When Their Commercial Work Dried Up During the Pandemic, This London Studio Bought a Laser Cutter and Started Making Furniture From Aluminum Scrap

As Jamps Studio, a London-based design and fabrication consultancy, Martha McGuinn and Tom Pearson collaborate with artists like Marguerite Humeau and Yinka Ilori and help create the design environments for exhibitions at the Venice Architecture Biennale and the Victoria and Albert Museum. Friends for a decade, McGuinn and Pearson studied together at the Royal College of Art, teaming up on a few small projects while Pearson was employed in fabrication and McGuinn worked as a high-end cabinet maker. Six years ago, they made their own practice official with Jamps Studio. Post-pandemic, that sense of play, inventiveness, and fun has now led to By Jamps, objects and furniture McGuinn and Pearson make out of leftovers — mostly aluminum — from fabrication projects they’ve done. If it’s an exercise in letting nothing go to waste, By Jamps also springs from a love of a particular material: the versatility and mutability of aluminum.
More

Week of August 26, 2024

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: the New York debut of the Collectible design fair — featuring yours truly! — plus a sunny new store on the Aegean coast, R&Company's new American triennial, and the chicest reissue from Knoll.
More

The 10 Best Modernist Buildings in Greece, According to Objects of Common Interest

They work so fluidly across geographic boundaries — regularly exhibiting everywhere from Milan to Miami, Brooklyn to Brussels — that it's easy to forget that the design duo behind Objects of Common Interest are Greek, born and bred. (In addition to their studio in New York, they also keep an office in Athens, too). Today they're offering Sight Unseen readers a history lesson in Greek architecture, compiling their ten favorite Modernist buildings around the country, some still in use and some gone (but not forgotten).
More

10 Process-Driven Designers to Watch, According to Designer/Gallerist Max Radford

Having spent the last three years inviting some of the region's most promising design talents into his eponymous London gallery (names like Lewis Kemmenoe, EJR Barnes, Andu Masebo, Isobel Alonso), interior designer and curator Max Radford's group exhibition lineups are now considered a veritable who's who of the UK scene. But Radford also keeps an enthusiastic eye on the goings-on outside his home turf, of course, and today he's sharing the ten most-promising non-UK designers who, like many on his own roster, are making process-driven furniture and lighting. 
More

The Top 10 New-Gen Vintage Dealers in the US, According to For Scale’s David Michon

We're willing to bet that as a Sight Unseen reader, a decent percentage of your Instagram feed is devoted to vintage dealers, whether you're actually in the market or just need a daily adrenaline hit of killer finds. Post-COVID, their numbers have only multiplied, and today's guest list-maker is an expert in their ranks: David Michon, the design scribe behind For Scale, a heady Substack in which he discusses topics like "airport terminal as home décor" and the "un-curation of domestic space," and keeps an ever-evolving list of top-tier décor sources around the world.
More

In a New Milan Exhibition, These Elemental Materials are Anything But Basic

Wood and metal — often used interchangeably for the same purposes, known as symbols of strength, both are innately rigid, while also malleable and capable of being crafted into almost any shape imaginable. As part of the recent Makers 1 exhibition in Milan, these two materials, which dominate the construction and furniture industries, were investigated in their many weird and wonderful guises by no less than 28 designers.
More

The 10 Things You Should Have in Your Bedroom, According to Charlap Hyman & Herrero

Most of us spend the majority of our time and money perfecting the look and feel of our living rooms, and then fail to offer the same attention to the space where we spend more than 1/4 of our lives: our bedrooms. Granted we're unconscious for many of those hours, but it's hard to overestimate the impact that good design can have on our mood and thus, ultimately, the quality of our rest. Today, Adam Charlap, co-founder of the bi-coastal architecture and interiors firm Charlap Hyman & Herrero, shares the ten objects you'd find in his fantasy bedroom, from midcentury lighting to a set of faux bois sheets his grandparents slept in that are still on the market today.
More

The 10 Design Books You Should Have on Your Shelf, According to Stephen Markos of Superhouse

Walk into one of the always-thought-provoking historical exhibitions at Superhouse gallery in New York — where founder Stephen Markos has built a program around showing both contemporary designs and those of the often little-known makers that preceded and influenced them — and you'll get to browse a smattering of books he's collected that reference those makers' bygone works. Here, he shares a list of 10 favorites from his personal library which also span past to present.
More

This French Riviera Design Showcase Delivers On Emerging Talent

For those lucky enough to be sunning themselves in the south of France right now, there are two sister design shows worth peeling away from the beach for. Split across a pair of historic and impressive — yet totally different — venues in the neighboring Riviera towns of Hyères and Toulon, the annual Design Parade festival and competition brings together established and emerging designers as part of two season-spanning exhibitions. Design Parade has long been a particularly great opportunity to spy up-and-coming French talent, and there's more than enough to get us excited in this year’s edition.
More

With Its Designer Collective, CB2 is Bringing a Global Design Perspective to the Masses

Big-box furniture stores doing high-profile collabs has long been one of the surest bets for those who yearn for a collection of beautiful things by internationally renowned designers — but who can't necessarily afford the luxury price tags that typically accompany such items. CB2 has long been at the top of our list when it comes to products with a point of view, hand-picking many designers we know and love — from Kara Mann to Luam Melake to Studio Anansi and Farrah Sit — to offer collections at accessible price points, bringing the designers' varied global design perspectives within reach of a much broader audience. Now, CB2 has introduced its 2024 Designer Collective, a showcase of nearly two dozen designers and independent studios, through whom the brand is able to introduce multiple design styles from around the world— giving design fans more options to find pieces that align with their aesthetic and creating a variety in perspectives that enables the range as a whole to feel fresh and current. We spoke to three members of the Designer Collective — interior designer Kara Mann, lighting designer Farrah Sit, and the Barcelona-based Mermelada Estudio — about what this collaboration means to their practice, and how their individual approaches to design each bring something unique to the brand. 
More

Week of August 5, 2024

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: the printed jeans of our dreams from Marimekko, Brutalist-influenced glassware by Solange Knowles, and a menswear store interior that’s unequal parts Halston, Richard Serra, and Teletubbies.
More

This New LA Music HQ Mixes Warm Woods and Cool Metals Like Nothing We’ve Seen

Normally we would say that an office doesn't have any business looking this good. But Ceremony of Roses — whose new offices were designed by Dean Levin of the LA studio 22RE in collaboration with Madeline Denley of Never Far Studios — is the merch and branding arm of Sony Music, and as such has a constant stream of global talents coming through, from Adele to Olivia Rodrigo (whose merch, we would argue, is impeccable.) The office is housed in a former 1950s factory in Culver City, and it bears several signatures we've come to associate with Levin's up-and-coming studio: a 1970s-influenced aesthetic that preferences elements like wall-to-wall carpeting in lush tones, beautifully monolithic metal expanses, and hits of coolly minimalist vintage furniture.
More

Week of July 29, 2024

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: a design gallery debuts in Ibiza and a member’s club opens in Mallorca, plus a lighting collection influenced by Mexico’s flora, a tiny vase necklace, and a one-off lamp made from a weathered brick.
More