07.18.24

Up and Coming

Designers in America Lack the Infrastructure to Help Build Their Businesses. A New Residency From Colony is Here to Help.

Putting creative work out into the world can be incredibly daunting. There’s not only the pressure to conceive of a strong artistic vision but also the challenge of balancing logistical production details — not to mention the cost, particularly here in the United States, where we lack structural and financial support from the government. The Designer’s Residency Program from Colony, a gallery and design strategy firm in Manhattan, helps guide up-and-comers through all of this. For their 8-month intensive incubator, Colony’s founder Jean Lin and creative director Madeleine Parsons draw on their experience as professors at Parsons and RISD to help emerging, independent designers navigate the stages of launching a studio and breaking into the industry.

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07.16.24

Interiors

This London Cafe Proves There’s No Color Butter Yellow Can’t Elevate

A new cafe at London's Somerset House, run by acclaimed chef Rishim Sachdeva and designed by the London- and Milan-based studio Duelle, seems to prove a rule that people keep forgetting: that any color or trend can feel fresh again depending on the context in which it's placed. Seeing Café Petiole's cafe tables and 1930s bentwood chairs doused in a layer of antique rose and set against a backdrop of butter yellow and blue, made me feel like I was seeing Millennial Pink for the first time all over again.

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07.13.24

Saturday Selects

Week of July 8, 2024

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: two design projects made from discarded materials, an exhibition that's a who's-who of young Scandinavian designers, and an opulent new space for the intersection of French and American culture.

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07.11.24

Fair Report

A Decade In, 3 Days of Design in Copenhagen is a Must-Visit on the Design Fair Circuit

There's an increasing sense in the design world that 3 Days of Design in Copenhagen is a must-stop on the design fair circuit — some have argued even moreso than Milan. And while we didn't make it over this year, we could see from our inboxes that there was no shortage of wonderful things to see at the 11th edition this past June. The annual festival featured more than 400 exhibitors, bringing together emerging, experimental voices and established global giants, sprayed across the city, each stop just a bike ride — or sometimes a boat ride — away. While Danish and Scandinavian talent was on full view, a roster of international designers also had a strong presence. The theme this year — Dare to Dream — brought forth new interpretations of classic forms and inventive uses of unusual materials. Here were some of the highlights for us.

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07.10.24

Excerpt: Book

A Brutalist Cemetery, a Center for Spiritual Exploration, a Compendium of Product Design: What We’re Reading, Summer 2024 Edition

This week, the New York Times is counting down the 100 best books of the 20th century. So while you could be reading one of those this summer — or, perhaps, the book everyone I know is talking about, which does tangentially relate to this site in the form of a motel-room renovation — we've recently had a few more hefty design tomes come across our desk. What better time, then, to inaugurate a new column, where we tell you all the great things we're reading, browsing, or simply returning to again and again for inspiration. 

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09.02.21

Excerpt: Exhibition

For His New Collab With Kvadrat, Artist Danh Vo Wrapped an Entire House in a Rediscovered Nanna Ditzel Textile

Kvadrat’s newest fabric release, Sisu, doesn’t look particularly remarkable in photos at first glance. A thick wool woven in 16 different two-color pairings, it closely resembles its cousin, Hallingdal, the best-selling textile designed in the 1960s by Danish icon Nanna Ditzel. But when we learned the full story behind its discovery and development — in collaboration with the artist Danh Vo — it was so interesting we didn’t even know where to begin telling it.

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07.06.24

Saturday Selects

Week of July 1, 2024

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: We're taking a deep dive into the first ever LA Design Weekend, plus a stellar new London hotel draped in Bode tapestries, a gloriously tangible furniture collection by a digital artist, and a summery group show at Tiwa Gallery in New York that takes its cues from the mossy ancient forests of Wales.

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07.03.24

Interiors

A Tour Through the London Architectural Marvel The Cosmic House, Charles Jencks’s Postmodern Masterpiece

Located in London’s ultra-wealthy Holland Park, architect Charles Jencks's London home, The Cosmic House, doesn’t particularly stand out at first glance from the classic row of Victorian brick houses. But a closer look reveals unorthodox details, including circular windows and a metal gate that’s a collage of historical styles — telltale signs of Postmodernism. Adam Štěch revisits the 1983 masterpiece, now a museum and art foundation open to the public.

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07.01.24

Sight Unseen Presents

Want to Have Your Work Judged by Sight Unseen in Stockholm Next Year? Apply to Greenhouse Today!

I've now been to Stockholm in the dead of winter, when the ground is often covered in ice, on four different occasions. I've visited in the throes of summer — season of archipelago-hopping, 10PM sunsets, and simple but chic country houses — a grand total of zero times. But there's a non-masochistic reason why I keep returning: The Stockholm Furniture Fair, which in 2025 runs from February 4-8, is one our longtime favorites, and it's become even moreso in the last couple of years as we've developed our partnership with the fair's organizers, adding a Sight Unseen Best in Show award to the fair’s emerging design showcase, Greenhouse. We're excited to announce we'll be returning to the fair in 2025 — having bestowed last year's honor on the exciting up-and-coming duo Bursell/Svedborg — and we're hoping to convince more than a few of you today to submit your work to the jury in the hopes of being selected for next year's fair.

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06.29.24

Saturday Selects

Week of June 24, 2024

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: a show celebrating 40 years of American art furniture, a house near Barcelona with a dazzling red and blue kitchen, and a very fun palm-shaped mirror.

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06.27.24

Travel

Four Incredible Designer Villas You Can Rent This Summer in Europe, Or Just Admire From Afar

Every winter, when I start fantasizing about summer vacations I might go on that year, there's one form the daydreams always take: the enduring paradigm of the verdant country villa shared with family and friends, something straight out of a French or Danish film. But once you try to actually book a villa like that, the grounds may be picturesque, and the building pretty enough, but the interiors usually leave a lot to be desired. That's why we've been so happy to get to know the high-end home-sharing platform Boutique. Their offerings are geared towards design-forward properties rented by and for creatives, so your vacation can be both idyllic and aesthetic. We went hunting on Boutique's site for some of our favorite villas for rent across Europe and the UK that are lovely to look at, inside and out.

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06.26.24

Travel

To Kick Off Summer, We Rounded Up Three of Our Favorite New Design-Forward Destinations

Sometimes it seems that if you want a hotel with unusual and unexpected design, the tradeoff may be a lack of comfort and ease. No compromise is needed, though, at three recently opened destinations — one in the heart of Paris, one by the Mediterranean, and one in the Catskills — where style takes precedence, but not at the expense of a leisurely and welcoming stay.

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06.25.24

Up and Coming

This Parisian Artist Translates His Work Across Three Ancient Art Forms

When a sentence or phrase is translated from one language into another — and perhaps another, returning eventually to its native tongue — the result is often a completely different set of words whose meaning ultimately remains unchanged. For his Traduslation project, French-Swiss artist Réjean Peytavin has created an objects-based version of this kind of kinked-up inspiration funnel. Peytavin's multi-step development process typically involves drawing a found vessel, translating it first to carpet and then to wildly textured ceramics, allowing him to move his concepts through a series of physical states, carrying commonality from one form to another, yet ending up with three totally distinct collections of work.

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