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01.03.18

Excerpt: Exhibition

This Up-And-Coming Italian Designer is A Master of Materials

Looking like glossy collages left too long in the sun, Strata — a collection of glass plates and lamps by Venetian designer Lucia Massari for Swing Design Gallery — are vibrant, delicate, and weirdly fun. Massari fuses differently colored flat sheets of glass in an oven, and the results teeter between two and three dimensions. Sticking with a few neutrals and a pop of color or two — yellows, violets, and blues — the casual overlapping of smooth ovals, chunky grids, and basic rectangles create unexpected, but harmonious, geometric textures.
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11.28.17

Up and Coming

An Up-and-Coming Brazilian Designer On Lightness, Gravity, and the Future

“Before studying product design, I almost graduated with a business degree,” says Guilherme Wentz, the São Paulo–based designer who, in 2016, partnered with entrepreneur Rafael Gehrke to form WENTZ, a new line of furnishings, lighting, and accessories. “But at the time, I was not happy with the job and life I had. I realized I wanted to live in a simpler and maybe more disruptive way.” Since then, the up-and-coming Brazilian designer has become a serious talent to watch, what with his spare, nature-infused creations blurring the boundary between old and new.
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10.27.17

Sighted

This Dutch Designer is Giving Concrete a Serious Makeover

At this point, we've seen pretty much every formerly humdrum thing in the universe get a design-forward makeover, from watering cans to luggage. But Dutch designer Iwan Pol wasn't happy to simply renovate a product category — he wanted to recast an entire architectural material. "Concrete can take any shape or form, so why not aim for a softer look and feel?" he says.
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Dutch Design Week 2017 - Hardcore Exhibition
10.25.17

Excerpt: Exhibition

At Dutch Design Week, 17 Designers Turning Everyday Materials into Sculptural Furniture

It’s Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven, and we'll be publishing a round-up of our favorites first thing next week. But for the second year in a row, one of the best exhibitions on view came from the young trend-forecasting and design firm Core Studio, who last year curated the colorful exhibition Popcore. This year, the theme was HARDCORE, and the curators asked participating designers to create works exploring "a counter-digital movement."
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10.02.17

At Home With

Inside the Home and Studio of LA’s Newest Emerging Design Star

Leah Ring's works represent striking and deeply thoughtful iterations on familiar forms, but there’s something brighter and more buoyant that binds them. “There's a sort of playful geometry that's present in all of my work, and I definitely hope that all of it communicates a sense of joy,” Ring says. She recently invited us into her Atwater home and studio to reflect on her space, her process, and the importance of play.
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09.05.17

Up and Coming

A Debut Collection Influenced By Poetry, Philosophy, and “Total Garbage”

We've always been curious about solo designers who choose to use a studio name, but we got as good a reason as any recently by Brecht Gander, the designer behind a brand-new, Queens-based studio called Birnam Wood, whose first collection we're debuting here today. A philosophy major and the son of two poets, Gander's studio name is a reference to Macbeth. But its lack of specificity also acknowledges the people who work alongside Gander in his shop — as he says, "I write the songs, but it takes a group to play the music."
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08.16.17

Excerpt: Exhibition

This Norwegian Auction Just Made Us Excited for the Fall Design Season

Today we got word of a new auction launching in Oslo next month, which we hope will be the first of many: Called Unika, the event — held at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts from September 9-10 and online from September 1-10 — is a collaboration between the biennial event Designer’s Saturday, Oslo's oldest auction house Blomqvist, and Klubben, the Norwegian designers organization.
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08.09.17

Eye Candy

8 Amazing Finds From the Parisian Design Dealers Known as Kolkhoze

This month we discovered the Parisian entity Kolkhoze, whose program we must confess we don't entirely understand — founders Thibaut Van den bergh and Thomas Erber seem to be interfacing not just between designers and clients, but between other galleries and clients, as well, offering both existing editions and custom commissions. Whatever they're doing over there, they're doing it well — we did a deep-dive into their site this week and discovered not only amazing works we'd never seen before, but designers we'd never even heard of.
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07.02.17

Saturday Selects

Week of June 26, 2017

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: furniture inspired by Judd and Noguchi, a peek into Portland's seriously impressive retail scene, and a new collaboration between a Dutch textile designer and a happy housewares store, above.
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06.29.17

Up and Coming

Six Talents to Watch from RCA’s 2017 Graduate Show

Despite continued uncertainty about the effect Brexit might have on applications from students abroad, this year’s Royal College of Art graduate show was a celebration of global design talent, showcasing some of the best emerging talents from the EU and beyond. Here are six of our favorites.
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Ornsbergsauktionen at Stockholm Design Week
02.07.17

Excerpt: Exhibition

An Auction of Work By Emerging Talents is the Best Thing at Stockholm Design Week

For Örnsbergsauktionen’s sixth anniversary, the Swedish exhibition, produced annually by Fredrik Paulsen, Kristoffer Sundin, and Simon Klenell, is moving into swankier digs and partnering with Artek. But though the location is new, the event is still one of the best things about Stockholm Design Week, where the variety of experimental objects on view is a direct result of the designers’ extreme specializations and visions — no mass production necessary.
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