These Three Historic Properties Have Been Reimagined As Our New Favorite Design Hotels

Designing the interior for a hotel these days can be a tricky thing. Most hotels aren't ground-up builds, so there needs to be a certain amount of sensitivity towards the building's past while still imagining a place that a 21st-century traveler — who is constantly bombarded with other people's vision of what makes the perfect vacay — might actually want to stay. In our fall hotel round-up, we look at three projects who have succeeded beyond our wildest dreams. How about a reimagined historic English country manor from the 17th century? A ‘50s-inspired guest house in Marseille above a famed restaurant? Or a renovated functionalist building that’s the talk of Brussels? Take your pick after the jump. 
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Upholstered task chair herman miller

Herman Miller’s New Task Chair Wants to Become the Next Upholstered Icon (And It Doesn’t Have a Ton of Competition)

We don't talk a lot on this site about Naoto Fukasawa. He's one of an earlier generation of industrial designers — along with names like Jasper Morrison and Hella Jongerius — whose talent and influence is, by this point, simply a given in certain creative circles. (And not, perhaps, in others.) But while we hadn't heard about a major project of his in a long time — his Pao light for Hay was probably the most recent, though why did no one tell us about this sweet Japanese playground equipment? — our ears perked up with we heard one of America’s largest and most celebrated office furniture brands had teamed up with the feted Japanese designer. The result is the Asari task chair, the latest collab between Herman Miller and Naoto Fukasawa, and it is, expectedly, a resounding match made in functional, ergonomic, minimalist heaven.
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Week of September 11, 2023

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: Gallery Fumi’s biology-inspired 15th anniversary exhibition, furniture made from giant toothpicks, and the juiciest tiled interior we've seen to date.
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These Woven Outdoor Chairs Are Built to Withstand the Test of Time — As Well As the Elements

By now, we’ve become accustomed to the reissues of classic furniture designs for interiors — so much so that it can sometimes be hard to keep track. But the same can’t be said for outdoor furniture, so when the relaunch of an iconic product for exterior use does come along, we sit up and take notice. Case in point: Spanish manufacturer Expormim’s Lapala collection of chairs, typified by their woven seats and backrests, which turns 25 this year. Highly chameleonic and adaptable to almost any plein-air setting — from garden patio to urban balcony — the design has proven its longevity through a variety of only the subtlest tweaks over the years. 
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Yowie, the Best Design Boutique in Philly, Has Opened an Equally Cool Hotel

We've long been obsessed with the always-just-under-the-radar design scene in Philadelphia, but a decade ago — when we devoted a whole week of coverage to Philly — something like Yowie, the design store founded and curated by creative director Shannon Maldonado, simply didn't exist. That all changed when Yowie opened its doors in 2016, introducing a variety of Danish and American furniture brands and a refreshingly playful color palette to Philadelphia. Today, Yowie offers clothing, lighting, furniture, homeware, gifts, books (including our own!) and more, deservedly it earning the title of coolest boutique in Philly. And thanks to this success over the past seven years, Yowie is now not only expanding its retail footprint, but opening an entire hotel upstairs.
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This Bar is a Desert Oasis (And a Design Dream) in Joshua Tree

If you've traveled through the desert in this summer’s record-breaking temperatures, you'll know that stopping to cool off and refresh is an absolute necessity. Along Highway 62 through the famed California town of Joshua Tree, siblings Brit Epperson of Studio Plow and Barrett Karber of Grain Construction have designed Mas o Menos, an ideal refuge to do just that: pause, grab a drink, and relax in a laid-back setting of terracotta tiles, warm sandy hues, and inviting furniture.
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Week of July 10, 2023

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: a zesty creative hub in Milan, a set of “noisy” rugs, and a sofa modeled after boxing gloves.
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Only a Year Out From Graduating RISD, Alexis & Ginger Already Have Two Collections Under Their Belt

Was it fate that brought Alexis Tingey and Ginger Gordon together? The designers’ studio benches happened to be positioned next to each other during their furniture design Master's program at RISD, and after two years of sharing ideas and inspirations, the pair decided to officially join forces and set up a business together after graduating in 2022. A year later, Alexis & Ginger have moved to Brooklyn, launched two collections — one as part of our Sight Unseen Collection — and already have plans for so much more.
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This Kelly Wearstler–Designed Cocktail Bar Boasts an Enviable Art Collection

With additions like Hauser + Wirth and the Ace hotel, downtown Los Angeles long ago ascended from commercial wasteland to must-visit destination. But this status was perhaps fully cemented when the Proper hotel chain opened its Kelly Wearstler–designed property in the neighborhood in October 2021. Her fourth hotel for the brand — and her second in LA, following the Santa Monica Proper, with its epic and oft-Instagrammed chair porn lobby — the hotel recently added an intimate cocktail bar, called Dahlia, to its offering — and, whoo, it’s a stunner.
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This Design Duo Makes the Understated Furniture They Couldn’t Find Anywhere Else

“The pursuit of approachable everyday objects, put together using readily available materials and simple fabrication techniques,” is, it turns out, much harder than it sounds. For visual designer Masha Osorio and architect Christian Kotzamanis, the search was, in the end, futile. So they decided as the newly-formed Mock Studio to design and produce the simple, reductionist pieces they’d been looking for themselves. 
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Heard of Quiet Luxury? This Newly Renovated French Riviera Hotel Epitomizes the Trend

The French Riviera, long a playground for the rich and famous, is undeniably chic, both in its physical structures and its natural beauty. And perched atop Cap d’Antibes, a rocky promontory between Cannes and Nice that was used as a backdrop in both Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief and Jacques Deray’s La Piscine, is a hotel that embodies that elegance in the most nonchalant way: The Cap D’Antibes Beach Hotel, recently reimagined by Belgian architect Bernard Dubois, a frequent collaborator with Brussels’ Maniera Gallery, who is known for his beautiful, brutally efficient approach to interiors.
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15 Things We Loved From Copenhagen’s 3 Days of Design

3 Days of Design in Copenhagen is a growing fixture on the design calendar — so much so that we recently heard murmurings that the show is considering changing its name to expand beyond its temporal limitations. But for now, let's look back on the ninth edition, which took place over three days in June and pointed to the event becoming an even bigger spectacle in years to come.
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