06.10.21

Q+A

Dirk van der Kooij On Creating a Truly Circular Design Process — And On Using Your Old Nirvana CDs to Make Furniture

To ensure true circularity, Van der Kooij and his team of carpenters, welders, colorists, and finishers make use of proprietary technology including house-developed presses, robots, and extruders to transform waste materials such as discarded CDs, leather sofas, kitchen appliances, chocolate molds, and diseased wood into singular pieces made to stand the test of time and trends.
More
06.09.21

Graphic Design

A ’70s-Inspired Sunscreen, and Other Graphic Design Picks for June

Each month The Brand Identity shares with our readers a selection of the most interesting studios, packaging designs, and branding and identity projects featured recently on their site. This month: An identity for a Black- and women-owned L.A. bookstore, a quirky custom typeface for a London underwear brand, and colorful, '70s-inspired packaging for a sunscreen brand (above).
More
06.08.21

Sighted

The Designer Making Chairs From Discarded Puffy Coats

If you're like me — and by that I mean you spent a very cold, COVID-filled winter socializing outside — you might be ready to never see a padded puffy coat again. But I was thoroughly charmed by the work of South Korean designer Jinyeong Yeon, who uses padded goose down jackets, which remained unsold by fashion brands and manufacturers, as upholstery for his series of puffy chairs.
More
06.07.21

Excerpt: Exhibition

Step Inside Object & Thing, An Intimate Art Exhibit at the 1955 Home Gerald Luss Built for Himself

The new Object & Thing exhibition, created in collaboration with Blum & Poe and Mendes Wood DM at the Gerald Luss House in Ossining, New York, opened on May 7. Since then, I've basically treated it like the design equivalent of the Mare of Easttown finale, trying to shield myself from spoilers on social media until I could visit in person last Friday. And yet, when I got there, I realized that this was a relatively pointless task: No image can replicate the feeling of stillness that comes from being inside a house that's as well-considered as the Luss House, and no Instagram tour can capture all the details that make this particular collaboration so satisfying.
More
06.06.21

Saturday Selects

Week of May 31, 2021

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: an Israeli furniture showroom with a Barragán-inspired look, a French housewares company with a stellar line-up, and — stay with us here — a very sexy new slidable door system.
More
06.24.19

Excerpt: Exhibition

A New Exhibition Asks: Can Digital Representations Eclipse the Experience of Physical Objects?

Soft Baroque's "World of Ulteriors" exhibition at Étage Projects in Copenhagen, which closes this week, features many items that are simply variations on the duo's existing work. The new conceit here is the way in which these items are presented: In each vignette, a collection of furniture sits atop a curved, zero-horizon backdrop — something akin to a seamless, but here depicting a fictional interior that's completed by Soft Baroque's domestic objects.
More
06.01.21

Up and Coming

A New Lighting Collection Inspired By the 1960s Modernism of Fire Island Pines

“Growing up, I always love stained glass,” recalls Peter B. Staples, discussing the early design experiments that would eventually lead to the launch of his lighting brand Blue Green Works. “I grew up in a Craftsman-style home, and one summer, my dad and I found the plans for the original stained glass lanterns. We taught ourselves how to fix and recreate them. I was probably 12 at the time and that experience really stayed with me.” But while the exercise was clearly formative, Staples would have to take a circuitous path through the New York design scene before returning to lighting. Having previously worked at The Future Perfect and Apparatus, Blue Green Works marks the first time Staples has designed a collection himself — which you would never guess just by looking at it.
More
05.28.21

Fair Report

8 Must-See Projects From This Year’s Venice Design Biennial

After a year of visiting virtual exhibitions, it’s a joy to finally start venturing out IRL again. Where I am here in Italy, things really began to pick up speed last week with the opening of the Venice Biennale, which always brings with it a slew of contemporaneous projects — one of which being the Venice Design Biennial, now in its third year. Curated by Venice Art Factory’s Luca Berta and Francesca Giubilei, this year’s theme was "Design as a Self Portrait" and featured work that spoke, loosely, to the notion of self-representation in design.
More
05.26.21

Fair Report

A Sneak Peek at Collectible Design’s First Fully Digital Fair, Happening This Weekend in Brussels

Collectible, the long-running design fair in Brussels, was one of the last fairs to slip under the wire last year just as COVID was beginning; we remember having a phone call with our solo exhibitors, Ben & Aja Blanc, asking if they felt safe enough to go. But though the fair went off without a hitch last March, due to changing restrictions in Europe, organizers Clélie Debehault and Liv Vaisberg decided to take the fair fully digital this year, introducing a new platform called Collectible Salon, which runs online from May 28-30 and concurrently with events around town.
More

Trends, interviews, home tours, fair reports, and more.

The best of Sight Unseen, delivered to your inbox.

Sign Up
×