11.02.21

Sighted

A Tacchini Reissue Proves Tobia Scarpa’s Very First Chair Is Still One of His Best

As a designer, you may have been taught to always explore beyond your initial hunch — that, not unlike the "bad pancake" theory of dating, your first idea will never be your best. And yet history offers a wealth of exceptions to that rule, including Tobia Scarpa's iconic 1959 Pigreco chair, the first furniture piece he ever designed that, having recently been reissued by Tacchini, endures to this day.

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10.30.21

Saturday Selects

Week of October 25, 2021

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: a vacation home in Greece made from repurposed Styrofoam, a furniture series in colorful onyx, and the prettiest hand-blown borosilicate bong.

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10.28.21

Q+A

Lighting Designer Lukas Peet on Balancing the Sculptural and the Saleable

Lukas Peet's first commercially successful lighting design — and the one that brought him to our attention way back in 2011 — looked like diamond wedding band that had been stretched into a three-foot-long oval tube. An arch of shiny gold at the top, flowing into a glowing strip of LEDs nestled inside the contoured glass, his Rudi light was inspired by his father, a jeweler. That light's success was enough to convince Peet that lighting might be the most interesting path for him to follow in design, and with his fellow Vancouver-based creatives, Caine Heintzman and Matt Davis, Peet co-founded the commercial and residential lighting manufacturer and studio ANDlight.

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10.26.21

Up and Coming

Nick Pourfard, the Guitar-Maker Turned Furniture Designer On the Rise

Skateboarding gave Nick Pourfard his foundation in design. Building ramps and obstacles for his friends provided an early education in how to put materials together effectively, and old skateboard decks are what he’s used to construct the body of the guitars he’s been producing since 2014. Recently, this San Diego–based luthier (maker of stringed instruments) has moved into furnishings, bringing his meticulous skills and try-it-and-see approach with him.

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10.25.21

Up and Coming

This Swedish Duo is Giving a Second Life To Industrial Waste

Axel Landström and Victor Isaksson Pirtti founded their design practice Lab La Bla in 2018 but their connection sparked way before that. The pair first met, hilariously, as toddlers in their native town of Luleå on Sweden’s Lapland coast, a remote region known for its subarctic climate, dense spruce forests, and history of iron mining — all topics Landström and Isaksson Pirtti continue to draw on in their practice.

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04.19.19

Fair Report

The Best of Milan Design Week, Part V

Yesterday and today we’re sharing the best of the rest, including a Josef Hoffman-esque gridded wood series by Cara/Davide, an Anton Alvarez presentation inside a 14th-century church, a takeover of a classic Milanese patisserie by Cristina Celestino, and Pretziada's latest works pairing designers and Sardinian workshops.

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10.23.21

Saturday Selects

Week of October 18, 2021

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: an affordable(ish) amorphous plaster mirror, new chairs by Moroccan Renaissance woman LRNCE, lamps that are like little paintings, and a dreamy Kips Bay room by Michael Hilal (above).

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10.21.21

Interiors

Tour “The Bae,” A 250 Square-Foot Airbnb Whose Functions Are Hidden in Its Walls

In 2017, Tasmanian architects Alex Neilsen and Liz Walsh bought a 250 square-foot apartment and rebuilt it into their vision of a perfect “micro-luxury” home. Their intent was to create something amazing enough that it could set an example for small-space living, and by renting it out on Airbnb, help open other people’s eyes to its possibilities. The apartment became “The Bae,” and guests who enter it are often nervous at first about its small footprint — but ultimately fall in love.

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10.20.21

Excerpt: Exhibition

A New Exhibition Defines the Next Generation of Danish Design

The purpose of Ukurant Perspectives was to showcase a new generation of designers who are pushing the conversation forward through practices that “revalue discarded materials, create innovative composites and explore the limits of craft to redefine its importance.” Seventeen mostly Denmark-based designers were featured, all of whom pursued wildly different approaches to object and furniture design.

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10.19.21

Fair Report

Highlights From the First Fair to Showcase Contemporary Greek Design in a Historical Context

Despite a canonical place in the annals of art and architecture history, Greece has been quiet on the contemporary design scene. Earlier this month, though, the inaugural Athens Design Forum offered a confident counter-narrative — one that asserts the country's creative relevancy and seeks to “mark Athens as both an emerging and historically established center of creative production.”

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10.18.21

Excerpt: Exhibition

Sean Gerstley is Playing With Scale at New York’s Tiniest New Design Gallery

When we first started writing about ceramic furniture back in 2014 — first with Chris Wolston's terracotta chairs, then on through to Eny Lee Parker, Kelsie Rudolph, Floris Wubben, Virginia Sin, BZIPPY, and more — we had no idea we would end up here: in Superhouse's new, 100 sq.ft. vitrine/gallery on the second floor of a Chinatown mall, filled to bursting with more than a dozen such works by the young designer Sean Gerstley, whose process and aesthetic we can only describe as simply thrilling.

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10.16.21

Saturday Selects

Week of October 11, 2021

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: new prints from one of our favorite Instagram accounts, a duo of vases in the best color by Sophie Lou Jacobsen, and a gut renovation from Home Studios peppered with local artists.

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10.15.21

Travel

Three New Design Hotels With Interiors We’d Love to Get Cozy in This Fall

Fall is the best time to enjoy the coziness of having a coffee or a cocktail in a warm, well-designed, moodily lit hotel lobby or bar. If we weren't going to be spending ours finishing up the first Sight Unseen book, we'd be checking into one of these three new properties and settling in with a martini and a good book. As a bonus, they marry the sustainability of using vintage furnishings with the social responsibility of sourcing from local artists. Tour Kanalhuset, the Hotel Grand Stark, and the Alsace LA after the jump.

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