In Brussels, New Designs at the Place Where Art, Architecture, and Industry Meet

When we first heard that Belgian architects Kersten Geers and David Van Severen were collaborating with the Kortrijk-born, Turin-based painter Pieter Vermeersch for an exhibition at Maniera Gallery, we became, we'll admit, somewhat unreasonably excited. Our love for Vermeersch's signature gradients is well-documented on this site, and, if you'll recall, Office KGDVS's angular furniture collection was what set off our love for the Brussels-based Maniera all the way back in 2014.
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A Showcase for Experimental Craft — And Iridescence — On View in London

Like Salon in New York, the Collect fair in London has recently evolved to become a platform for enabling more risk-taking work, showcasing the latest possibilities, processes, and technologies at play in the field of making. The peripatetic London gallery Seeds, a longtime SU favorite, returned to the fair this year with newly commissioned works from nine contemporary designers.
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Our 30+ Favorite Finds from Design Miami 2018

For Design Miami, the way to announce itself as different from all other design fairs is to, well, embrace the Miami-ness of it all — whether that means an ultra-saturated backdrop (as with Atelier Courbet this year and Demisch Danant last year), an exhibition devoted exclusively to water fountains (Sabine Marcelis x Fendi), or, as with the Chris Wolston light for The Future Perfect at top of this post, an explosion of hyper-colorful flora and fauna.
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Kueng Caputo’s Kaleidoscopic New Furniture, On View in Copenhagen

Since the beginning of their practice, the Swiss duo Kueng Caputo have been obsessed with what happens when colorful particulate matter is somehow fused together. After all, their first, attention-grabbing project was a series of chairs in which pigmented sand and mortar were hardened in a mold and then chiseled into shape. Their newest works, currently on view at Copenhagen's Étage Projects in a exhibition called Ciao Amico Mio, follow in that same vein.
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The Finnish Designer Using a Traditional Moroccan Wall-Surfacing Technique to Make Furniture

Amsterdam-based designer Tuomas Markunpoika aims for “tedious functionality” in his designs, but to us there is mystery and wonder in the bulbous, colorful slabs of material that compose his furniture. His new series of works is called “Contra Naturam,” or against nature — a mauve bench, a coffee table and chair in grayish and springy greens, and a side table and console in pale yellow and cream. Each looks cut from the earth or plucked from a stage set, at once natural and totally fake.
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A Short List of Everything We Loved At This Year’s Design Miami/Basel

Even if nothing else of interest had launched at last week's Design Miami/Basel, we would have still done this round-up if only to feature Galerie VIVID's Column Paintings by Thomas Trum, seen at the top of this post; nothing about the recent Design Academy Eindhoven's previous two-dimensional work could have prepared us for the awesomeness of these two-toned painted shelving units. Luckily, there was other good stuff at the fair to be found as well.
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At a New Show, Thomas Barger Upcycles Your IKEA Discards Into Collectible Design

At just 25 years old, Thomas Barger finds himself wrestling with the ordinary — the idea that he’ll soon be kicked off his parents’ health insurance when he turns 26 — and the extraordinary — raising a solo show of sculptural furniture, on view through March 31 at Salon 94 Design. A recent nod from Architectural Digest and a sale to prominent art dealer and collector Javier Peres also signal Barger’s ascendency into the artistic stratosphere. But while all of these realities point to his newfound adulthood, the works on display at the gallery look backwards to the underpinnings of a youth spent growing up gay on a farm in Mattoon, Illinois.
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Detroit designer Chris Schanck at Friedman Benda

In a New Show, Chris Schanck Debuts Furniture Fit for an Alien King

If you're familiar with Detroit-based designer Chris Schanck's work, you can probably easily conjure an image of it in your mind — primitive yet shiny, lumpen yet somehow slick at the same time. Since 2011, when he was an MFA student at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, Schanck has been developing and refining a technique he calls Alufoil, which is responsible for that shiny, otherworldly aesthetic — it often looks as though Schanck is making executive furniture for an alien king.
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