07.02.25

Sight Unseen Collection

The Melbourne Design Studio Creating “Soft-Spoken” Objects

How many new things should we actually be making? This is the question that plagues so many designers now as the issues facing our planet continue to worsen. “I find the design industry very troubling in a lot of ways, and I do feel the tension of creating new pieces in a world of excess, with the majority of furniture and lighting ending up in landfill. It’s really hard to reconcile sometimes,” says Kate Stokes, co-founder for Melbourne studio Coco Flip.

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07.01.25

Fair Report

Everything We Loved at Everyone’s New Favorite Design Fair: 3 Days of Design in Copenhagen

Copenhagen's 3 Days of Design festival has made an uncanny ascent to the top of the ranks of global design fairs in the past couple of years. Soon after we started reeling over the number of non-professionals going to Milan for pleasure rather than business, we started hearing the same about 3 Days, which we had only ever personally experienced (as recently as 2021) as a tiny event with mostly local participants. To be fair, it owes a part of its popularity explosion to the fact that it takes place in Copenhagen, in the summer, which is not a bad place to be even when your social calendar isn't full of design aperitivos. But as interest has grown, so, too, has participation. We attended this year's edition as a guest of Royal Copenhagen, and our friends and colleagues who didn't go were dying of curiosity about what we saw. Today's roundup, we hope, will answer some of those questions.

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06.30.25

Interiors

This Interior Design Studio Firmly Rejects “Instagram Moments,” But Its Spaces Are Still Super Photogenic

Despite a wane in the curated "Instagram aesthetic," hotels and restaurants still often must rely on vignettes that guests will be inclined to photograph, post, and tag as part of their organic — and free — marketing strategies. But for New York-based Islyn Studio, the aim is to lift these guests out of their digitally oriented lives entirely, and — even if for a brief spell — focus on the sensorial value of the space they’re in. “We reject trends and ‘Instagram moments’ in favor of timelessness,” says founder Ashley Wilkins. “Our hope is that our audience is so immersed in the moment, they forget to look at their phones.” 

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06.28.25

Saturday Selects

Week of June 23, 2025

A weekly recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: a renovated 1920s mansion available for rent in Paris, the latest in stained glass as a furniture material, and one Brooklyn designer's attempt to bring back flatware manufacturing in America.

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09.26.23

Sighted

Herman Miller’s New Task Chair Wants to Become the Next Upholstered Icon (And It Doesn’t Have a Ton of Competition)

We don't talk a lot on this site about Naoto Fukasawa. He's one of an earlier generation of industrial designers — along with names like Jasper Morrison and Hella Jongerius — whose talent and influence is, by this point, simply a given in certain creative circles. (And not, perhaps, in others.) But while we hadn't heard about a major project of his in a long time — his Pao light for Hay was probably the most recent, though why did no one tell us about this sweet Japanese playground equipment? — our ears perked up with we heard one of America’s largest and most celebrated office furniture brands had teamed up with the feted Japanese designer. The result is the Asari task chair, the latest collab between Herman Miller and Naoto Fukasawa, and it is, expectedly, a resounding match made in functional, ergonomic, minimalist heaven.

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06.27.25

Sighted

This Italian Bed Brand Is Making the Statement Sleep Furniture of Our Dreams

In many bedrooms, it’s often what goes on the bed that adds personality to a space. Bold-patterned sheets, colorful comforters, punchy pillows — all of these are used as aesthetic signifiers while the bed itself often falls into the background. But, as we saw in Milan this year, there’s a resurging trend for fun iterations of headboards, bases, and frames — whether they’re unusually shaped, exaggeratedly oversized, expressively crafted, or just pretty to look at. While exciting experiments in bed design have largely been left to emerging designers until now, bigger brands — like the Italian bed specialists Bolzan — are finally waking up(!) to the power of imaginative designs for a piece in which we spend such a significant portion of our time.

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06.26.25

Travel

The Sight Unseen Summer Hotel Roundup: A Chef-Owned French Countryside Escape, a Retreat in Cap d’Antibes, and a Bold Newcomer in Houston

Truly memorable hotel design isn’t just about seamless check-ins, good sheets, and moody lighting (though we’ll happily take them all). It’s about spaces that linger in your brain long after you’ve hopped on your return flight. Now that summer is in full swing, we’ve found three new spots that hit that sweet spot — a chef-owned escape in the French countryside, a five-star retreat on the Cap d’Antibes waterfront, and a bold newcomer in Houston, steps away from the Museum District.

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06.25.25

Interiors

Nick Spain Designed This Massachusetts Lake House After Encouraging His Clients to Forget Everything They Thought a Lake House Ought to Be

Interior and landscape designer Nick Spain creates spaces that feel evocative of a certain period and yet out of time, never bound to an era in a retro or kitschy way. For a 1960s lakehouse in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, Spain — based in the Berkshires and Brooklyn — recently combined various references that nod to the past but live fully in the present. It’s more challenging than it looks, of course, and we wanted to know how he pulls it off.

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06.21.25

Saturday Selects

Week of June 16, 2025

A weekly recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: a book that dives into the modernist architecture of Fire Island, wooden vases embroidered with delicate blooms, and a Wong Kar-Wai–inspired interior in LA's Silver Lake neighborhood.

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06.20.25

Sighted

Danielle Fretwell’s Veiled, Jewel-Toned Still Life Paintings Both Conceal and Reveal

In New Hampshire-based artist Danielle Fretwell’s still life paintings, what is visible is often just as important as what is obscured. Fretwell’s work first caught our eye at NADA New York last month; presented by London-based Alice Amati gallery, Fretwell’s seductive, hyperrealistic oil on canvas works featuring fruit, fish, candles, vases, and other tableware stood out among the over 120 booths at the bustling art fair. Depicting these items on what appears to be silken table linens or velvety drapery, Fretwell often includes the device of a painted veil or screen to obscure part of the composition. 

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06.14.25

Saturday Selects

Week of June 9, 2025

A weekly recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: Formafantasma's first US solo show, a new housewares line that pairs Greek art with Swedish craftsmanship, and two new stores in Brooklyn, one focused on vintage heirlooms and one focused on contemporary Georgian design.

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06.11.25

Travel

Two New Sight Unseen–Approved Hotels Are As Much Living Rooms For Locals As They Are Destinations for Design-Seeking Travelers

When the Ace Hotel opened in Manhattan in 2009, it established a blueprint for the idea of a hotel lobby as a living room for the city. With its Stumptown Coffee, Opening Ceremony outpost, April Bloomfield-helmed restaurant, rows of laptop-friendly desks (in an era before WeWork, no less), vintage-inspired photo booth, and a bustling events calendar, the Ace was as much a hangout for locals as it was a haven for travelers. Ace continued to imprint this model as it opened in cities around the world, and other hotels soon followed suit. As this mode of hospitality became the norm over the past decade and a half, though, it's gotten harder for new hotels to stand out, which is why design has become such an important distinguishing factor. But as I found in my travels over the last six months, there are a few properties who are really doing things right — who have taken the idea of the hotel as living room, tweaking it through both expansion and refinement, to something resembling perfect: the Stockholm Stadshotell and the Ace Hotel Kyoto.

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