The 40+ Best Things We Saw at Design Miami 2017

The design side of things seemed particularly strong this year, from the so-weird-it's-genius idea to recreate Muller Van Severen's Ghent living room from scratch in an installation for Airbnb, to Chris Schanck's shimmering, Little Mermaid–colored cabinet for Friedman Benda, to Christopher Prinz's wrinkled, oil-slick benches for Patrick Parrish.
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Josef Albers is One Of Design’s Biggest Influences — See What Inspired the Artist Himself

Things have changed quite a bit since we began Sight Unseen eight years ago, but one interview question has remained steadfast in our arsenal: Who are your biggest influences? And while the same answers tend to pop up often enough — Barbara Hepworth, Agnes Martin, Luis Barragán, Donald Judd — there's one name that seems to get checked more than anyone else: Josef Albers, the 20th-century artist, educator, and designer, whose book, Interaction of Color, is one of the most essential design texts ever written. But in a new exhibition at the Guggenheim, Josef Albers in Mexico, one of Albers's own greatest influences is laid bare.
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Sight Unseen gift guide 2017

The Coolest—And Only—Gift Guide You’ll Need This Season: Part I

Welcome to the annual Sight Unseen gift guide! Over the next three days, we’ll be sharing our most covetable home, fashion, and beauty finds from around the web, from Japanese flatware to felt berets to the best air purifier we've found to date. First up is Jill, who’s got you covered on everything from sheer socks to splatter-painted stools.
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The Arlo Skye x Sight Unseen Suitcase, 2017

To help launch Arlo Skye's new polycarbonate line, we designed a carry-on and check-in exclusively in sage, with a pastel interior lining print created by Antti Kekki, a Finnish illustrator hand-selected by Sight Unseen.
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Futuristic, Architecturally-Inspired New Furniture by Os & Oos

We've caught glimpses of the new work by Dutch duo Os & Oos here and there: Their new Tunnel collection, made from extruded aluminum cylinders that interlock without the use of fasteners, was shown in the castle exhibition we featured earlier this year; the aesthetic behind their Matrix project, an endlessly configurable metal grid, was used in their store interior for the glasses brand Ace & Tate. But today we're presenting both collections in all their glory
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Want Sight Unseen to Review Your Work? Apply Now for 2018’s Reform Design Biennale

We receive submissions from designers every day in our inboxes, and we're constantly scouring platforms like Instagram and Pinterest for new work. But come next spring, we'll be looking to a new source for scouting designers: We've been asked to join the jury for a curated design exhibition known as REFORM, which takes place every other year in Copenhagen. The deadline for submissions is this Friday, December 1st.
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A Dutch Duo’s Albers-Inspired Acrylic Boxes

Over the past few weeks, we've been working on a little project about Josef Albers, so the idea that color might function as a material has been front and center in our minds. And perhaps no contemporary studio's work has pushed color into as defining a role as the Dutch duo Raw Color. Their latest project, a series of acrylic boxes whose multicolored planes intersect and blend into one other, is one of their best to date and pushes color even further into Albers territory.
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Week of November 13, 2017

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: Cassina's new headquarters (featuring a futuristic Perriand shelter in its coffee break-room), Marleigh Culver's new abstract series for Tappan Collective, and a Detroit-based start-up's new table, available in the perfect shade of blush.
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Salon Art Design New York

Our Favorite Finds from the 2017 Salon Art + Design

We've never been ones who needed an excuse to dress up, so last Thursday we happily headed uptown to the Park Avenue Armory for The Salon Art + Design, generally considered to be New York's fanciest design fair. We've only recently begun attending the Salon in part because the fair has only recently reached a tipping point, where the quality and number of boundary-pushing contemporary pieces matches the number of vintage ones on display — all of which, of course, reflects a more general trend in the collectible design world.
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At The Future Perfect, Bec Brittain’s SHY Lights Grow Up

Bec Brittain has been playing with different configurations of her constellation-like SHY Lights ever since they debuted all the way back in 2012. But because each light is constricted only by the width and length of an LED tube, as well as Brittain's own boundless imagination, the possibilities are quite literally endless. So for a new show at The Future Perfect, called Resolute, Brittain began experimenting with the path and quality of the light source itself rather than the configuration of the tubes.
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Meet the Up and Coming Finnish Illustrator Behind the Sight Unseen Suitcase Print

Earlier this year, when we began to think about who might design the pattern that would adorn the interior of the Arlo Skye x Sight Unseen suitcase, we first established a few parameters: We wanted the suitcase to be more sophisticated than playful, but to still embody the warm, colorful, graphic sensibility that we tend to favor. We needed the print to repeat, but we wanted the pattern to have the illusion of being more random. And we hoped that we might be able to shine a light on a lesser-known, up-and-coming talent.
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Maniera Gallery for the Operae design fair

Fake Wood, Real Stone, and Imagined Foam: Our Favorite Collection from the Operae Design Fair

This year's Operae show was curated by Alice Stori Lichtenstein and the fair, always notable for its mix of designers and galleries, featured Sight Unseen favorites like Campbell Rey, Carwan Gallery, and Maniera. It was the latter gallery who hosted our favorite presentation: a series of layered particle-board furniture developed by the Belgium firm aDVVT as well as a newer series called "Light Conversation Pieces," by the Italian architecture firm Piovenefabi.
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