Six Practically Perfect Floor Lamps from the Italian Architect Behind the Prada Stores

Remember the house tour that published a few years ago in T Magazine, with its Ekstrem chairs, velvet couches, 18th-century wooden toilet, and circular bed covered in fox fur? We've pretty much been obsessed with its owner, the Italian architect Roberto Baciocchi — aka the man who designs all the Prada stores — ever since. His latest works for Nilufar Gallery, which we spotted on Instagram and are publishing here today, only serve to fan the flames: a series of six geometric floor lamps, with materials like brass, slate, iron, and velvet stacked into neat totems.

05.31.18

Sight Unseen OFFSITE

The In-Demand Architect–Turned–Furniture Designer to Know Now

Giancarlo Valle didn’t set out to design furniture. A trained architect, his practice moved first indoors to interiors, then even further to the things that fill them. An interest in objects initially manifested in the collecting of furniture from across eras, but soon, collecting wasn’t enough. At Collective Design this spring, he debuted his first collection in a holistic installation that saw his own highly personal pieces alongside historical ones. Last week, for Sight Unseen OFFSITE, Valle debuted new work in collaboration with Viso Project, a new, sustainability-focused textile studio.

10.31.13

Sight Unseen Presents

The Sight Unseen x Snarkitecture Pumpkin-Carving Contest

When we decided a few weeks ago to host a good old-fashioned pumpkin-carving contest with our friends at Snarkitecture — and to invite more than a dozen of our favorite architects and designers to compete — we figured there would be lots of intricate, hand-drawn patterns (there were, courtesy of Daniel Horowitz’s pumpkin in the form of a brain). We knew at least one group would employ meticulous typography (ditto, thanks to Benjamin Critton Art Dept.) What we didn’t guess — perhaps naively, in hindsight — was that the designers would come armed with such an array of power tools, Japanese machetes, kitchen electrics, Arduino-coded LEDs, drywall screws, and the like. As a result, what unfolded last night at Snarkitecture’s Greenpoint studios was nothing short of amazing. Here’s what went down.