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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10.31.16

Up and Coming

A Parisian Creative Studio With An Epic Client List (We’re Looking At You, Rihanna)

In some ways, the five-year-old Parisian creative agency Bonsoir Paris has everything a modern-day entrepreneurial venture could want — creatively fulfilling commissioned work from cool, high-profile clients (everyone from COS to Rihanna) as well as the time and space to pursue their own work on the side. The studio has a lab that encourages its workers into "boundaryless exploration," as managing director Ben Sandler puts it.

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10.12.16

Up and Coming

The Dusky, Sophisticated Beauty of Natalie Weinberger’s Ceramics

Natalie Weinberger’s ceramics draw you in with their dusky beauty while a sense of mystery keeps you looking. Her pieces have the stillness of arrested movement; they seem both captured in time but not limited by any one moment, nodding to pottery’s long history, but also feeling oh so current. Or, as she puts it: “I love a good remix.”

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10.05.16

Up and Coming

Meet the New Generation of Italian Design

“Learning something new in every project gives us energy and happiness, which are fundamental not only while designing, but also in everyday life,” says Marco Zavagno on the curiosity that drives his collaboration with co-founder, Enrica Cavarzan, in their Venetian-based design practice Zaven. It’s a malleable mindset that sees the understated duo flexing their design muscles across various disciplines, having created everything from lights and chairs for companies such as Atipico and Secondome to catalogs and logos for design brands and schools.

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09.27.16

Up and Coming

Beautiful Objects Built to Last, By a Tech Refugee Turned Furniture Designer

Not every designer considers UI when approaching a furniture collection, but then Zürich-based Isabell Gatzen isn’t every designer: A brief stint in Silicon Valley a few years back left her disillusioned with the short product lifecycle that seems to be a hallmark of so much tech industry innovation and eager to apply strategic thinking to a more traditional craft.

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08.25.16

Up and Coming

Everything is Illuminated: Anthony Bianco’s Cool, Contemporary Glass Lights

When it comes to working with glass, says designer Anthony Bianco, the journey, so to speak — intense, immersive, rarely improvised — is just as notable as the destination. “The material is so physically demanding,” he says. “I’ve come to appreciate the involvement and the many steps it requires, from understanding the chemistry to creating the colors.” Having discovered a passion for glass nearly two decades ago, it’s a process with which the artist is more than well acquainted.

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08.15.16

Graphic Design

Matisse-Inspired Prints By a Graphic Designer On the Rise

Much in the way our love for a book is evident in loose binds and worn-out pages, there's a certain value in the way we let beloved things blemish or roughen overtime. The Japanese call this permission of imperfection wabi-sabi — wabi denoting a singular, often uncontrolled uniqueness akin to a flowing streak of paint, and sabi literally meaning "chill" or "withered," which references the beauty of corrosion. Marleigh Culver, a graphic designer at Need Supply by day and visual artist by night, feels a certain kinship with this design approach. "I like sloppy shapes and rough edges, and for my pieces to look like they’ve been moved between houses for generations," Culver says.

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08.04.16

Up and Coming

This Brooklyn Designer is Doing Amazing Things With Industrial Rubber

In a previous life, Arielle Assouline-Lichten studied architecture at Harvard's Graduate School of Design, created graphics for Bjarke Ingels's Copenhagen office, built models for Snøhetta, and interned for Kengo Kuma. But she landed on our radar this spring after she began working for someone a little less famous: herself. This spring saw the launch of Slash Objects — a glamorous, assured debut furniture and object collection that mixes brass, marble, concrete, ceramic, and industrial rubber in endless combinations and at various scales.

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chic Parisian hotels boutique interior design

08.01.16

Up and Coming

Meet The In-Demand Interior Designer Redefining Parisian Chic

Dorothée Meilichzon had worked in Paris for just five years before she founded her eponymous design studio in 2009 at the age of 27. Since then, she’s become one of the most in-demand interior designers in the French capital — as well as 2015’s designer of the year at Maison & Objet — despite maintaining a full-time staff of only three. Her work focuses on hotels, restaurants, and bars — the “fun places,” as she calls them, done in a style that is decidedly of-the-moment but grounded in color and texture and marked by an exquisite attention to detail and a love for metals, wood, and stone.

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07.27.16

Up and Coming

A Bauhaus-Inspired Artist Makes Color Her Primary Medium

The paintings and wall-based textiles of New York–based Senem Oezdogan are like a Venn diagram where Bauhaus and Suprematism meet — almost as if Anni Albers and Kazimir Malevich were to have a baby. Her fiber-based geometric studies — made by wrapping wood panels in natural rope, punctuated by cotton floss color blocks — are deft executions of straight lines and woven shapes that tease the eye yet retain the softness of a tapestry.

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06.28.16

Up and Coming

Six Talents to Watch from RCA’s 2016 Graduate Show

Martino Gamper, Tomás Alonso, Raw-Edges, Soft Baroque — these are just a few of the designers who came from abroad to study at London's Royal College of Art and ended up making a home in the UK. So it's no wonder a dampened mood filled the air at this year's graduate showcase, in the wake of the EU Referendum, with an underlying anxiety of how the political sphere might affect the influx — and future prospects — of applying students. Still, the show was as fruitful as ever at uncovering this year's next big thing designers — click through for six of our favorites!

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06.27.16

Up and Coming

A Finnish Textile Designer Who Tossed Out All the Rules of Textile Design

Reeta Ek is one of those fine artists who studied design for practicality's sake, as a way to ensure she'd actually be able to get a job upon graduation. Yet when it came time for her to start her thesis, she gave herself one last taste of freedom, opting to throw out all of textile design's typical rules and restraints and just create whatever pleased her.

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