Week of October 7, 2019

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, and more from the past seven days. This week: a new entrant into the vintage velvet couch Hall of Fame, a designer killing it with kids' room decor, and an exhibition featuring a who's who of Canadian designers.
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Material Lust American furniture designers

Exploring Furniture’s Dark Side with Material Lust

Just a year and a half old, Material Lust was born of a desire to fill glaring gaps in the world of home design: lighting that isn’t overpowered by its surroundings, for example, or a rug that does double duty as sculpture. Now four collections in, the studio's work is singular, striking, always made with extreme care and attention. It’s also often and unreasonably stereotyped.
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Stockholm apartment by Tekla Evelina Severin

Leave It To a Swedish Designer to Reinvent the White Box

You wouldn’t be alone if your first thought, upon seeing pictures of Daniel Heckscher’s Stockholm apartment, was: How can I reconfigure my life in order to live in a place just like this? For us, this was followed by a second, slightly more reasonable thought: We should repaint. It may come as no surprise to learn that Heckscher is an interior architect at Note Design Studio, the Swedish team that’s gained a reputation for perfect color palettes, well-proportioned products, and stunning spaces.
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In Venice, for the Bugaboo x Diesel launch

As we understand it, this is the dream, right? To turn your art-school thesis project into a multimillion dollar corporation and a brand that’s coveted the world over? That’s essentially what happened to Dutch designer Max Barenburg, who devised the origins of the Bugaboo stroller back in his days as a student at Design Academy Eindhoven in the early ’90s. The original design did not survive intact — Barenburg at first envisioned the now iconic stroller as an all-terrain vehicle that could turn into a two-wheeler and hook up to a mountain bike for a bit of baby off-roading — but its essential DNA was there: the telescoping handle meant to accommodate tall Dutch dads, the central joint that would allow the stroller to fold up using a single hand. Barenburg could never have foreseen Bugaboo’s massive popularity in part because he never could have guessed the collaborations the stroller would inspire. To date, the brand has worked with Pendleton, Missoni, Viktor & Rolf, the Andy Warhol Foundation (we particularly like the stroller covered in a giant Velvet Underground banana), and, as of next month, Diesel.
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best ikea furniture pieces

The First 59 Minutes of Jill’s Day

We were recently asked to participate in IKEA’s brand-new “Show Us Your IKEA: The First 59” campaign, which focuses on how IKEA pieces can help make the most out of the first hour of your day. So we thought this was as good a time as any to invite our readers into one of my favorite spaces and to share a bit of my own morning routine.
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