The next generation of Zaha Hadid’s Liquid Glacial table was unveiled yesterday at David Gill Galleries for an exhibition that will run until November 16th. A gravity-defying design, the table perfectly resembles a puddle of crystal clear water, frozen in time. At once fanciful and authentic, the table top is smooth and flat but reveals delicate ripples beneath the surfa...
Patrick Norguet has traveled an enviable, atypical path in his career as an industrial designer. He has worked with some big names in fashion like Louis Vuitton, Lanvin and Dior creating scenographies, already has an iconic chair as part of MoMA’s permanent collection and has been consistently churning out furniture for the likes of Glas Italia, Poltrona, Kristalia and C...
Black houses hold a certain intrigue, perhaps due to the pure rarity of their existence. Black houses are the unicorns of the architecture world. That being said, we’ve managed to wrangle ten black houses that hold the intrigue for which they are known. Enjoy. Black Desert House by Oller & Pejic Architecture Oller & Pejic’s Black Desert House is located in the extr...
Berlin-based designers Essi Johanna Glomb and Rasa Weber are the young faces behind the design studio Blond & Bieber. Their innovative project, Algaemy, first made its appearance at DMY Berlin this past May and will be presented at the upcoming Dutch Design Week. Algae is an abundant and fast-growing material that has infinite potential. It has been studied as a replace...
For this year’s Dutch Design Week, Kiki van Eijk and Joost van Bleiswijk decided to do some tidying up. Using old sketches, scrap material and protoypes, they created several new products which were then exhibited at their Eindhoven workshop. Titled ‘CLEAN UP! The Mess’, the exhibition included shelves made from wood and crumpled copper, lighting made from industrial mac...
Handcrafted design isn’t just for DIY Pinterest projects, we promise. In fact, we dedicated an entire e-magazine to the topic! And with the help of associations like Crafts Council Nederland (CCNL), craftsmanship is rising up the design ranks to become a category of its own. Dutch Darlings is a competition organized by CCNL to encourage, exhibit and reward sustainable c...
From May 16th to June 20th, Chinese artist Jacky Tsai will present his work at Scream London for an exhibition called Eastern Orbit. Based in London since 2006, Tsai is trying to create a link between the two cultural worlds he has been evolving around all his life. Mixing several techniques and styles along with those two strong cultural influences, Jacky Tsai achieves ...
The kitchen is evolving. All of the essentials are still there, but modern kitchens have gone to the next level with materials, ergonomics and aesthetics. Designers are bringing back natural materials and using technology to create bring never before seen materials into the kitchen. Stand alone and modular kitchens are becoming a design staple, and integrated kitchen acc...
Romain Guillet and Louise de Saint Angel, the Parisian duo behind STATUE, use design to reinvent objects and spaces in unexpected ways. They chose STATUE as both the name of their design studio and as their mascot due to its architectural, artistic, decorative and epic attributes. The pair often takes antiquated objects and profoundly revives them. Despite their acousti...
A staple of architecture for centuries, the facade has a long history as a decorative element of both private homes and public buildings. Facades play a clear decorative role, with new facades frequently being used to “dress up” existing houses, but they can also contribute to the energy efficiency of a building. As energy becomes a greater concern, the facade has adapt...
Mother Nature presumably did not have art in mind when creating the bright colors and patterns of our feathery friends, however feathers are natural masterpieces. They insulate against the weather, make flight possible, provide camoflage and also serve as decoration to lure potential mates. Washington artist Chris Maynard has recognized the inherent beauty of feathers an...
Carl Kleiner’s Postures series is a collection of pictures of tulips held in various positions with wires. Documenting the surrounding world with his camera, he lets his photography serve as a medium for bringing his insightful visions to life. The fragility of the flower figures contrasts with either a black or white background, and as they hang in the air the flowers ...
Jonathan Muecke doesn’t like labels. Working from his studio in Minneapolis, Minnesota, he toes the line of design, teetering into art, architecture and back again. Indeed, his creations would be equally convincing in a private residence or modern art museum. Case in point: Step Stool is part of the collection at MAD in New York. For Open Objects, his second solo exhibit...
Slowly and steadily, time sculpts the urban landscape. Pollution, graffiti and precipitation leave their indelible mark on the city through a simple addition and subtraction of materials. Rain erodes and soot creates, building up on windowsills in a minuscule geography that often goes unnoticed. Often, but not always. Fortunately, there are some that take notice. Broo...
Summer is almost here, and it’s becoming impossible to move without breaking a sweat. ‘Tis the season to slow down and relax, and for that, there is always the ever practical, always reliable hammock. But what if we went above and beyond the hammock? What if? Let’s check out 10 suspended seats with an unusual twist. Tropicalia by Patricia Urquiola for Moroso Colorf...
These breathtaking floor installations are created by hand-placing bagillions of tiny mirrors, crystals, pieces of chromed metal, optical glass and precious stones in patterns once only accessible through the ubiquitous kaleidoscope tube. The craziest part of these mesmerizingly precise installations is that all of the pieces are loosely placed, AKA not fixated, glued ...
Hey there, procrastinators! We see you scurrying around on December 24th, ripping items off shelves without so much as a glance at the price tag. It’s all part of the fun, right? We get it, and we made this list just for you. Of course, we realize that you probably won’t actually get around to ordering any of these until it’s too late, but we hope that it will at least g...
At last year’s Design Miami, we were captivated by the beautiful and perplexing light installation from champagne house Perrier-Jouët and designer Simon Heijdans presented. This year, Perrier-Jouët has commissioned a installation from Vienna-based design duo mischer’traxler that also leaves visitors scratching their heads. ‘Ephemerā’ is the first in a series of work tha...
Not a run-of-the-mill design manufacturer, Incipit chooses to be defined as a training laboratory or as a workshop that supports young designers in their craft. Similar to organizations such as VIA in France, Incipit’s ultimate goal is to give designers a chance to succeed by supporting them through the entire process. Initiated by Roberto Hoz and Marta Bernstein in 2...
“My photographs are all that remain of the sculptures.” Environmental artist and designer Martin Hill makes sculptures in nature that return to nature. His designs illuminate the idea of a new model of progress where the living world on which life relies is not destroyed. Using local materials running on renewable energy, waste is eliminated and multiple benefits and job...
Navid Baraty examines the world from the top down. Dangling over the edge of skyscrapers, he captures society as few would ever see it. The Brooklyn-based artist began the series while living in Tokyo where he discovered that the dizzying views provided a lot of insight into a society’s character. His work has been featured in several major publications, including Nation...
Nuances are perhaps the highest level of language. We rarely stop to consider how beautiful it is to understand the subtle shades of a phrase or word. Paying homage to these linguistic subtleties, Japanese studio Nendo designed a series of Rain Bottles. The Japanese language has dozens of different words for the English word ‘rain’ – variations that depend upon condit...
Do you pay an exorbitant price for a dwelling that serves only for sleep? If so, you might be a modern nomad. Fortunately, Studio ARTE gets it. With their NOMAD Living project in Algarve, Portugal, the design ensemble explores the boundaries and flexibility of the modern wayfaring lifestyle. Born out of a disused shipping container, the project is a cheap and obtainable ...
Small confession: we are deathly afraid of heights. Our paralyzing fear is the reason that Object Élevé by Dutch designer Mieke Meijer strikes terror in our hearts, yet we would put it in our house without hesitation. Despite the vertiginous heights, combining a staircase with storage and a desk is brilliant, and the design is gorgeous. The oak and steel structure was...
In an ideal world, work would be so much fun that extra hours would feel effortless. Unfortunately, the majority of us spend our weeks slogging through until Friday. Depressing? Perhaps. But we’ve rounded up a few objects that may not necessarily make work more fun, but their convenient multiple functions will definitely make it easier. Islands by Jordi Blasi Islan...
The Stockholm Furniture Fair is officially in full swing! Each year, the Greenhouse serves as a “Garden of New Ideas”, displaying new talents from around the world. For the second year in a row, Stockholm-based Note Design Studio designed the hall. Intent on representing the social aspect of the event, the Swedish design studio put participant and customer interaction a...
New York artist Karen Margolis has a profound fascination with the inner workings of the mind. Her art, through a beautiful and almost obsessive repetition of circles, is actually a calculated expression of human psychology. Circles of shadow, color and absence map out the thoughts and feelings flying through our gray matter. Drawing upon her background in psychology,...
What looked like a great exhibition turned out to be more than that. From January 25th to April 6th, the Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is hosting one major event. A few figures can sum it up: 7 architects from 6 countries and 4 continents have the task of filling more than 2,000 square meters with one monumental exhibition. The point is to make architecture interact with ou...
Adding to his body of work titled An Aggregation, Seoul-based artist Seon Ghi Bahk is currently presenting his latest installations at the Zadok Gallery in Miami. Known for his delicate charcoal installations, Bahk hangs the substance from nylon threads to create concrete and abstract shapes that simultaneously seem to be crumbling, floating and flying away. More specif...
“It is not about what you see but how you see it.” And from behind the lens of Lebanese photographer Serge Najjar, Beirut’s concrete jungle flourishes with unexpected geometric patterns, contrasts, colors and stolen moments. If such elements exist outside of Najjar’s digital world, his patience and timing are impeccable. Every Saturday, Najjar drives without aim, until s...
With the Tetris House, the famous Brazilian architecture firm Studio mk27 achieved another tour de force and broke some new ground in the world of modern architecture. Mixing the classics (geometric elements materialized in a perfect mix of wood and stone, an amazing balance between organic and unnatural elements in the design), the Brazilian architects came up with a wi...
If prefabs are fabulous, containers are pretty cool too. It’s funny to see how in a few years, containers then prefabs have taken over the architectural world. These simple and economical construction methods have provided an answer to our growing need for adaptable and quick architecture. One country that has shown such need over the last few years is China, so it is no...
December is rapidly drawing to a close, which means it’s the perfect moment to revisit the most visited articles of 2014. From a Vietnamese house in Ho Chi Minh to the Mojave desert in Nevada, let’s take a little trip down memory lane. Here are the top five projects from the past year.
Why be traditional when you could be original? Or something along those lines. Either way, freestanding wooden bathtubs are as resistant as their counterparts, and they provide an unexpectedly warm bathroom centerpiece. From Japanese ofuro soaking tubs to marine-inspired bath time vessels, wooden tubs can be an impossibly simple accent or a dramatic statement. We’ve sele...
Half rug, half sculpture, Elise Strozyk’s wooden rugs are unlike anything we’ve ever seen. They manage to overturn our concept of wood as a material – precisely as the German designer intended. By transforming wood into a sort of fabric that can be shaped and folded, an everyday experience becomes something remarkable and worthy of consideration. To create each object, a...
We like design /art that makes us cock our heads and turn round in circles, which is exactly why we so enjoy Norman Kelley’s Wrong Chairs. On display at Volume Gallery in Chicago through January 24th, Carrie Norman and Thomas Kelley revise the traditional Windsor chair. Using the American design ‘standard’, they explore and pry open what we perceive as ‘correct’ and ‘rig...
