New York, greenriverprojectllc.com
Founded in 2017 by two art-world expats, sculptor Ben Bloomstein and painter Aaron Aujla, Green River Project LLC might be our most under-the-radar pick this year. But a showing with Michael Bargo at Collective Design, a new Noguchi-inspired East Village storefront, and an ambitious plan to launch four, narrative-driven collections of sculptural furniture and objects per year has us intrigued, to say the least.

What is American design to you, and what excites you about it?

Contemporary American design is really the ability to reference other cultures and traditions without the burden of having to break through a historical design sensibility. It’s really more of an approach than a style.

What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? 

We make four collections a year, so for 2019 we’re starting with a collection of wall-hanging cabinets. We’ll be releasing each collection out of our new East Village space (204 East 7th Street), so we’re excited to have these new collections be released in a setting of our own. We’re also developing uniforms for the third collection of the year, which will be all available for sale through the store. The uniforms will be worn by us and our employees while in the shop and on the job site.

What inspires or informs your work in general? 

We’re always working on residential interior projects in New York; it’s a big part our business. We like thinking about general contracting as an artist would, as much as furniture design. We both had fine art practices before starting Green River Project LLC, and we were really interested in taking that same approach and applying it to building a home.