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A Year After the Fires, 21 LA Designers Channel Something Hopeful From the Wreckage

In a group exhibition at Marta in LA, designers used trees felled by the wildfires as raw material. Top: Mark Morones (L) and Sam Klemick (R); bottom: Josué da Silva (L) and Asher Gillman (R). Photos: Erik Benjamin

The Los Angeles mill Angel City Lumber specializes in sourcing downed trees from around LA for use in community projects. Often those trees are the result of things like storm damage, or planned forest thinning. But for “From the Foothills in the Upper Valley,” a group exhibition of primarily wood furniture now on view at Marta, the trees were exclusively cleared from Altadena in the wake of last January’s wildfires. Marta founders Benjamin Critton and Heidi Korsavong, in collaboration with co-curator Vince Skelly, gathered a group of 21 LA-based designers and allowed them to select from a cross-section of species that represent the LA foothills’ biome — Aleppo pine, Deodar cedar, coastal live oak, and Shamel ash among them. Each designer was asked to transform their reclaimed hunk into a functional object that invites rest or contemplation, to “suggest the repopulation of spaces that have been lost and must now be reimagined anew.”

Among our favorite pieces in the group: Asher Gillman’s textured aluminum seat, cast from blocks of wood that were spared by the fire but downed by the wind, “an imprint of nature’s force.” Brian Guido’s tuxedo-like stool recalls decorative details from the foyer of the McNally House, a historic Queen Anne Victorian that was lost in the fire. Skelly, Dan John Anderson, Sam Klemick, and Mark Morones all used patchwork or inlay of some kind, in a way that suggests, quite literally, repair. Thirty percent of the proceeds will be donated to @greenline_housing to aid in rebuilding efforts; on view through January 31.

How to Make the Most of a 226-Square-Foot Apartment

This tiny Parisian apartment uses repetition — of colors, wood species, and patterns — to create the impression of a larger space. Photos: Jean-Baptiste Thiriet

Could you live in a 226-square-foot apartment? Perhaps yes, if the Parisian studio Batiik was in charge of the renovation. For their latest project, called Chevalier, Rebecca Benichou and Florence Jallet reorganized a studio — with only three windows — into a glamorous, well-lit one bedroom. Aside from the structural challenge of directing light into every room, each décor choice had to be completely dialed in, considering you can see virtually the whole apartment in one go. But it works, in part because of a color-fueled system of triangulation that the two devised: A petite, darkly romantic bedroom is painted green and lined with a floral wallpaper by Antoinette Poisson that extends into the bathroom, where it’s paired with sunny yellow square tiles to lighten the mood. The green of the bedroom seeps into the living area, creating continuity, but here it’s paired with even darker green trims; the yellow from the bedroom recurs in a Schumacher animal print covering the kitchen banquette. And throughout, there are custom elements built using the same species of reddish-brown wood — a curved kitchen island, a tiny breakfast table, a chic hexagonal bathroom vanity, and the sliding checkerboard pocket door that separates the main area from the bedroom and allows for both privacy and a filtered, apartment-wide glow.

The New Methods of Assembly Office is a “Living Laboratory of Atmosphere”

The new Methods of Assembly office in Catskill, New York, goes hard on Noguchi lamps and other vintage furniture yet somehow feels very of this era. Photos: David Mitchell

If you’ve been reading our newsletter — or any design publication — religiously, you know that the office-as-residential space is one of the biggest trends we’ve seen over the past couple of years. Part of me, just to be contrary, wants to see a new office space that riffs on full-tilt 1980s: wall-to-wall carpeting, aluminum mini-blinds, and rows and rows of this insanely chic Eileen Gray desk. Until then, we will daydream that we work someplace as cozy as Methods of Assembly’s new office space at the Foreland complex in Catskill, New York. Of course this kind of studio makes a special kind of sense for an interiors firm, operating as it does as what founder Omar Aqeel calls “a living laboratory of atmosphere.”

To play up the space’s industrial loft vibes, Aqeel left the original brick and distressed wood plank floors mostly intact, adding texture and playful accents via vintage furniture pieces like these 1960s-era Swedish armchairs; pine plywood-covered walls; cheeky, finial-topped, Deco-inflected columns; and, dotted around the office, a selection of relics, prototypes, and works in progress. The result is a space that offers a blueprint for the kind of layered, textural work that MOA, as a new studio, is developing right in front of our eyes.

A New Single-Object Show Asks Us to Consider Life in the Shadows​

Candleholders for a new show at Blunk Space by Kajsa Stahl and Vince Skelly. Photos: Chris Grunder

Two years after the 100 Hooks show at Blunk Space — and 45 years after the original JB Blunk show that inspired it — the Point Reyes, California, gallery is again playing host to a single-object exhibition, this one titled, appropriately, 100 Candleholders. The theme resonates more than most; to hear Blunk Space’s Mariah Nielson explain it, candlelight is well near inextricable from the Blunk legacy. The late California sculptor made several candleholders over his lifetime, but he also built in Inverness a house similar the hand-built structures he lived in while apprenticing in Japan in the early 1950s — one where candlelight is a necessity, with “corners disappearing into shadow even during a bright day, and illumination as something that happens over time rather than all at once.” In the exhibition, candleholders are built from a range of whimsical source materials — the reclaimed mahogany of a guitar neck (Michael Marriott), sample swatches from the powder coater (Alex Reed) — as well as elemental ones. Pictured above are pieces by Vince Skelly (right), whose tiny ball wood form was inspired by the queen and the rook in chess and Kajsa Stahl, whose bronze time-keeper simply appeals to our most basic desire to see a face in everything. On view through March 28.

Sightseeing … In Tokyo, Japan

Taken together, your Sight Unseen editors have been to Japan three times in the past year alone, and while that hardly makes us experts — Tokyo rewards repeated visits like no other city — we do finally feel confident offering a little design-focused starter pack for anyone planning their first journey.

1. Hoshinoya Tokyo
There are luxury hotels in Tokyo and there are onsens in Tokyo, but Hoshinoya is the only one that marries the two. The hotel is sited on a plot that used to be covered by ocean, and it draws its iodine-infused water from 1,500 meters below the earth. The onsen, located on the top floor, is open to the sky, like a perma–James Turrell. Do you have any idea how nice it is to come home from the izakaya, take a dip in the hot springs, and watch the stars?

2. Enoura Observatory
A perfect day trip, this icon of land art was designed by Hiroshi Sugimoto. Every design person in my life told me to go here, and I wasn’t disappointed.

3. Asakura Museum of Sculpture
There are lots of little house museums around Tokyo — I could easily have put the Kyu Asakura house on here, or the Soetsu Yanagi residence adjacent to The Japan Folk Crafts Museum — but this sweet, out-of-the-way space with a rooftop garden was my favorite.

4. Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum
A former royal residence, it’s now an exhibition space, but the exhibitions are kind of secondary to the home itself, an Art Deco gem designed by Henri Rapin, with pieces by Rene Lalique. The Frick Collection of Tokyo.

5. SKAC
A bookstore (run by the folks who spearhead the Tokyo Art Book Fair), record shop, exhibition space, and more, SKAC was hosting a Kwangho Lee exhibition when I was there.

6. Sogetsu Plaza
The Isamu Noguchi–designed rock garden in the lobby of a Kenzo Tange building is my favorite Noguchi environment outside of the Noguchi museum in New York.

News

A Milanese two-room apartment by Studioutte, from AD Italia. Photo: Giulio Ghirardi

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I do not necessarily want to promote the idea that you can achieve bliss in a two-room apartment only by hiring an expensive interior designer, but here comes the second instance in this newsletter: a recent feature in AD Italia on a 700-square-foot Milan apartment outfitted by the young interiors and furniture duo Studioutte. This one couldn’t be farther from the aesthetic of the Batiik one above — this one is cool rather than warm, steel rather than wood, color palette: black.

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Before the holidays, I went to a friends and family event at the new Lore Bathing Club, which parks a dry-heat and infrared sauna — plus cold plunge pool — sheathed in travertine in the middle of Noho. I’m in many ways the wrong audience for this — I can get a little hypoglycemic from too much heat, tbh! — but I wholeheartedly support the idea of making sauna something you do more casually and frequently, on your way home from work, or with friends on the weekend. Even with the two martinis I had at Fanelli’s after my session, I slept like a baby that night.

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After a lot of tedious chatter on why there is currently a dearth of criticism in the design world, someone is finally doing something about it. Our friend David at For Scale is launching the first prize for “décor criticism” which he specifies as “interiors, not single objects and not architecture, that espouses whatever the f*ck tone of voice you’d like, so long as it’s yours.” Maximum of 500 words and the prize is $1,000. Deadline is February 15 here!

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The Strategist launched a Classifieds section this week, and it aims to be a kind of friendly, more curated Facebook Marketplace. For their first edition, they reached out to people in their orbit, including your Sight Unseen editors, so here’s your chance to snag a garden basket from Alex Crowder of Field Studies Flora, a vintage Ikea lamp from a Lichen designer, a barely used Khaite dress from interior designer Christine Gachot, or a 1980s Mikasa coffee set from Monica.

From the Collection

THE BON CONSOLE BY MUHLY

Did you know that Sight Unseen also sells furniture? Each week we’ll be featuring a single item here from our collection, starting with Muhly’s Bon Console, inspired by 1930s cabinets and candy buttons. It’s available in several woods, from cherry to maple, and the hardware — 14 perfectly round knobs in stainless steel or cast iron — are decorative as well as functional, giving Muhly’s mystical storage unit, with circles and dots alternating in a sun-moon pattern, a sort of hard, jewelry-like edge. Find out more here.

Jobs

Alex P. White is seeking an interior designer to work remotely.

The Business of Vintage is seeking a freelance PR specialist to work remotely.

Almost Studio in Brooklyn is bidding out a job for a wood facade and railing system for a residence in Accord, NY.