New York, studio-sayso.com At OFFSITE this past May, product and furniture designer Sophie Lou Jacobsen and interior designer Sarita Posada teamed up to create what was easily one of our favorite new launches this year: A collection of caned and color-blocked furniture and lighting that turns inspirations from 1930s French and 1970s Italian design into something energetic yet timeless. We want every. single. piece. What is American design to you, and what excites you about it? American design embodies the general attitude of American culture: open minded, loose rules, always a little bit of cutting and pasting from the past and other cultures to make something new, and a little scrappy. Though American design firmly has its roots in modernism, since then it seems it’s greatly been influenced by the country’s hyper-postmodern spirit, for better or worse. Sophie started her design education and career in Europe, which is so steeped in a strong sense of design and has such rich history that at times it felt a bit difficult to step outside of that mold. There are a lot of rules to follow and big shoes to fill, whereas in New York, because the American design scene was relatively quiet for some time prior to the last decade, designers are forced to carve out their own space. That’s very powerful. There also isn’t as much infrastructure to work within (big companies, manufacturers, larger studios, etc), so there’s also a very strong sense of entrepreneurship here. Ultimately — though it stills seems sometimes we have some catching up to Europe to do in certain ways, like creating more opportunities for designers and instilling a more widespread, everyday culture and dialog around design in society — today American design feels stimulating, exciting, hyper expressive, and full of possibilities, and it seems to be only growing stronger in that respect. What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? We launched Collection 01 this May, and it was incredibly well received. While we’re both continuing to work on our individual practices — Sarita’s designing a large-scale hotel project and Sophie has been working on a cafe in Bushwick, among other things — we’re working on new Studio Sayso furniture pieces and will continue collaborating on more installation and set design projects. The studio was created in the spirit of collaboration, and with that in mind we look forward to working with other like-minded business … Continue reading Studio Sayso

New York, smstwrt.com Sam Stewart first gained attention in the design world creating furniture for the hip New York eatery Dimes, and he’s developed a minor cult following since. 2018 was his breakout year, with a solo show at Fort Gansevoort, a booth at Collective, lights for Michael Bargo, and maybe the coolest couch we’ve ever seen (designed for Laila Gohar and Omar Sosa of Apartamento, below). What is American design to you, and what excites you about it? My approach and the context that I work within is very localized to New York City. Sometimes I find it difficult to imagine belonging to a broader context. I don’t think this is uncommon in today’s landscape. Realizing my work on a consistent basis is expensive and logistically difficult. It’s imperative to have a hyper-focused specificity to what I do; it just isn’t practical to be more expansive. This type of approach is exciting because it offers insight into the idiosyncrasy of the individual mind, whose intimacy is more relatable to me than the collective or group. It’s honestly a bit difficult for me to consider American design outside of the context of New York City. This is because the world of design is a relatively new context for my work. Up until the last year, the community that had been most supportive of what I do — both professionally and socially — was artists. However, there’s a longstanding tradition of overlap between the world of art and design in America, especially for those who outsource their work to expert fabricators, that I find really exciting. There’s a seemingly endless array of craftspeople here who can make almost anything that you can imagine. Often the first person I meet is be the right fit for the job, but people tend to be pretty open about referring someone who might. I’ve learned so much from these relationships and dialogues with the people who make things. It’s invaluable. And I’m sure this is true in other cities; however, I feel like NYC is a particularly exciting for this. What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? There are a couple of shows that I’ll be making new work for that I’m excited about. One is “Blow Up,” a group show at Friedman Benda that opens tonight. It’s curated by PIN-UP magazine founder and editor Felix Burrichter, where “the exhibition will take the miniaturized … Continue reading Sam Stewart

New York, rosieli.com We’ve always known Rosie Li was a star; after all, her first product out of design school back in 2011 was a Frank Stella–inspired geometric sconce, which was immediately picked up by Roll & Hill and remains in their collection to this day. But this year, Li added something to her collection that we hadn’t seen before: color, in the form of everything from rainbow-gradient bubbles to salt-patinated palm leaves in a brilliant oxidized blue. We can’t wait to see what comes next. What is American design to you, and what excites you about it? American design has this ‘can-do’ spirit. These days if you have an idea, you can go out and buy the materials, maybe watch a YouTube video, and dive in. There’s nothing holding you back, so there’s a sense of play and candor that feels less bound by tradition, and more informed by process — your process. To me, that’s another facet of American innovation: taking stock of what exists in the canon, and using that as a point of departure. The results are deeply personal and unique; it’s why I find American design so exciting. What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year?  We’re working on a few hospitality projects at the moment — golden Blossom fixtures coming soon to a lobby near you! Jokes aside, we recently debuted a lighting series at A/D/O Shop, in collaboration with architect Michael Yarinsky. It was a challenge not knowing what the final products would look like. I love a challenge, though, and I’m excited to collaborate with more artists and makers this coming year. What inspires or informs your work in general? Everything stems from the natural world, and Mother Nature is the best engineer! I’m interested in the way things grow, bloom, and mature. By studying growth patterns, we can define and distill these concepts to reverse-engineer them as lighting designs. I also love perusing old Mathematics and Biology textbooks — charts, graphs, and diagrams really speak to me. When science and math aren’t cutting it, I enjoy looking at works by other artists — some of my favorites are Spencer Finch, Olafur Eliasson, and Julie Mehretu.

San Francisco, oodstudio.com Guatemalan-born product designer Jessica Herrera graduated in 2016, but this year decided to officially plant her stake in the design world as Oōd Studio, launching a debut collection in May that just so happened to perfectly channel the zeitgeist for chubby, tubular forms (even New York Magazine said so). We can only assume her next collection will be equally prescient. What is American design to you, and what excites you about it? A melting pot of different cultures and their crafts coming together to form an ever-evolving and diverse design language. What excites me about American design is its inclusivity — in a time when our current political climate is so polarizing, it celebrates diversity. It’s really exciting to see Latin American designers from small countries like my own putting out amazing work and being recognized for it. What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? My plans are to continue developing and expanding my line. I just moved to San Francisco and am now producing everything on the West Coast, so it’s been a busy end of the year. I’m looking forward showing in Milan at Salone del Mobile this year, as it will be my first time there! What inspires or informs your work in general? I’m interested in the way we interact with furniture. The way a piece can create an intimate experience between a person and the space around them. Being able to create a user experience that’s unique to a product makes it that much more special. This kind of thinking is what informs my work and the shapes I use. When it comes to materials, I’m really into metal piping and oversized bolsters. I like a chunky look mixed with soft curves; I think it’s playful yet sophisticated. In terms of forms I love the torus shape. It’s a hard shape to achieve in any material, which is why I find it so fascinating.

New York and Athens, objectsofcommoninterest.com Founded by the Greek couple Eleni Petaloti and Leonidas Trampoukis, Objects of Common Interest is not only one of the most prolific studios we’ve seen in recent memory — constantly launching high-profile collections and installations, all while running a separate architecture firm at the same time — it’s also one of those rare outfits that seems to produce only hits, no misses. The pair simply have a killer aesthetic. What is American design to you, and what excites you about it? Contrasts, freedom, and openness to cultural interpretation has been our interpretation of American design in the way that we are a part of it, blending our European background with our American experience and international activity. American design offers an unprecedented openness to ideas, and a fertile ground for experimentation, innovation, and expression of personal identity. What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? We’ve started planning a major installation for the Art Athina fair in Greece. This is the 3rd year in a row where we’ve been invited to present a public installation piece, and it’s been our ground for experimentation, setting up our new ideas for the year and letting us explore materiality and concepts. Our office in Athens is moving to new exciting space and we’re doing some special objects for that space. We’re also designing a new series of light pieces that will result in an installation and a new collection. We’re working on an interior project for a dance studio in Williamsburg, for which we’ll create custom objects. And finally, a commissioned series of lounge pieces will be permanently installed at the rooftop of the Essex Crossing Development site in New York by the end of this year. What inspires or informs your work in general? Architecture — and ideas about volume, structure, articulation, materiality, plus dual notions of lightness and weight, transparency and opaqueness, and light and shadow — has always been our core source of inspiration, and a parallel discipline of ours by way of our separate architecture practice LOT. We’re attracted to simplicity, illusion, and natural references of momentary beauty that define mood and bring out certain feelings. We look at art rather than design in a search for clarity of concept, leading to stripping ideas down to an abstract expression, then injecting practicality to make our work balanced with room for personal interpretation.

New York and Washington, D.C., jumbo.nyc In our experience, architects tend to take themselves rather seriously, which makes it all the more surprising that Justin Donnelly and Monling Lee of JUMBO — possibly the most joyful design studio to launch in years — met in architecture school. The two specialize in a kind of conceptual but unexpectedly lovable aesthetic that’s made them darlings of the design world since their launch almost two years ago. What is American design to you, and what excites you about it? When we decided to start a studio together, we celebrated by taking a trip to the 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennale. That weekend, we discovered that we share a love for McDonalds, Mickey Mouse, and Michael Jackson. For us, these are the hallmarks of American design — each of them is pure pop perfection. We want to make work like that. We want to make designs that are reductive, synthetic, and emotionally engaging. What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? This is a really exciting year for us. Here is what we are doing: 1. We are designing ANTHOM’s new Chelsea retail space off the Highline on West 22nd. 2. We are designing and curating an exhibition and conference at A/D/O, entitled Neotenic Design. 3. We are writing an article about childlike furniture for Disegno Magazine’s Spring Edition. 4. We are designing our very first standalone building for an institutional client. 5. We are participating in Greenhouse at the Stockholm Furniture Fair 6. We are introducing a new furniture collection at Salone in Milan. What inspires or informs your work in general? We want to make things that are sort of dumb — objects that are so reductive, they couldn’t be any simpler. We use basic, prismatic shapes, and build them without visible seams, fasteners, or transitions. It’s actually quite hard to do. But by suppressing the constructive aspect of our designs, the resulting objects become abstracted, like a drawing or a cartoon. And as a result, they are so much more pleasurable. This idea — the dematerialization of form — is a core principle for our studio.

New York, incommonwith.com Like many New York studios, RISD grads Nicholas Ozemba and Felicia Hung have a special focus on lighting. But rather than design yet another statement chandelier for the luxury market, In Common With has placed its work squarely in the realm of accessible, opening up the idea of custom lighting to a wider audience than ever before. We have a particular fondness for the duo’s hand-pinched clay shades, which are made in collaboration with ceramicists from Ohio to Brooklyn. What is American Design to you and what excites you about it? American design to us is ever-evolving and not bound by traditional standards. It doesn’t have a defined aesthetic quality, but rather a distinct attitude, energy, and heart. It is autonomous, and ambitious. There is an aim for simplification that is changing human habits, constantly shifting and evolving our lifestyle. This has trickled into how a lot of designers and companies interact with people. We’re excited to see what happens next. What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? We launched our first lighting collection this past May during New York’s design week and have been busy developing new products since! We’re planning to launch these new forms throughout the coming year including new colorways in some of our popular ceramic pieces. We are also experimenting with making shades in some softer materials like linen, corduroy, and paper, in addition to a collection of tabletop objects. We’re equally excited to share the evolution of our brand. We’ve been working on a new website and graphics which will make our customer experience a bit more user friendly. All of our collections are designed around a family of components which allow for a variety arrangements and configurations. Up until this point we have been launching each fixture in a single configuration but our new site will better activate the system, and allow everyone to explore a broader range of design possibilities. Beyond the virtual, we are working on the concept of an experiential space, which we hope to introduce later this year. What inspires or informs your work in general? We’re both very hands-on thinkers and learn a lot from working with tangible materials. Each material tells you how it wants to be used, which sparks new ideas and better informs how we use them. We’re constantly experimenting in the studio, but are also fortunate to work alongside a handful of highly skilled artisans and industrial manufacturers from around the … Continue reading In Common With

New York, iancochran.com Sculptor and photographer Ian Cochran has only designed a single table, for Fernando Mastrangelo’s second In Good Company exhibition in September. And yet it was so major — made from thick interlocking slabs of purple resin with a clear curved top — that we felt compelled to mark him as one to watch, as he further develops the design side of his practice. What is American design to you, and what excites you about it? American design, or history, isn’t that old. Without tradition-setting precedent, American innovation works by constantly trying to reinvent the “new.” The precedents that are set don’t last long. Without a history of tradition setting boundaries, there’s a great freedom to explore new and old, mix the two, make bad look good, or be the best at what’s popular. American design is both limitless and inviting. My imagination tends to run on high speed, so I enjoy the freedom of chasing after whatever wild ideas I have. I’m excited about the tight knit community of design in America that I’m getting to know. Working alongside the other creatives that make up this dynamic landscape is a huge inspiration and I love that aspect. What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? Come January, I will have moved into my new studio with a fellow coworker, Bailey Fontaine, a designer himself. It’s part of a bigger project space that I think will be really exciting, fostering collaboration and conversations. Another big thing for me coming up will be bringing my next set of ideas to physicality. My Plump Table is my first foray into design, and furniture design specifically, so I have lots more that I want to work on. What inspires or informs your work in general? Up until my Plump Table, my work as an artist focused on our reality and the perceptions that form it. I played around with this idea through mainly sculpture and photography. A series of photos I did look like the surface of Mars, but are actually macro photos of iron oxide dust fragments the size of a pin head. It’s investigations like these that have lead to my interests in varied materials, as well as my fascination with effects that play with the eye. I love to research. Sometimes I tend to research too much; I just emailed a nanoparticle company about silicon dioxide spheres. Inspiration … Continue reading Ian Cochran

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.

Los Angeles, etcforshort.com We’d been fans of interior designer Sally Breer since she designed L.A.’s trendy Hotel Covell in 2015, but she’s since taken her practice to the next level, joining forces with stylist Jake Rodehuth-Harrison to form ETC.etera and gearing up to launch — early this year — a line of furniture the pair teased with an appealingly chunky coffee table at last year’s OFFSITE show. That, plus a new ETC.etera showroom and a new L.A. hotel project opening soon, are putting their firm at the top of our radar in 2019. What is American design to you, and what excites you about it? JH: Without getting too political, America is truly a melting pot and its design is a reflection of that. What you seeing happening on the East Coast is different than what’s happening here in Los Angeles, and so on. I think the varying landscape and history is a major factor. My aesthetic has been uniquely different in each part of the country I’ve lived in. Living in Los Angeles has definitely pushed my process and thinking into new territory. SB: We’re not burdened with the responsibility of as much history as Europe is, so somehow that space allows for more surprising — and dare I say interesting? — design. That might also just be an American arrogance. What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? JH: We’re opening a boutique hotel/restaurant/bar/gift shop/coffee bar in an old firehouse in L.A.’s Arts District early in the new year, plus some really beautiful residential spaces, both here and in New York. SB: Something we started to do in a big way this year was collaborations with other makers and artists, and my hope is to continue that in an even bigger way this year. What inspires or informs your work in general? JH: I’m really inspired by vintage spaces, especially from the 1970s and ’80s. There was such a sense of wonder in so much of what was being created then that’s returning to the world of design now — people are taking bigger risks, having more fun, and playing with unconventional materials in a way that feels fresh and exciting. Our aim is always to create spaces that people want to return to, either physically or in print, and a big part of that is working to make spaces that are a bit outside the box. SB: … Continue reading ETC.etera

Los Angeles, estudiopersona.com In 2014, designer Emiliana Gonzalez and artist Jessie Young moved to Los Angeles from their native Uruguay as mere acquaintances. Five years on, the two friends have established Estudio Persona as a need-to-know talent, with two collections of sculptural minimalism that riff on Montevideo’s Brutalist melancholy. What is American design to you, and what excites you about it? American design feels tangible and accessible. There’s an unapologetic approach here that makes you feel as if you, too, can do it. The fact is, we are foreigners and those concepts are what made us feel comfortable enough to try and make in this country. The challenge of actually being a designer in America is the exciting part. You have to design, produce, and sell — and, as tiring as it is, you never cease to learn.  What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year?  We are going to be in Milan for the first time, so that is going to be very exciting for us. We are also working with a lot of new stores in different parts of the country and abroad. Our plan is to keep up with the demand without losing the joy in what we do. What inspires or informs your work in general? We are bombarded with information and inspiration on a daily basis. We believe that saturation makes us turn our sights to simpler things such as materials and human interactions. We like working with different people and often we are seduced by the idea of making something new with that specific craftsman just to evolve our practice and hopefully develop a relationship. We try and balance the materials we use in each collection in order to have a good equation between warmth and cold, soft and hard.

Los Angeles, cuffhome.com Partly a residential and commercial interiors firm, Cuffhome was founded in L.A. a decade ago by Wendy Schwartz and Kristi Bender. Yet the pair didn’t catch our attention until this year, when they released a furniture collection full of simple yet contrasting geometries (soft curves, sharp angles) and textures (velvet, powdercoated metal) — with more to come in 2019. What is American design to you, and what excites you about it? For us, American design is defined by our accessibility to both resources and to a creative freedom to make up the rules as we go. This, coupled with a relaxed and unpretentious approachability. We thrive in and are most excited by a climate of collaborative opportunities, so we elect to surround ourselves with artists and artisans we respect and admire. More than anything, collaboration broadens the possibilities of our process, allowing us to design products that in the end are an elevated amalgamation of influences, perspectives, and capability. What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? We’ve got substantial residential and hospitality projects on the horizon, including one with two seasoned female restauranteurs who have partnered on the first Los Angeles location of the vegan Toronto cafe Fresh. For the next year plus, we’ll also be hard at work on a dream project specifying all finishes and furnishings of a 10-bathroom and 4-kitchen home in Hancock Park. Simultaneously, we’re developing new products to launch in the spring or summer, all informed by new partnerships, color palettes, and sourced artisans. What inspires or informs your work in general? The practicality of client’s needs, customer feedback, and observed market voids drive our creative process — kind of a business-minded, look-backward-to-see-forward approach. That said, we garner tons of inspiration from the intersection of color with shape, form, and texture. The recent launch of our collection Where Angles Meet Curves articulated our gravitation toward shades of green and terra cotta, along with a combination of the edge and softness that define us both. (Cuffhome photos by Daniel Hennessy)