Open Object is Crafting Globally-Minded Ceramics From China’s “Porcelain Capital”

Contextualizing the work of Shanghai-based ceramic studio Open Object is a challenge; it feels starkly hybridized, a combination of East Asian craft traditions and Scandinavian aesthetics, playing into Westerners’ misconceptions of Chinese artistic disciplines and histories. That tension is, to some extent, by design.

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09.28.20

Q+A

China’s Most Influential Design Duo on the Country’s Future As a Cultural Powerhouse

To understand the contemporary design scene in China, learning about Neri&Hu’s work is a prerequisite. The country has experienced phenomenal social and architectural growth over the last two decades, and the pair have been a key part of the powerful creative driving force behind it, contributing numerous landmark designs inside and outside the country. I spoke with them about their current projects, and China’s place in the modern world.

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09.27.18

Interiors

Is This New, Gleaming Bookstore in Hangzhou the Future of Books?

We marvel at pretty much every bookstore brave enough to open in today's retail landscape, but that goes double for the new Harbook shop in Hangzhou, designed by the Shanghai studio of Alberto Caiola. A sprawling 6,500 square-foot playground filled with monumental custom furnishings and rows of thick steel archways, it's almost touching in how it seems to channel the glory days of the early 2000s, when ambitious "concept stores" still flourished and Amazon hadn't yet ruined books for everyone else.

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