09.21.20

Sight Unseen Presents

Guest Editor Robert Sukrachand Wants Us To Embrace the World’s Diverse Design Perspectives

As part of our 2020 Guest Editors series, we've asked each editor to write a personal essay that introduces themselves and the ideas and inspirations behind their week of content on Sight Unseen. Today, meet Robert Sukrachand, a New York furniture designer and American Design Hot List alum. "I’ve aimed to stop trafficking in the binary language that separates 'craft' from 'design,' or 'primitive' from 'modern,'" he writes. "The rigidity embodied in these distinctions is a tool that reinforces colonial hierarchies."
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09.19.20

Saturday Selects

Week of September 14, 2020

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: three new (ish) puffy chairs, a collection of graphic ceramic tiles by Nathalie du Pasquier, and a suite of styrofoam-and-resin floral furniture with millennial-weirdo vibes.
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Juliette Wanty home tour
09.18.20

At Home With

Juliette Wanty’s Auckland Cottage is a Masterclass In Doing The Most With A Rental

Stylist and designer Juliette Wanty’s Auckland home is a lesson in resourcefulness. As the art director for the New Zealand shelter mag Homestyle, she’s accustomed to whipping up a centerfold in an afternoon for one of her impeccably styled interiors shoots. So when it came time to makeover the home she rents with her partner, Robin Schmid, that inventive, DIY approach served the couple well. Unable to make any major structural changes to the weatherboard cottage, Wanty and Schmid set about doing what they could without leaving permanent marks.
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Juliette Wanty 3D rendered interiors
09.17.20

Interiors

These Limited-Edition Art Prints Look Right At Home in Juliette Wanty’s Poppy, 3D-Rendered Interiors

Most designers can point to the specific starting point that inspired a space, whether it be a concept, like a Balearic disco; a singular element, like a gilded backsplash; or a particular shade of blue. For a recent 3-D rendered thought experiment, Absolut Art proposed that it could also just be a single piece of art. The Stockholm-based company, which works with up-and-coming talents to create and sell affordable, limited-edition fine art prints, asked interior stylist Juliette Wanty to design five rooms inspired by five of its collaborators.
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Sight Unseen OFFSITE 2018 - Moving Mountains x Giselle Hicks
05.07.18

Sighted

The Barragán-Inspired Ceramic Lights Debuting at Sight Unseen OFFSITE

“My house is my refuge, an emotional piece of architecture and not a cold piece of convenience,” the architect Luis Barragán once said. According to Moving Mountains studio founder Syrette Lew, this sentiment perfectly captures the spirit of her new collection of chairs and lights — the latter designed in collaboration with ceramicist Giselle Hicks. The installation — on view at 201 Mulberry starting next Thursday, May 17, and presented by Levi's Made & Crafted — is loosely based on the color palettes and surroundings Lew encountered on a recent trip to Barragán’s native Mexico.
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09.16.20

Sighted

Three Monumental Works of Public Art You Can Experience Outdoors Right Now

Yesterday we got excited about the possibility of seeing art in person at a gallery or museum sometime soon. But for those who are still wary — or for those who simply can't — there are still plenty of ways to experience art "en plein air," and even moreso this fall: In New York alone, we found three new temporary installations, each centered around a single material.
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09.14.20

Up and Coming

This Melbourne Designer Gave Himself Six Months to Develop His Very First Collection — And Knocked It Out of the Park

Zachary Frankel was working as a jewelry designer in Melbourne, Australia when he came across an image of a simple chair and was struck by how perfectly it seemed to do its job. “I was taken by how restrained and elegant it was,” he says. It ignited his curiosity in working with timber. After some time, Frankel devised a plan to find his own voice and broaden his exploration of materials. He’d give himself six months to create a collection with no commercial obligation; he’d make furniture just for the fun of it. If he liked what he made, great, he’d share it publicly. If not, he’d have half a year’s worth of getting better acquainted with his craft and it would inform where he would take things next. At worst, his house would be full of interesting experiments.
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09.12.20

Saturday Selects

Week of September 7, 2020

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: a new destination in Paris with a rooftop sauna, a Faye Toogood sofa that makes cement look downright cozy, and a modern collection of Judaica — i.e. a unicorn.
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09.11.20

Up and Coming

A Berlin Duo Whose Marriage of Art, Design, and Craft Is More Literal Than Most

When creatives describe their work as blurring the boundaries between design and art, it's rare that the effect is quite so literal as it is in the case of Berlin's Opt Studios — not only because it's the shared practice of a textile and product designer and her painter and sculptor husband, but also because the works themselves look like abstract artworks that just so happen to be hanging out on rugs and side tables.
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09.09.20

Excerpt: Exhibition

With Design Parade Postponed Until 2021, the Cities of Hyères and Toulon Took Their Exhibitions (Mostly) Outside

Like most international art and design festivals this year, the annual Design Parade — which typically takes place across two cities in the south of France and is on record as one of our favorites — was forced to postpone its summer edition until 2021. Somehow, though, these restrictions don't seem to have reduced the activity in Hyères and Toulon by much.
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