04.16.19

Fair Report

The Best of Milan Design Week 2019, Part II — Salone Satellite

We're devoting all of our coverage this week to the 2019 Milan furniture fair, from the best things we saw around town, to the best of this year's Euroluce show, to the up-and-coming designers and new brands we discovered along the way. Today we're sharing our 13 favorite collections at Salone Satellite, the section of the Salone del Mobile fairgrounds devoted to emerging talents — which is where we discovered many a Sight Unseen veteran back in the day, from Sebastian Herkner to Ana Kras.
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Emerging Dutch designers Truly Truly
04.14.17

Up and Coming

This Dutch-Based Studio Was the Best Thing We Saw at Salone Satellite

The Dutch-based studio Truly Truly finds a comfortable niche oscillating between product design and experience, creating artful and engaging moments for the viewer that fall between familiarity and curiosity. Their latest work, presented at last week’s Salone Satellite, features projects that combine technical ingenuity with new aesthetics — their morphing Touch glass lights are cast using a dynamic mold that allows for more expressive surface qualities, while the Wove chair plays on the graphic interplay of two differently colored bent-wire frames. And of course we were instantly magnetized by the Daze table – folded, aluminum volumes with subtle corner slits, which allow flashes of hazy, powder-coated color to burst through.
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03.20.17

Excerpt: Exhibition

10 Designers and Brands to Watch at Salone del Mobile

Of course we'll always head to Salone del Mobile to see what's new with some of our favorite companies like Vitra, Moroso, e15, Glas Italia, and Flos, as well as to scout the emerging talent section, Salone Satellite. But the sheer number of independent designers who are either planning their own booths or who have major projects with big-name companies seems to have increased this year — including Raw Color for Nanimarquina, Max Lamb for Bitossi, Philippe Malouin for Resident, and Atelier de Troupe and Lambert & Fils at Euroluce. Most of the launches are still under wraps for now, but we've picked 10 of our favorite designers and brands to give you a sneak peek of what's to come starting April 4.
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03.03.16

The Essentials

10 Things We’re Looking Forward to at This Year’s Salone del Mobile

When we attended our very first Salone del Mobile fair in Milan a decade ago, we were instantly swept up in the magic of an event that’s served as the epicenter of the contemporary design world since 1961, and that each year packs a 2.5 million square-foot convention center (plus an entire surrounding city) full of everything that's new and next in furniture and lighting, from future classics by mega-brands to prototypes by design-school grads. Here are the 10 things we're most looking forward to at this year's show, which begins April 12.
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04.24.15

Eye Candy

e7’s Zinc Project Was One of This Year’s Salone Satellite Standouts

Our last bit of Milan coverage this week comes from a brand-new design studio comprised of three ECAL grads — Giulia Chéhab from Italy, Micael Filipe from Portugal and Romain Viricel from France — whose Zinc Project caught our eye in the very last row of this year's Salone Satellite. A table and shelf series made from galvanized zinc, the project was inspired by the aesthetic irregularities that arise from the galvanization process.
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10.30.13

Excerpt: Exhibition

Salone Satellite at La Rinascente

From now until Christmas, pieces by 11 standout stars from this year's Salone Satellite young designers' showcase in Milan will be on view and for sale at La Rinascente. Considering that the Milan-based department store is basically Italy's version of Barneys, this is kind of a Big Deal for those young designers on the verge of stardom. And if the pieces look like they could actually be part of the same collection, perhaps it's because they all tackle the same theme from last year's Satellite: “Design and Craftsmanship: Together for Industry," a typically Italian name that just means that the designers were tasked with figuring out how to retain traditional craftsmanship techniques and processes while still producing for a mass audience. It's also because many of the items draw from a similar materials palette: "This is a compendium of “poor” materials, ranging from wood to glass, to iron to terracotta, reinterpreted and worked in a surprising fusion of craftsmanship and industrial techniques." We've picked some of our favorites to share with you today.
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04.19.24

Excerpt: Exhibition

If You Like Architectural Details, You’ll Love This Comprehensive Archive of Modernist Buildings and Interiors, On View in Milan

Unless you’re very offline, design-wise, you probably know about Prague-based architecture historian and curator — as well as frequent Sight Unseen contributor! — Adam Štěch. On his well-loved Instagram account, @okolo_architecture, he’s been assiduously and beautifully cataloging 20th-century architecture and interior design details for years. His photographic efforts aren’t simply representative, they’re revelatory, and they’re currently on view as part of Salone in his Elements exhibition at Dropcity, a new center for architecture and design in Milan. By focusing on the parts — the lighting, seating, tables, railings, doors, handles, windows, floors, and more — Štěch’s 3,000 images give us a new sense of the whole: not only the larger project of how a particular building was put together in a cohesive way, but a comprehensive view of how architecture and design developed and moved throughout the last century, charting the differences and similarities of Modernist buildings over time and through place.
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03.14.24

The Essentials

Ask the Experts: How Do I Get Started With PR?

Whether you’ve been in the business for years or are just launching your studio, PR can be a powerful tool for boosting your reputation and visibility as a designer. But, as an independent creative or small business, we know your daily to-do list can seem insurmountable. Is doing PR on your own worth the effort? What can PR really offer, and how do you get started? As design fair season ramps up, Sight Unseen has partnered with Hello Human, a PR company for creative entrepreneurs, for a new series that breaks down some of the most common questions about the often nebulous world of public relations. Here, we’ll introduce you to the basics. 
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03.12.24

Sighted

Sunnei and cc-tapis Just Dropped the Ultimate Fashion x Design Collab, Where Carpets Become Clothing and Vice Versa

In addition to their playfully chic sartorial offerings, Sunnei has been on our radar for years thanks to their periodic overlaps with the design world, from a thoughtful ongoing object collection to the collaboration they presented during Salone in 2022 with our friends at Bloc Studios. And yet I was still surprised and delighted when, after I emailed the brand's PR team asking for a press kit for the brand's FW24 fashion show, it turned out the striking striped knitwear pieces that I'd immediately been drawn to were actually a collaboration with one of our other favorite Milanese brands, rug-maker cc-tapis.
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12.05.23

Up and Coming

Frederik Fialin on His New Tubular Metal Collection: “We All Like to be Comfortable, But Other Things Are Often More Important to Me”

Danish designer Frederik Fialin understands the idea that you have to know the rules before you can break them. He’s certain something is working not only when it’s functional and beautiful, but when it makes him laugh. It’s a way of taking the work seriously, without taking yourself too seriously, and it may have something to do with how Fialin got started, with a classic cabinetry apprenticeship. “I didn’t particularly enjoy it at the time, but now I see why everything has to be done in a certain way. I consider this, now, to be possibly the greatest foundation of my professional life that I could ever have asked for — especially because I can use, remix, and warp this never-ending chase for perfection that dominates the environment. There’s reason in the madness.”
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