show, “Woodworkers of the Hudson Valley,” she’s whittled the contenders down to 16, all of whom are working primarily within a design framework, focusing their artistry less on pure sculpture and more on functional — or at the very least, decorative — objects. Nadia Yaron does a bit of both in the show, exhibiting both a blue-stained floral chair as well as carved abstract totems, while a wavy, lasagna-esque table by Christopher Kurtz looks more like generative art than a platform for showing off your coffee table books. Jonah Meyer’s contributions — including a painted-wood artwork wrapped around a wall mirror and a whimsical mixed-media chandelier — walk a similar line, while other highlights, like Chris Lehreke’s lamps and Brian Persico’s pared-back furniture, are more straightforward. What unites this group though isn’t just their geographical proximity and choice of medium, but a celebration of the hand of the maker, which is clearly visible in each and every piece.

Editor’s List

CLOCKWISE, FROM TOP LEFT:
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I practically wept earlier this year when I spotted this epic 1970s ceramic pitcher on my Instagram feed, only to realize it was sold long before the algorithm deigned to clue me in. And it was only $110, too. The lesson: Look for smaller vintage purveyors like MILG where you’ve got less competition for purchases, and then subscribe to their newsletters so you don’t get left in the dust!

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I love passion projects like TTMM, a curiosity shop started by practicing architect Tyler Thomas and interior designer Mike Moser. The pair met on Instagram and eventually got married, and TTMM is their professional baby, where they resell their top-shelf vintage finds, as well as editioning objects they’ve created that could just as well be top-shelf vintage finds, like these walnut-lined aluminum Digit Boxes.

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This silver bowl set could easily have been a TTMM offering, but it’s actually a beautiful detail of a painting by Danielle Fretwell, a young New Hampshire artist who has a show up today through November 8 at Alice Amati gallery in London. Called “Tablescapes,” it features lush, saturated paintings of still lives that all have a tiny, subtle bit of movement or complexity to them.

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Earlier this month saw the return of the now-annual L.A. Design Weekend, which featured dozens of exhibitions, open studios, and product launches across the city. One of the most popular was Chet Architecture and Meaghan Roddy’s “Infield,” a survey of local designers — staged in the firm’s huge Los Feliz backyard — that included this new oak chair with a checkerboard jute cushion by Studio Big Moon. Explore all of the weekend’s programming here.

News

Flynn McGarry’s new Manhattan restaurant Cove, featuring paintings by Frederik Nystrup Larsen. Photo: Sean Davidson

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This week saw the opening of Cove, the new California-inspired restaurant in New York from Flynn McGarry, the chef behind Gem and Gem Home. McGarry designed the interiors himself, mixing a Cali vibe with Danish mid-century finds and, as seen in the photo above, paintings by Frederik Nystrup Larsen.

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Building Block is back! After closing down the beloved brand almost two years ago, sisters Kimberly and Nancy Wu are slowly reintroducing it, starting with a design consultancy and a shop in Los Angeles that sells collaborations and works by friends. We aren’t exactly sure what’s to come for the pair’s actual bag and accessories line, but we can only imagine that at least some of that work will be resuscitated as well? Watching closely.

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New York ceramics brand SIN just re-released its porcelain paper plate, the tongue-in-cheek piece that Virginia Sin first launched the brand with back in 2007. After several years of service at Eleven Madison Park and a cameo in the film The Menu, Sin retired the design, only to bring it back again this week in a newly reengineered version that’s both sturdier and more paper-like than ever.