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06.15.20

Sight Unseen OFFSITE

“Little Poop Stools” & An Anemone-Shaped Ottoman — Welcome to The Weird World of RISD’s MFA in Furniture Design

Student thesis projects can run the gamut, but this particular collection of them — representing the work of RISD’s 2020 furniture MFA graduates — happens to be much more sophisticated in execution than some of its playful starting points might suggest. Headed by Patty Johnson, the two-year program is co-taught by faculty members Ben Blanc, Lane Myer, Chris Rose and Emily Cornell du Houx. “The program is really focused on hands-on making and process-based learning — helping the students find their creative voice and what they imagine their creative practice to be,” says Blanc.
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06.12.20

Sight Unseen OFFSITE

Lland’s New Copper Furniture is Meant to Age in Place, Because “Nothing is Perfect”

Rachel Shillander's copper Pipe Collection, debuting as renderings for Offsite Online, is made entirely of the lightweight alloy, in tribute to its quickly fading functional life as plumbing infrastructure in older homes, now often replaced by composite plastic tubing. The entire collection, which will eventually be available in a range of metals, is meant to “age in place,” making external what was once an unseen process. “I do respect that some people want it to stay new, but it’s meant to take on the characteristics of its home and its people,” says Shillander. “Nothing is perfect.”
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06.12.20

Sight Unseen OFFSITE

Studio POA’s Work Combines Natural Materials With Computer-Generated Growth Algorithms

Guatemala-born, New York–based designer Giovanni Valdeavellano blurs the boundaries between digital and analog, industrial and unrepeatable. His sculptural designs estrange familiar materials like glass, wood, ceramic, and steel to create fresh structures and shapes. We caught up with him to talk abstraction, technology, and the hand-made in an era of life taking place increasingly on the small screen.
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jackrabbit studio offsite online
06.10.20

Sight Unseen OFFSITE

Jackrabbit Studio’s New Works Aren’t Chubby — They’re Monumental

Curves both gentle and exaggerated, varying volumes, and a playful sensibility find balance in the disarmingly simple furniture of Jackrabbit Studio, the Hudson Valley, New York, design practice of Brett Miller. Miller's recent work began as experiments with circular and cylindrical geometries; the curves of his Funky Bunch trio of chairs, Plato floor lamp, Primary chair, and Rotunda coffee table are thanks to Miller’s experiments with his lathe, in a process he likens to surfboard shaping — a fitting reference for the San Diego native.
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Seer Studio Offsite Online
06.09.20

Sight Unseen OFFSITE

Seer Studio is Making Your Dream Sofa Down in Austin, Texas

The pieces that Scott Martin designs, as Seer Studio, lean towards the dramatic. As with any good drama, there's a conflict that creates a compelling tension — in this case, between a kind of sophisticated glamour and an uncomplicated, comfortable ease, between big, comfy curves and sharp, stark angles, and a way of working with proportion and scale to create furniture that somehow feels both worldly and intimate.
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05.28.20

Sight Unseen OFFSITE

A Book on Chromophobia Inspired Estudio Persona’s Most Colorful Collection Yet

Born of an investigation of volumes and building principles and marking Estudio Persona's first foray into color, the pieces in their Connection Collection — such as the Block chair, a low-slung lounge upholstered in rust-colored mohair — are meant to elicit a new perspective on their surroundings. Of course, as soon as the collection was ready to be shipped across the country and shown, the country went on lockdown.
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Atelier de Troupe Offsite Online
05.26.20

Sight Unseen OFFSITE

Atelier de Troupe’s Latest Collection is the Sun and Sand Infusion We Need Right Now

Gabriel Abraham is nostalgic: for childhood summers spent between the rocks of Cassis and the beaches of St. Tropez, for glass bottles found washed up on the beach, maybe even for squinting up at a sun that shines a little less harshly. His reveries are made manifest in Dérive D'Été, Atelier de Troupe’s new collection of lighting and furniture, inspired at turns by “drifting tides, the cyclical shades of light, and the long shadows of summer.”
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05.25.20

Sight Unseen OFFSITE

Christopher Norman is Turning the Castoff Urban Trees of Los Angeles Into Art

Los Angeles–based architect and designer Christopher Norman’s new collection of hand-machined minimal forms resists standardization. His untitled “extrusions” in ash and cedar and pine riff on a hardware aesthetic, while maintaining the organic ethos seen in much of his other, more fluidly-shaped work. Forgoing pre-cut lumber, Norman uses wood from freshly cut trees. “If you’re working with commercial wood, you get a very normalized look and set of proportions. It’s basically highly mediated,” he explains.
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05.23.20

Sight Unseen OFFSITE

From Lava Stone to Hempcrete: The First of Our Offsite Selects Round-Ups

Ever since we began hosting our Sight Unseen Offsite fair, it has always featured both full collection launches as well as a more gallery-like section called Selects, the latter meant to highlight only a piece or two each by a large, diverse group of designers. Now that our physical show has become Offsite Online, we’ve kept the Selects concept in tact, and we’re presenting those individual works in roundups on our main feed over the next three Saturdays. View the first one here.
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