Saint Augustine, Florida, yielddesign.co The most beautiful designs are rarely the most accessible and affordable, but that’s where the magic of Yield lies: They make planters and housewares — and as of late, furniture and lighting — that we not only want to live with, but actually can. What is American design to you, and what excites you about it? The beauty of American design is that our country’s vast diversity summons the design scene to be refined, yet widely varied. From our perspective, American design is the intersection of cultures and crafts representative of a global society. America is historically known for its industrial prowess, and American design’s craft and ingenuity is rooted in our manufacturing heritage, but it’s begun to move beyond just a manufacturing story. The fact that so many cultures and perspectives collide here results in a refined approach that blends craft and experimentation with an eye towards fine-tuned function and purpose. American design is a melting pot that can be playful yet structured, abstract yet purposeful; it’s not required to speak to one specific person or group of people because there’s always an audience to be discovered. What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? With the addition of furniture to our collection and more furnishings to come, we plan to engage in more holistic interiors work. Renovating our personal home over the last year has been a major source of inspiration and new ideas. This coming year we have our sights set on building a new guest house from the ground up, and we intend to use it as a sort of testing ground for new pieces. Since we won’t have the pressure of needing to live in it right away, we see it as an opportunity for more fluid experimentation. What inspires/informs your work in general? We’ve always relied heavily on traveling and frequently getting outside of the studio to get inspired. This year has been a little different. There’s no sugar coating it, it has been difficult. We’ve encountered some personal tragedies that have kept us lying low, and as a result, we’ve had to dig more deeply within for inspiration. So this year our work has been the result of a more introspective take on our own design. As a company, we’ve also been able to observe our products in the world for a couple of years now. We’ve become inspired by various manufacturers … Continue reading Yield

New York, wintercheckfactory.com Wintercheck are giving new meaning to the term industrial chic, translating materials like safety glass and polyurethane rubber sheeting into unexpected yet dream-home-level furniture. What is American design to you, and what excites you about it? It’s less of a product and more of an exercise in craftsmanship or experimentation. In September we produced a show called TOUCHING at our studio, in which all of the designs took the concept of furniture and lighting but pushed past the standard definition of what a chair or lamp is. It seems way more important — and quite frankly less boring — to explore and exercise what design can be when you remove it from commercial constraints or the need to satisfy clients. So in that sense, American design is the experimental pieces that drive new trends, rather than just the latest version of an already proven design. What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? Right now we’re designing and building out a new show for early next year: an installation in our studio that functions as a bar. Instead of having a traditional opening and reaching as many people as possible, our goal is to make it a more immersive experience, with smaller groups and more time to get inside of and interact with the piece. We’ve also just been invited to show an installation of new designs at the Volta art fair in New York, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary in March. What inspires/informs your work in general? Our work is informed by concepts of transformation and of control. How can we take a material and force it to perform in the way we want? Inevitably that produces unforeseen results, but inspiration often comes through the moment when we fuck up the thing we were originally trying to do. Over the last two years, as we’ve pushed our work further from pure functionality to a more abstract place, we’ve drawn inspiration from artists like Scott Walker. Here’s a guy that went from singing saccharine teen ballads to recording a 20-minute avant-garde narrative about Attila the Hun that features the sound of meat being punched. The idea that there’s a thread that connects those two places, and that the path is traversable by anyone willing to tread it, is very exciting.

New York, uhurudesign.com They launched their design-build furniture studio in 2004, but Uhuru have made major leaps forward recently, scaling up their studio, opening a Manhattan showroom, starting their own contract workplace line, and launching a collection of steel furniture that’s taking their aesthetic in a very new and exciting direction. What is American design to you, and what excites you about it? New American design started with the maker movement of the late 1990s and early 2000s, which grew in places where there were empty and underutilized manufacturing spaces, as big companies shipped operations elsewhere or disappeared altogether. The void has been filled by individuals, small companies, and communal shops started by young people out just out of school and not wanting to or being able to get a job at a big company. Instead they’ve cultivated their own style to make their mark. What’s been so exciting is there’s no big industry to define what things should look like — we are defining it as we go. What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? We have a few new collections we’re really excited about. One is called Fold (sneak preview pictured above top), and it’s made from solid brass sheets that look as if they’ve been twisted and flattened to create the forms in the collection. It also plays with how faces of a material can age differently as they are exposed to the elements. We’re also continuing to develop our workplace collection, especially the desking system we launched this summer along with three collections of ancillary furniture for the office. These are a refined version of the essentials line we launched two years ago, and although the push will be the workplace market, they really can fit into all kinds of commercial and residential environments. We just moved our Pennsylvania workshop into a new 50,000 square-foot manufacturing space, so we’re really excited about what we’ll be able to produce there as well as the manufacturing jobs we’re hoping to create. What inspires/informs your work in general? I would definitely say a constant would be the way nature affects materials over time. I think there’s incredible beauty in capturing that process and bring it into an interior space in a piece of furniture. Right now my kids are also a huge inspiration. To see life through their eyes and to sit and build things with them — whether it’s Legos or a making a crossbow out of … Continue reading Uhuru

New York, studioproba.com Alex Proba is primarily a graphic designer, but in the past three years she’s become one of the most in-demand collaborators in the design scene, lending her expert eye for pattern and color to the likes of Bower, Aelfie, CHIAOZZA, and — soon — CC-Tapis. What is American design to you, and what excites you about it? I’ve moved to New York City almost 6 years ago, after studying in the Netherlands at the Design Academy Eindhoven, and at the beginning I was actually very clueless about contemporary American design and what it means. I’ve since learned and experienced that American design takes itself less seriously than European design (or the design I grew up with), and lets you be a bit more playful, with a wink. What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? I am actually so excited for next year. I’ve never been part of a show or exhibition outside the US, and next year I’m finally going to show in Milan. I have had the great honor to work with CC-Tapis on a new collection of rugs which will be launching at the Salone del Mobile in April. I’m very proud and nervous at the same time. I almost feel like a kid waiting for Christmas. Another very special project for me is a celebration of tradition and craft: I’m working with an amazingly talented weaving community in Ecuador, designing housewares that showcase their beautiful craft techniques and celebrate their tradition and history. I’m also working on an online publication and event series called “Substance Quarterly” with my dear friend Caroline Lau, which explores art, design, and food through the lens of one material. It will be launching early next year. What inspires/informs your work in general? Back in school I used to look to literature and design history for inspiration, but that’s drastically changed ever since I started my A Poster A Day project almost 4 years ago. I’ve learned how to be inspired by not visual and design-y things but by simple conversations with people, their stories, and their emotions, as well as smell. That also leads to materials — I love researching materials and their properties, and to feel and see them at the same time inspires me. In general I have to say that it isn’t necessarily visual inspiration that brings out an idea in me, it can be way more abstract than that. Sometimes all … Continue reading Studio Proba

New York, slashobjects.com This year, Arielle Assouline-Lichten branched off from her architecture studio to launch a glamorous, assured debut furniture and object collection that mixes brass, marble, concrete, ceramic, and industrial rubber in endless combinations and at various scales. What is American design to you, and what excites you about it? I think there’s the rise of a new Americana that’s been redefining design in this country, and I’m really excited to be working in a time of vibrancy and energy in the field. When I think about American design, I first think of Frank Lloyd Wright and Taliesin, the Wild West, and a streamlined aesthetic that built a way of making in this country. Fast forward past the turmoil in the maker culture of the American rust belt, and you get to a renewed interest in what can be done with design and fabrication on this soil. There’s an emboldened and critical approach to contemporary design in America that’s being fueled by a desire to reinvent and defy the status quo. I think it’s also about using the resources that we have in different ways than we have before. I love the excitement and urgency driving the design community right now to produce new inventions and new ways of making. What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? The upcoming year is all about getting bigger and better. I’m literally trying to figure out how to take a chunk out of a mountain and turn it into large-scale pieces that are functional and impactful. I’m really excited to grapple with the weightiness of raw stone, thinking through its connection with other materials, and all to face all of the new constraints that come at this scale. I’m also seeing the production of smaller pieces from my debut collection at Sight Unseen OFFSITE finally leave the presses and enter the marketplace. Slash Objects rubber coasters, placemats and vanity mirrors will be hitting retail stores, and I’m looking forward to seeing them reach a wider audience. It’s been a huge undertaking to design every step of the way with materials that have never coexisted in this way. I’m going to keep pushing those boundaries in my next collection, which I’m now starting to design. I haven’t stopped brainstorming for next year’s design week since the end of the last one! What inspires/informs your work in general? My work is largely inspired by … Continue reading Slash Objects

New York, samuelamoia.com With his studio open barely a year, Amoia’s client list is already filled with names like Calvin Klein, Stella McCartney, Peter Marino, and Dover Street Market. They seek him out both for his eclectic, geometrically inclined interiors and for his inventive furniture made by combining traditional casting materials with precious stones and minerals. What is American design to you, and what excites you about it? The design climate in America is very, very hot at the moment. There is an expansive landscape between art, design, and functionality that idea-makers are widely exploring. Designers are utilizing new techniques and progressive ideas while still honoring the core principles of design. We are also constantly pushing the boundaries of sustainability, and yet not sacrificing craftsmanship. I can think of six American designers right off the top of my head that inspire me and that are shaping the present day and the future of design. More importantly, there’s a major unity within the design community in the States. With the emergence of such a great range of fairs and shows — Sight Unseen OFFSITE, Design Miami, The Salon, Collective — you can really get your work out there, making the “American Dream” more possible than ever for an unknown designer to showcase their work and passion. And if it’s good, people will support you. There’s a great sense of community among designers — I’m living proof of it! I’ve had a lot of love from my contemporaries. It makes me very proud, and It’s not only inspiring but also encouraging. As the old saying goes, “All boats rise with the tide.” What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? On the interior design side, we’re very excited to open our first hotel project, Itz’-Ana Resort & Residences, in Belize. It’s an enormous ground-up project in Placencia, with both residential and commercial elements spanning over 20 acres of design. Blending British and Spanish Colonial design mixed with a 1920s beach and jungle twist, we’ve been working with over two dozen local and international artisans and craftsman to commission everything from furniture, lighting, and architectural elements — handmade tiles, woven wall panels — to artworks. There will even be a butterfly farm in the spa! We’re also designing our first ground-up residential building in Coconut Grove, Miami, called Arbor. It will have a focus on sustainability, bike sharing, and commissioned works by local artists. The project has a luxury grassroots feel … Continue reading Sam Amoia

New York, architectureatlarge.com We hesitated from including de Cardenas on this list for years because we thought he might be too well-known, having designed hip-yet-haute interiors for the likes of Nike, Cartier, and Jessica Stam. Then he nabbed the AD100 and Maison et Objet’s Designer of the Year, and we stopped overthinking it. Better late than never. What is American design to you, and what excites you about it? I think America’s greatest export is a certain kind of optimism. I’m excited by the problem of how to fold American optimism into American design. What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? I can’t get too specific yet, but there are a number of upcoming projects I’m excited about. In general we seem to be working on a larger scale, coming up, which is great. But I also always love the smaller-scale project that allows us to work with a finer grain of detail. The line of eyewear we just designed with Gentle Monster, for example. Also, 2016 marks the 10th anniversary of the studio. We’re currently preparing a monograph to be published in celebration of the occasion. That will be coming out next fall. What inspires/informs your work in general? Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie, David Lynch, Madonna. Bruce Springsteen, right now. I have a roster of about ten movies that serve as an endless source, for me — a source of more than I could hope to say. I keep coming back to them.

Los Angeles, ouli.us What began as a store in L.A.’s Echo Park has evolved into the solo design practice of Brooke Intrachat, whose work has also evolved — from easy-to-produce accessories into full-blown, gallery-level, sculptural furniture. What is American design to you, and what excites you about it? I think American design is reinvention, innovation, acceptance, and a no-holds-barred mentality. And I think American design is often none of, or half-heartedly, or some of these things. That’s what excites me about it — not a single, tidy definition suffices. For me it’s mutable. It’s all the good and all the bad and it’s OUT THERE. In the same vein, I think many designers and artists are embracing the exploratory space between fixed definitions of art and design. Furniture is sculpture is product is object. At its best, American design is re-evaluating our culturally held beliefs about value and worth, and that’s endlessly exciting. What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? A number of private commissions and a dream project (that I can’t yet talk about) will be wrapping up in 2017. I’m super excited to see the works materialized! My most recent collection of furniture — created for Arborite at Sight Unseen OFFSITE in May — was very sculptural, and I’m looking forward to further exploring furniture as sculpture, and vice versa. I think the schism between the two is often imagined. What inspires/informs your work in general? It’s all about feeling. Aesthetics and the visual deeply affect how I feel — both emotionally and physically — and how I think most people feel, whether they know it or not. I’ve often felt most happy and most alive just through looking. Looking at a salad spoon or a very old, hand-whittled stick, for example; something that makes me feel something. I find inspiration here, and even more in re-configuring and referencing. The same goes for beautiful art and design. I love looking through books of artists and designers whose work excites me. It’s that excitement that really inspires. I also have to point to a large amount of mistakes. I often mis-see things, almost like visual dyslexia. I’ll catch small glimpses of imagined things or see an object “incorrectly.” These visual mistakes end up being extremely informative.

Kelly Behun New York, kellybehun.com Behun is bringing downtown cool to an uptown crowd — both through her chic-yet-unexpected interiors and through her line of collaborative, Memphis-inflected furniture and objects that, this year, staged a takeover at Barneys. What is American design to you, and what excites you about it? There’s a wonderful spirit of non-conformity and fearlessness that I think is still uniquely American and permeates our subconscious in a way that’s profoundly liberating and exciting. This is absolutely the case in the world of American design — the dual realities of our strong emphasis on individuality and the freedom of individual expression, and even upending traditions, is one that not just lives but thrives alongside the reality that this is also a very tight knit, generous, and supportive community. When married together, these two seemingly disparate worlds create about as perfect an environment as one could hope to work in. That’s genuine gratitude speaking. What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? After coming off A Kook Milieu, my pop-up shop at Barneys New York, I’m really looking forward to my next line of furniture and accessories. It was such a great experience, and I especially loved working with new materials and techniques like marquetry and lacquered fabrics. My plan is to continue to explore different mediums, like blown glass, and more collaborations with artists, which has always been a cornerstone of my design practice. I am also working with clients on projects on both coasts and am looking forward to an interesting partnership with Artsy here in New York. What inspires or informs your work in general? I am endlessly inspired by the power our surroundings can have on our mood and ability to feel safe or happy, calm or restored. With so much uncertainty surrounding the political landscape and the world in general, it’s nice to feel there’s one environment you actually can control; your own little fiefdom where you can fashion the world as you want it, at least aesthetically. There’s something deeply satisfying, and even life-affirming, about working with clients to figure out how to give them just that, and how to create an environment that is an authentic projection of who they are and that makes them feel happy and enriched to be at home.

Jason Miller New York, jasonmiller.us and rollandhill.com In addition to maintaining his own studio practice, Miller gets major credit for having founded the preeminent contemporary American lighting brand Roll & Hill, which not only produces his own elegant designs but also provides a much-needed manufacturing platform for up-and-coming American talents. What is American design to you, and what excites you about it? American design is often a balance of new and old. When the balance is tipped too far in one direction, it becomes either alien or retro, neither of which is good. What’s exciting right now is that there’s a ton of really great work being created that finds the right balance. It’s a great time to be working in the US. What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? Through my studio, the biggest project this year is a furniture collection that I’m developing for De La Espada. I’m also working on a rug collection for a French manufacturer. Both will debut during New York Design Week. Roll & Hill will be launching new products again this year at EuroLuce and then in the fall in New York. What inspires or informs your work in general? I’m increasingly interested in interiors. While I’m still a product designer, it’s hard for me to think of products outside of a specific interior context. Furniture and/or lighting is never experienced on a white background — it’s part of a room. I think more and more about how the things I make will affect the rooms they inhabit.

Bainbridge Island, Washington, graindesign.com We’ve long been fans of Chelsea and James Minola’s understated furnishings and Guatemalan-made textiles, but their most recent collection reached new levels of sophistication. What is American design to you, and what excites you about it? American design is: – Entrepreneurial As independent American designers, we’ve had moments — especially in the beginning — where we looked at young European designers and thought they had it so much easier with support from their government. Our thinking on that has shifted over the years. In having to build and maintain a business to support our design practice, we’ve created an ecosystem around our work, supported by relationships with peers, manufacturers, photographers, press, retailers, and clients, that now affords us a lot of creative freedom. -Regional As part of a large country, with such diversity of culture, climate, and geography, we can’t help but get excited when we see regional design communities working together to create their own point of view based on their specific experience of time and place. -Inventive We are builders in this country. We admire invention and the search for newness. Designers are at the center of this action as problem solvers and catalysts for change. There is kind of American heroism in the ambition of those who build a practice around curiosity and discovery. -Collaborative Our design education taught us how rewarding it is to collaborate and learn from one another. We’ve been so shaped by working together with our peers as well as the artists, craftspeople, and manufacturers that help us realize our work. This has been especially important for us within our small Northwest community, where so many of us share resources and support each other through creating collective events and experiences. -Optimistic We started our practice at the height of the recession and spent a few years in this optimistic naivete that is so much a part of the American Dream narrative. We have learned a lot since then, but that optimism is still with us and with so many of our peers who have also built businesses from scratch. What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? We have some exciting client work in production at the moment. It is a lot of customization of our line, which is something we do well since we make so much of our work to order. Working with architects and interior … Continue reading Grain

New York, fernandomastrangelo.com and m-material.com Mastrangelo creates furniture under the name MMaterial and limited-edition, more fine art pieces under the name FM/s. Inspired by natural phenomena such as glaciers and rock strata, the two collections are united by a predilection for unusual materials such as dyed cement, salt, and sand. What is American design to you, and what excites you about it? I feel there is still a lot of uncharted territory in American design. That’s always an exciting place to work from because you’re not subjected to traditions or standards. We spend a lot of time in the studio just trying to push the craft and materials to new levels in hopes that it will expand the current ideas of how art, design and architectural objects can be made. What are your plans and highlights for the upcoming year? The studio is fired up for next year! In March 2017, we’re preparing for a collaborative solo project with Maison Gerard, and in April, FM/s will show new work with Rossana Orlandi during Salone del Mobile. In May, we’ll present entirely new collections for both MMATERIAL and FM/s at Collective Design Fair. We’re also working on several private commissions that explore new casting techniques and more architectural type installations. One of these commissions is for a top secret residential project in California and we recently completed a large commission for the 1 Hotel here in Brooklyn, which includes a completely custom bar cast from black silica sand. Late next year, I’m extremely excited about an FM/s collaboration with Edward Fields where I’ve been invited to create an collection of rugs. We’ll be showing the first one during design week next year. What inspires or informs your work in general? I can’t seem to get over exotic landscapes (Iceland, Patagonia, Mexico) that have natural, organic formations. Nature is the greatest sculptor of all. We try our best to translate the materials we cast with into forms inspired by nature, in an attempt to give the object its own gravitas. I feel jealous when I see a perfect stone formation created by water crashing into it, or by wind wearing slowly against its surface. I want to live with those moments, and that’s what I try to create in art and design.