03.11.23

Saturday Selects

Week of March 6, 2023

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: a show of more than 50 lamps by up-and-coming artists and designers in Brooklyn, the "most Instagrammable" restaurant interior in Tbilisi, and a home in Australia that makes the case for green-on-green-on-green (above).
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03.08.23

Excerpt: Exhibition

Nadia Yaron Embraced Chaos — In the Form of Chainsaws — To Create This Tranquil Exhibition

In a new show at Francis Gallery in Los Angeles, Nadia Yaron presents the body of work that emerged from a burgeoning love affair with her natural surroundings in Hudson, New York. “I work mostly outside from spring to autumn and am immersed in nature,” she shares. “This show is a tribute, a way to say thank you to these elements for their beauty and wisdom and all the joy they bring to our lives.” From her studio, a repurposed 19th century barn, Yaron used chainsaws and grinders to produce a series of sculptures of striking tranquility. It is not a peaceful exchange of energy. But, she says, “out of the chaos comes some quiet.”
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03.07.23

Excerpt: Exhibition

The Latest Iconic Italian Sofa Reissue, Bellini’s 1972 Le Mura, Has Arrived in the US

First came the return of conversation pits. Then came the resurgence of that other '70s-era seating mainstay — the ultra-comfortable, oft-squishy, sometimes-modular sofa, conceived by an array of (mostly) Italian designers, and built for conversation, intimacy, and that ephemeral but much sought-after quality of "conviviality." The trend only picked up steam during the pandemic, spurred by our collective desire to entertain at home. Now, alongside a slew of other sofa reissues throughout the industry, comes a Mario Bellini masterpiece back onto the market: The Le Mura sofa, first released in 1972 and reissued last year by Tacchini, will get its U.S. debut this week at the New York design gallery M2L, in a special presentation on view though March 27.
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03.04.23

Saturday Selects

Week of February 27, 2023

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: a Los Feliz house done up in a who's who of contemporary design, new art-inspired textiles from Areaware, and a Louis Poulsen lighting reissue that's close to our hearts.
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03.03.23

Excerpt: Exhibition

In a New Milan Exhibition, These Elemental Materials are Anything But Basic

Wood and metal — often used interchangeably for the same purposes, known as symbols of strength, both are innately rigid, while also malleable and capable of being crafted into almost any shape imaginable. As part of the recent Makers 1 exhibition in Milan, these two materials, which dominate the construction and furniture industries, were investigated in their many weird and wonderful guises by no less than 28 designers.
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03.01.23

Invitation

The DALL-E Invitational: We Asked Designers to Create Rooms, Objects, and Other Weird Experiments Using Image-Generating AI

With the sudden explosion into mainstream culture of AI tools like ChatGPT and the image-generation program DALL-E, the past few months have seen lots of speculation and big talk about what AI means for the future: Will machines take over the world? Will they take over the design industry? How scared should we be? These are questions that require serious consideration, but at the same time, we could hardly be blamed for simply being curious about what these tools can do, DALL-E in particular. DALL-E allows you to generate an endless stream of fictitious images based on whatever prompt you plug in, and it's insanely addictive; a few months back I went down a rabbit hole asking it to design rooms, to mash-up the work of famous designers and artists, or to create imaginary products from scratch; it was fun, so I invited a dozen designers to join me. You can see both my creations and theirs after the jump.
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02.28.23

Interiors

London’s Daytrip Studio on Mining for References and Why “Pinterest is a Dangerous Place”

The London-based interiors firm Daytrip Studio can do soothing, pared back minimalism; they can do more maximalist drama. Still, whatever it is, it all derives from the same place: a fixation on materials and a layered attention to sensory details. They bring together elements of texture, light, depth, proportion, and color palette and the overall effect is one of deceptive simplicity: the whole looks effortless and inevitable, yet every part is thoroughly researched and considered.
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02.26.23

Saturday Selects

Week of February 20, 2023

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: megalithic sculptures carved from storm-felled trees, lamps inspired by summer siestas, latex skirt sculptures, and a series of delicately decorated ceramics that are unexpectedly influenced by Soviet propaganda. 
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02.22.23

Fair Report

All the Best Art — and Design — We Saw at the 2023 Frieze Week in Los Angeles

Los Angeles is certainly not the most social town — compared to New York, where design and art events happen nightly and, as a professional, you could pretty much get by never paying for a glass of wine, LA's calendar can't really compete. Which is why things feel so much more exciting when Frieze comes to town each February, and suddenly your calendar fills up and you're running into interesting people left and right, multiple times a day. For those of us who crave creative stimulation, it's a boon, the time of year when galleries, stores, and makers sync up to showcase new works and new ideas. See (almost) everything we saw after the jump.
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02.18.23

Saturday Selects

Week of February 13, 2023

A weekly Saturday recap to share with you our favorite links, discoveries, exhibitions, and more from the past seven days. This week: the hits from Zona Maco, an exhibition that's meant to recall an imaginary speakeasy by the sea, and our favorite new candy-like glass goblets, by the Franco-Russian designer Alissa Volchkova.
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02.16.23

Fair Report

The Best of Stockholm Design Week 2023, Part II: The Fair and Around Town

Some of the things I loved at this year's fair included the Frama installation inside Konstnarsbaren, a 1930s-era bar with murals lining the wall that I dubbed "the Swedish Bemelmans;" a visit to Hem's new studio, decked out in four of my favorite colors, cobalt, highlighter yellow, powder blue, and pink; a packed-house fried-chicken party at Note Design Studio; a curving emerald green chair made from 3-D printed recycled fishing nets by a collective called the Interesting Times Gang; a beautiful seating system for Offecct by the late designer Pauline Deltour; a presentation by Beckmans College of Design that paired students with Sweden's leading furniture companies; and Alvsjo Gard, the new platform for experimental design that we wrote about yesterday. Check out the rest of our favorites after the jump!
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02.15.23

Fair Report

The Best of Stockholm Design Week 2023, Part I: Alvsjo Gard

After a three-year COVID hiatus, Stockholm Design Week returned in full force last week. And while we'll be covering the fair and its happenings around town tomorrow, today we're putting the spotlight on a new exhibition that also happened to be our favorite. Called Älvsjö Gärd, it was a showcase of experimental, research-driven, and collectible design, set across 13 rooms in one of the oldest manors in Stockholm — basically Sight Unseen catnip.
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