11.10.21

Up and Coming

This Belgian Designer’s Color-Blocked Kitchens Channel the De Stijl Movement

“My first study was the preservation of paintings,” Dries Otten tells us over the phone from his home in Antwerp, Belgium. “But I decided it was too boring — your job is only appreciated when it's invisible!” Since hanging up his white gloves, though, Otten’s work has been impossible to ignore — bright, color-blocked interiors and furniture that set him apart from the neutral-obsessed minimalists that dominate contemporary Belgian design.
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10.02.23

Fair Report

15 Projects We Loved From September’s Design Fairs in London and Paris

It could be the time of year that gives the London Design Festival and Maison & Objet in Paris a kind of in-between feel. Summer still lingers in places, and a moody, autumnal atmosphere takes over in others — although this could also be attributed to the essential nature of each city's design scene as well. As usual, there was plenty to see, though we also wondered if there was some amount of holding out for what may end up the true statement moment of the fall design calendar: October's inaugural edition of Design Miami/Paris. What struck us this year (from afar, sigh) wasn’t so much a few noticeable trends as an emphasis on collaboration — aesthetics may be fragmented, but our connection to each other is stronger than ever.
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07.14.20

At Home With

How Brendan Ravenhill Ended Up Living In — And Restoring — a 1938 Schindler House in the Hills of Los Angeles

Brendan Ravenhill and his wife, Marjory Garrison, had been living in Echo Park for years before they realized that they were living around the corner from a gem of Modernist architecture. Built in 1938 by Rudolf Schindler, the Austrian architect whose volumetric residences dot Los Angeles, the Southall house, as it's called, was hidden from street view and in a state of disrepair when it fell into Ravenhill's lap in the mid-2010s.
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12.09.17

Saturday Selects

Week of December 4, 2017

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: a puzzle series that’s sure to elevate your game night, Norwegian tealight holders that seem to float above your table, and a collection of “sacred objects” made without machinery.
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Strauss Bourque-Lafrance
11.21.16

Up and Coming

Strauss Bourque-Lafrance and the Deconstructed Domestic Space

Strauss Bourque-LaFrance’s work reflects a holistic approach to materials informed by the social function and status of objects as well as our relationship to them; the roles they play in our lives as symbols, signs, and totems. In Bourque-Lafrance's world, objects and paintings often get mixed up together with sculpture and interior design; his approach may be best summed up by his gallerist, Rachel Uffner, who calls it: “painting-in-the-expanded-field, painting-as-collage, painting-as-performance, and painting-as-sculpture.”
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07.20.15

Up and Coming

Stephanie Specht, Graphic Designer

People always ask where exactly we find our story subjects, and for the past two years, the most frequent answer has invariably been Instagram. And it’s true, in the case of Belgian-born graphic designer Stephanie Specht, we were fans of her @spechtstudio handle long before we ever knew who was behind it. But our interest was piqued even further in recent months after Specht got the imprimatur from two friends with an impeccable knack for collaborations: Sandeep Salter of McNally Jackson Picture Room, where Specht released an edition earlier this year, and Alex Proba, with whom Specht created this series of plant-inspired posters. 
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02.28.20

Excerpt: Exhibition

This Barcelona Studio Asked a Painter to Choose the Colors of Its New Chair

When Gerrit Rietveld designed his famed Red and Blue Chair in 1917, it wasn't red and blue at all, but plain, unstained beech wood. Only six years later, after his De Stijl collaborator Bart van der Leck suggested he add bright colors, did Rietveld create the version that went on to make history. The same is true, in a way, of the Barcelona studio AOO's Chair 8, whose colors were envisioned by painter Claudia Valsells for a recent collaborative exhibition in Spain.
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07.06.17

Sighted

See Sabine Marcelis’s Real-Life Version of Mondrian’s Most Famous Painting

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the launch of Theo Van Doesburg's seminal magazine, De Stijl, in 1917, and Rotterdam-based designer Sabine Marcelis recently helped carve out a space at the Cannes Film Festival to honor the art and design movement that adopted its name. For the festival's Dutch Pavilion, Marcelis brought to life Mondrian's famed 1935 painting "Composition with Red, Blue, and Yellow" by building a 3-D framework of black lines inset with gradient glass panels, then punctuating it with primary colored versions of her signature Voie Lights and Candy Cubes.
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08.16.22

Excerpt: Exhibition

A Traveling Gallery Show in Belgium Offers a Renewed Sense of Discovery

This summer, the galleries Barbé Urbain and Atelier Ecru, located in Ghent, Belgium, have teamed up to present a temporary exhibition of collectible design and contemporary art outside of their dedicated spaces. Named to evoke a sense of discovery, the Magellan show brings together works by a host of artists and designers in the De Beir residence, an iconic early Modernist building designed by Belgian architect Huib Hoste in 1924.
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12.17.21

ARCHIVAL INTERVIEW

A 2010 interview with Centraal Museum curator Ida Van Zijl about Gerrit Rietveld's background and legacy.
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