06.09.23

Interiors

Curved Walls — and Color — Are French Architect Pauline Borgia’s Secret to Designing a Small Space

At Pauline Borgia’s childhood home in Corsica, every room was a different color. Growing up in this polychromatic environment, she quickly understood the power of color to create associations and identity, and now applies hues in a highly considered way — to focus a sightline, play with proportion, or create a trompe l’oeil effect — in projects by her Paris-based studio, Atelier Steve.

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05.04.23

Interiors

Thank This Couple For Bringing a Dose of Color to Berlin’s Interiors

Progressing from designing furniture for children to interiors for the whole family could easily result in spaces that were kitschy or too twee. But not in the hands of Berlin studio Jäll & Tofta, whose projects carry the joy and spirit of childhood whimsy, yet with a sophisticated, well-considered maturity. If you ever needed proof that colorful can be chic (which we didn’t, obviously), this is it.

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04.06.23

Sighted

Gaetano Pesce Vases and a Cabinet That Looks Like a Japanese Capsule Hotel: Inside Melbourne’s Newest Fashion Boutique

A jewelry cabinet that looks like a scaled-down Japanese capsule hotel, with chartreuse-colored compartments fronted by metal and glass doors; a glossy deep-red lacquer applied around the edges of the ceiling; a Gaetano Pesce vase: We’re all familiar with the adage "shop ‘til you drop,” but at the Melbourne boutique Stable, designed by Studio Manifold, you might actually want to lounge for hours.

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03.29.23

Interiors

This Intensely Color-Blocked London Victorian Will Make You Rethink the Possibilities of an Historic Home

When Studio Rhonda was asked to redesign a Victorian terrace house in North London for a friend, “the brief was to go crazy, a celebration of life moving forward,” notes Rhonda Drakeford, director of the studio. With a trusting client, Drakeford completely pulled it off while pushing the limits of what you can do with color. Thick stripes and blocks of saturated primary colors harmonize with earthier tones of terracotta and chalks — over 30 shades of paint, in all. Drakeford kept the period details of the residence but glossed over them, in some cases literally: ignoring moldings and architraves, the dictates of corners and where walls meet ceilings. Instead, she used color and geometric shapes to delineate the space.

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07.07.22

Sighted

This Berlin-Based Furniture Brand Has All Your Color-Blocked Essentials Covered

Block colors, wavy pastels, and geometric glassware? Say no more. (Haaaave you seen our Pinterest?) Four years after founding his eponymous design brand, Berlin-based Moritz Bannach is expanding with a quartet of new offerings that build upon the bold simplicity of his first product: the Uno collection of dining/conference tables, which launched in 2018 and featured in our Saturday Selects. Bannach's latest design mimics Uno's strikingly simple planes of color and recalls the best of Memphis Design.

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11.22.21

Interiors

Tour the Unbelievable 1930s Color-Blocked Fantasy Interior Hiding Inside a Simple Brick Building in Belgium

The modernist pioneer Jozef Schellekens was the public architect of Turnhout, a Belgian town halfway between Antwerp and Eindhoven, where he worked on schools and city halls. But his best-known and greatest work was his own house, a 1935 rectangular brick-and-glass structure whose simplicity belies the expressiveness of its interior, where Schellekens created a colorful world full of bespoke built-in furniture and other functional and decorative details.

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11.10.21

Up and Coming

This Belgian Designer’s Color-Blocked Kitchens Channel the De Stijl Movement

“My first study was the preservation of paintings,” Dries Otten tells us over the phone from his home in Antwerp, Belgium. “But I decided it was too boring — your job is only appreciated when it's invisible!” Since hanging up his white gloves, though, Otten’s work has been impossible to ignore — bright, color-blocked interiors and furniture that set him apart from the neutral-obsessed minimalists that dominate contemporary Belgian design.

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09.27.21

Up and Coming

Paper Pulp and Oil Pastel Are Perfectly Paired in a Colorful New Collection

Seeking a distraction from the pandemic, Brazilian newcomer Barbara Bareca spent the better part of this year reimagining ordinary everyday objects by elevating them to a cheerfully colorful new level. Her debut "Gesture Object" collection comprises a selection of seven handmade wooden structures, including vases, a mirror, a tray, bowl, and bookends, each covered in a mélange of paper, glue, and water, then scribbled with an oil pastel for color effect and a textural finish.

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10.23.20

Sighted

The Texas Jeweler Plucking Sculptures from the Recycling Bin

Early in quarantine, way back in April, you couldn't open Instagram without running into a designer teaching a papier-mâché tutorial. Down in Austin, Texas, Sarah Murphy of the jewelry brand Hey Murphy caught the bug, like many of us did, and began making pieces from what she calls "quarantine trash" as a creative distraction and release while she watched TV and drank wine (relatable). "The point was to not create any more waste, so they are mostly made from the contents of our recycling bin," Murphy says.

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11.07.19

Sighted

Franz West’s Hyper-Colorful Chairs Are At the Top of Our Fantasy Furniture Wishlist

It's gift guide season, and if our budget this year was $12,000 instead of $200, we would definitely be buying someone we love one of the new Franz West chairs available at David Zwirner as part of their latest online Viewing Room exhibition. The late Austrian-born artist was not known for making especially functional furniture, but these chairs might be the closest he came to pure design.

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02.05.19

Sighted

You Need These New, Color-Blocked Goblets by Helen Levi

There's a ceremonial feel to the latest collection from Brooklyn-based ceramicist Helen Levi. First, there are the goblets — a type of stemware more often associated with medieval banquets or religious rituals, to which Levi gives a resolutely modern look by color-blocking and employing a pristine matte finish. Second are the jugs, which might look as though they'd been excavated from a silty river bed were it not for the delicate palette, ranging from stony buff to rose pink.

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10.14.18

Saturday Selects

Week of October 8, 2018

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: the American designer having a breakout year, the Portuguese design studios flooding our submissions line, and the iconic Norwegian chair that's being re-released in five new on-trend colors.

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