10.17.23

Excerpt: Exhibition

EJR Barnes On Cast Glass, Instagram, “Freaky Stuff,” and His Excellent New Show at Emma Scully Gallery

Elliot Barnes’s work is full of historical references and subtle echoes that are at once familiar but hard to pin down. It’s not so much an expression of nostalgia as it is a longing for a time and place that never actually existed. In his work, Barnes messes with temporality, giving shape to things that feel anachronistic or out of time — and that are both sophisticated and a little mischievous. In his first solo show, A Room on East 79th Street at the Emma Scully Gallery in New York, the self-taught designer has created a dreamscape in the form of a living room.

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10.16.23

Interiors

A Fictional Graphic Designer Was the Muse for This São Paulo Exhibition

“Who lives in this house?” you might be wondering after seeing these images of a stainless-steel Mario Botta sofa sitting upon a high-pile wool rug, or two steel-wrapped, camel-colored Kazuhide Takahama chairs. Its occupant would certainly be lauded for having great taste — if only they existed IRL. The space was actually designed for a fictional character, by a trio of Brazilian creative forces who teamed up to produce an exhibition that celebrates the country’s architecture, design, and art of the mid-20th century, and uses its modernist flavors to inform new works that are also on show.

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10.14.23

Saturday Selects

Week of October 9, 2023

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: Two new design-led bakeries — aka Modernist paeans to carbs — an expansive ceramic furniture exhibition by Cody Hoyt, and a new, modular furniture collection inspired by the book Soviet Bus Stops of Georgia.

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10.12.23

Shopping

Where Are All the Cool, Designer-Made Beds? Here Are 48 Options to Kickstart Your Search

It's easy to understand why beds aren't a typology that's attempted by most designers; there are pain points at nearly every step in the process. Beds are hard to ship, they're hard to store, and they're limited in their form. Plus, beds are expensive, big-ticket items that only get purchased once in a blue moon. Luckily, we're sensing a shift in the cosmos. Earlier this year, we were introduced to the Copenhagen-based brand ReFramed, whose colorful, easy-to-ship frame is made from 82% post-consumer recycled aluminum and comes with the option to purchase matching headboards and bedside tables; they'll start shipping to the US later this year. And one of our favorite emerging designers, Ben Willett, says he has at least four bed designs in the works. Until then, whether you're spec'ing for a project or buying for your own home, here are 52 options to kickstart your search.

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10.10.23

Up and Coming

This Graphic Designer–Turned–Cabinetmaker’s Dyed-Wood Furniture is, Well, To Die For

Paris-based designer Jonathan Cohen has been working in wood for only a couple of years. Initially trained as a graphic designer, his eye for flat compositions naturally transferred into the three-dimensional world of furniture, with his creations quickly catching the eye of top architects and designers and local galleries. “When you have knowledge of good proportion, shape, and balance, you can design a letter or furniture,” Cohen says. “For me, it’s almost the same.” What lends the designer's work a certain je ne sais quoi, however, is the unique dye treatment he uses, applied in various techniques to bring out the grain and texture of the wood — forming patterns reminiscent of those created by Memphis artist Nathalie du Pasquier. 

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03.07.22

Eye Candy

Daniel O’Toole’s New Gradient Works Provoke a Distortion of the Senses

"Can an image feel as though it has a sound frequency embedded in it?" That is the question animating Australian artist Daniel O'Toole's latest exhibition at Modern Times, which closed this week in Melbourne. Called Cascade Rumble, and inspired by O'Toole's own experience with synesthesia, the exhibition features works that are intended to fully engulf the viewer and to "hum a frequency of sound that resonates in the mind."

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10.07.23

Saturday Selects

Week of September 24, 2023

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: a wavy wooden console, an exhibition showcasing modernly made Baroque-style furnishings. and the recently reopened Bottega Veneta Paris flagship store.

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10.05.23

Travel

Beata Heuman Made Her Name Designing Colorfully Maximalist Interiors. Now She’s Bringing That Same Aesthetic to a Chic Parisian Hotel.

The Swedish-born, London-based designer Beata Heuman is known for bringing character and charm to her interiors. And she does just that with her first hotel project: Hôtel de la Boétie, which opened in September, the sixth Parisian space from design-forward French hotel group Touriste. For this collaboration, Heuman and her studio worked with the 19th-century architecture of the building — located in rue de la Boétie in the eighth arrondissement, not too far from the Champs-Élysées — and incorporated existing elements such as the marble entrance, elevator, and staircase of the 40-room property. Keeping the design relatively simple, using a limited palette, natural woods, and stainless steel and brass, Heuman has created the kind of heightened atmosphere you can have in spaces that are meant to be traveled through and not necessarily lived in all the time. “We can treat it a bit like a stage set, which is not the approach I would take when it comes to someone’s home,” says Heuman.

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10.04.23

Sighted

Each Rug in the Latest Collection from Cc-Tapis Looks Like a Portal to Somewhere Else

Made of hand-knotted Himalayan wool at the cc-tapis atelier in Nepal, the Memento collection by Yabu Pushelberg features a trio of undyed, tone-on-tone variations in off-kilter geometries. There are arches that could be doorways; squares, trapezoids, and circles that could be windows; portals to somewhere else. Or not. These designs are not so much figurative as suggestive. Like a fleeting memory that takes you out of the present but can’t exactly put you in the past.

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10.03.23

Interiors

These Three Historic Properties Have Been Reimagined As Our New Favorite Design Hotels

Designing the interior for a hotel these days can be a tricky thing. Most hotels aren't ground-up builds, so there needs to be a certain amount of sensitivity towards the building's past while still imagining a place that a 21st-century traveler — who is constantly bombarded with other people's vision of what makes the perfect vacay — might actually want to stay. In our fall hotel round-up, we look at three projects who have succeeded beyond our wildest dreams. How about a reimagined historic English country manor from the 17th century? A ‘50s-inspired guest house in Marseille above a famed restaurant? Or a renovated functionalist building that’s the talk of Brussels? Take your pick after the jump. 

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10.02.23

Fair Report

15 Projects We Loved From September’s Design Fairs in London and Paris

It could be the time of year that gives the London Design Festival and Maison & Objet in Paris a kind of in-between feel. Summer still lingers in places, and a moody, autumnal atmosphere takes over in others — although this could also be attributed to the essential nature of each city's design scene as well. As usual, there was plenty to see, though we also wondered if there was some amount of holding out for what may end up the true statement moment of the fall design calendar: October's inaugural edition of Design Miami/Paris. What struck us this year (from afar, sigh) wasn’t so much a few noticeable trends as an emphasis on collaboration — aesthetics may be fragmented, but our connection to each other is stronger than ever.

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09.27.23

Excerpt: Exhibition

Need a Cheat Sheet to the Current Norwegian Design Scene? Take Notes

For this year’s Unika Auction, the third iteration of the contemporary Norwegian design showcase, FOLD Oslo invited 30 designers, from up-and-comers to established Norwegian names, to create new pieces. (Unika means unique in Norwegian). "Choosing designers to be part of this Unika exhibition was challenging, but also very exciting, as the Norwegian design scene has exploded with talented designers, craftspeople, and artists in recent years,” says FOLD member Anna Maria Øfstedal Eng. There are a wealth of materials here, which both represent and spring from longstanding Norwegian craft traditions in textiles, woodworking, glass, and aluminum. What connects it all for Øfstedal Eng, aside from geographic provenance, is a shared approach: a combination of preservation and innovation that leads to enduring work.

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09.26.23

Sighted

Herman Miller’s New Task Chair Wants to Become the Next Upholstered Icon (And It Doesn’t Have a Ton of Competition)

We don't talk a lot on this site about Naoto Fukasawa. He's one of an earlier generation of industrial designers — along with names like Jasper Morrison and Hella Jongerius — whose talent and influence is, by this point, simply a given in certain creative circles. (And not, perhaps, in others.) But while we hadn't heard about a major project of his in a long time — his Pao light for Hay was probably the most recent, though why did no one tell us about this sweet Japanese playground equipment? — our ears perked up with we heard one of America’s largest and most celebrated office furniture brands had teamed up with the feted Japanese designer. The result is the Asari task chair, the latest collab between Herman Miller and Naoto Fukasawa, and it is, expectedly, a resounding match made in functional, ergonomic, minimalist heaven.

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