Meet Cara\Davide, The South African-Italian Duo Making Waves in Milan

One of Cara Judd and Davide Gramatica of Cara\Davide’s most memorable projects quite literally started in a scrap heap. “We were visiting an artisan who works with metal for another project and we came across a piece of leftover iron with an interesting patina,” says Gramatica of the offcut that would inspire their Calandra collection. “For them, it was rubbish, but between us, we said, why not?”
More
Mario Tsai Chinese design

Though He Designs for Of-the-Moment Brands, Mario Tsai Isn’t Inspired By Trends

When Hangzhou-based designer Mario Tsai was growing up, he’d take apart the electronics in the house. Luckily for him, his parents were forgiving. He’d also collect old, tossed-out electric components and scrap pieces of wood to make new things. “I made many things that adults would consider strange,” he says, but that early freedom to explore has proven foundational for his design practice. A research-centered approach is the basis of Mario Tsai Studio, founded in the summer of 2014, which produces elegant, contemporary furniture and conceptual lighting design.
More

Week of September 14, 2020

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: three new (ish) puffy chairs, a collection of graphic ceramic tiles by Nathalie du Pasquier, and a suite of styrofoam-and-resin floral furniture with millennial-weirdo vibes.
More

Charlotte Kidger’s Crumbling Columns, Made From Foam Dust, Are Perfect For This Moment in Time

In April, just as the world was beginning to shut down, Central St Martin's grad Charlotte Kidger got a phone call from Browns Fashion in London, who wanted her to create a window display for the store's flagship on South Molton Street. Four months and 19 sculptures later, Kidger's work is on view until September 7, highlighting the store's iconic accessories collection.
More

Meet the South Korean Designer Making Furniture From Lacquered Volcanic Stone

Seven years ago, Seoul-born Jeongseob Kim set out to find a niche that would define his identity as an independent designer. He began experimenting with using black or brightly colored cement to fill in the cracks and crevices created in the process of making cast-concrete stools, lamps, and tabletops. Calling the project Emergence, though, turned out to be prescient — rather than being his sole calling card, it ended up inspiring a body of work that draws on similar ideas but is even more layered and process-driven.
More

Lex Pott’s Pandemic Pastime: A New Series of Hand-Woven Checker Chairs

Just when we'd almost begun thinking of him as "the candle guy," his pillars and tapers seemingly having colonized every store in New York, Dutch designer Lex Pott posted a photo on his Instagram late last month of a single eye-catching chair wrapped entirely in hand-woven nylon straps. We did a mini interview with Pott to find out more about the project.
More

Meet Three (More) Rising Stars Defining the Greek Design Scene

To work in Athens in 2020 is to work in a city that is both global — and, as such, ripe with opportunities for cross-border collaborations — but also very particular. Whether focusing on local problems with global impact, like the Greek capital’s distinct lack of recycling facilities, or creating collective arts organizations, making of any kind here is always situated within a local context. To get a glimpse into the growing Greek design scene, we recently caught up with three of the country's most exciting young talents.
More

The New Dutch Talent Whose Colorful Scale Models Caught Our Eye

If you clicked on this story thinking that the main image, above, was a chair, and that maybe — even if only in your internal fantasy world — you could somehow buy it for your house, bad news: It, and all of the covetable glass objects featured in this post, are tabletop-sized models created for research purposes by the newly graduated Rotterdam product designer Fleur Peters.
More

Week of October 21, 2019

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: an explosion of color in our current must-see art exhibitions, an affordable new housewares series by Philippe Malouin, and four very different takes on wooden furniture, including the table above.
More

Three Designers Turned Their Hotel Rooms Into Studios for A Weekend Residency — Here are the Results

With the help of the design-forward travel app HotelTonight — which allows designers to choose from a curated selection of hotels that might drive creative inspiration — we issued a challenge to three designers: Spend a weekend in a city you've never been to, bringing with you only the tools you can fit into a carry-on, and use your hotel room as a mobile studio in which to create a design object inspired by your travels.
More