Thanks to the incessant holiday music playing in stores since late October, you are probably aware that it’s almost the holidays. For some, it’s a time of joy and excitement. For others, it’s a time of crippling anxiety and dread. Either way, you’re pretty much expected to buy things for people you love, so why not buy awesome things? Thus, in the spirit of the season, w...
Shanghai-based design brand Stellar Works presented its new signature collection at EDIT by designjunction in Milan during the design week. The exhibition featured their cross-cultural cosmos of furniture, lighting and accessories. Stellar Works stitches together past traditions with present approaches for tomorrow’s design needs. Their ethos as an international melti...
Design Miami officially kicks off today, and we are exceptionally excited to meet with Lebanese designers Marc Baroud and Marc Dibeh, creators of Wires. Commissioned by Art Factum Gallery, Wires has been to Dubai and back, making its way to Miami Beach this week. The minimalist designs originated as 2D drawings before being manipulated into 3D forms. Each piece is create...
Breaking up is hard to do. Unless you are Elsa Boch. Well, perhaps the lovely French designer also finds breaking up hard to, however her modular lamp, Rising, makes breaking up and making up seem eternally easy. Made from steel, aluminum and glass, the table lamp consists of a tray, a light source and several trundle tubes that can be arranged and rearranged according ...
For his first time exhibiting at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark, Olafur Eliasson presents 3 ambitious spatial installations within the architectural context of the museum. Among these installations is Riverbed, an indoor river perfectly imitating nature. The artificial landscape created by the Danish-Icelandic artist is breathtaking. Rocks cover the floor...
Roadkill is pretty disgusting. That said, whenever we spot it, we’re overtaken by mixed feeling. On one hand, the repulsion forces you to look elsewhere, but on the other, a certain fascination makes you want to look – even though you know it’s wrong. In creating the Roadkill Carpet, Dutch designers Oooms play with that side of us. Both repulsive and kind of funny, th...
Raise your hand if you often eat in front of the television, or at the computer, or standing in the kitchen, or in your bed. Okay, maybe that last one is just us, but the point is that many individuals no longer sit down at a proper table to eat. Mealtimes are often used for multitasking, however eating is also a profoundly social act. In order to bring the focus back o...
Some may say Rhode Island School of Design graduate Annie Evelyn has a thing for chairs. After creating a chair-shaped ring called “Sit on My Finger” and an “Impolite Chair” with pompoms, we were right to expect interesting things from New Colony Furniture, her Brooklyn-based company, but she produced more than expected! There’s a reason why the Squishy chair made quite ...
What happens when a designer is facing difficulties? French designer Julien Carretero wanted to use the flexibility and low-cost of aluminum to avoid the additional costs of aluminum injection molding. After a few try-outs, he found out aluminum didn’t need to be too warm to melt and thus came his idea. Carretero figured this reasonably high temperature of melting wasn’t...
Get a complete rundown of the Venice Architecture Biennale in the latest edition of our e-magazine! As part of the 14th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice, German artist Heinz Mack created a grid of nine identical golden columns. Each column is seven meters high and decorated with over 850,000 light-reflecting golden tesserae that give a nod to Venice’s t...
Jean de Loisy, president of the modern and contemporary art space Palais de Tokyo, commissioned Constance Guisset to create three islands of calm for the immense Parisian building. Titled “Three Conversations”, the three objects resemble lamps of Gulliverian proportions. Long, colorful straps, suspended from metallic circles, are held aloft by a mast that rises above the...
With its new exhibition Tincture, Copenhagen’s art and design gallery Etage Projects has invited two accomplished designers to explore color and material as changeable and dynamic elements that go beyond the object to create an overall experience. Participating in the exhibition are Sabine Marcelis, a Dutch/New Zealand designer based in Rotterdam, and Eindhoven-based des...
If you’ve ever tried checked out the real estate market in densely populated, highly desirable urban areas, you know that it’s not cheap. Space is a rare commodity. In response, more and more designers (and their clients) are reconsidering their spatial needs. Some choose small spaces out of concern for the environment, while others choose to go small simply because thei...
32-year-old architect Yener Torun has spent the last year seeking out and photographing minimalist buildings in Istanbul, hoping to show a different side of the city from the standard images of old streets and mosques along the Bosphorus. He claims that because there aren’t many such buildings in Turkey he spends most of his time searching, which turns his mission into a...
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...
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...
How to make storybook-like stool? Easy! First, grab some scrap wood and some wool from a newly shorn sheep. Now, put it all together and have a seat! Okay, it’s not quite that easy, but 0304 makes it seem as such. Using simple and sustainable materials, they create fun and funky designs. A collaboration between former Design Academy Eindhoven classmates, Tanja Kole, Raym...
Bamboo, bamboo, how we love you! We talked about Bo Reudler’s bamboo collection at DDW 2013, but it doesn’t stop there! In the wake of Beijing Design Week and Taiwan Designers Week, we’ve seen a resurgence of the eco-friendly wood. Durable, sustainable, beautiful, bamboo’s multitude of qualities make it a design dream. So have a gander at some of our favorite bamboo c...
Ah, Paris. We never get tired of Paris. The whirlwind of Paris Design Week spread from the Marais all the way to Maison & Objet in the suburb of Villepinte. We ran from stand to stand at Maison & Objet and from exhibition to exhibition in the city to find a selection of products that we love. Of course, our list is not limited to ten! Petite Friture, Collection Partic...
Kids may not have all the fun, but adulthood can definitely be a drag. Fortunately for the 18+ crowd, playful design is on the rise, and some of our childhood favorites are being revamped and revisited . So, in honor of the weekend, let’s take a few moments to indulge our inner child. And who knows? You might find some early holiday gift ideas!
The holidays are coming faster than a high speed train, but you’ve still got time to decorate! We’re not in love with the idea of a red and green explosion, so we decided to seek out some options. We’ve selected ten holiday decorations that we think will make the season just as jolly while stepping a little bit out of the holiday mold.
The movie adaptation of the E.L. James novel 50 Shades of Grey has just been released in theaters. You might be wondering what the racy flick has to do with design, but it turns out that when your character is a swanky businessman, chances are he also has a swanky apartment to match. Moviegoers will get an eyeful…of lamps from DelightFULL, a cabinet by Boca Do Lobo, a ta...
In 1964, Verner Panton’s FUN Lamp series was shown for the very first time at the Cologne Furniture Fair. The generous shape and gently reflective discs undeniably made an impression, provoking strong reactions across the board. Fifty years later, the FUN series has become a design icon and a staple of the VERPAN collection. For the fiftieth anniversary, VERPAN launche...
German-born, New York-based artist Markus Linnenbrink embraces color with open arms. In fact, the vast majority of his work is spent examining color and its impact. But he didn’t always throw himself wholeheartedly into the rainbow abyss. He even used to be a little frightened of color. We find this reassuring in lieu of the overwhelming sense of panic we feel when simpl...
British artist Steve Messam is known for his striking, temporary landscape installations. Most recently, the artist completed PaperBridge, a crimson footbridge made from 20,000 sheets of paper. Currently open to the public, the bridge spans a babbling brook in the Grisedale Valley of England’s Lake District. Two footpaths lead up to the bridge on either side, making it l...
In the wake of his melting facade and upside down building, British artist Alex Chinneck continues to work large-scale magic tricks with his latest installation. Titled ‘Take My Lightening but Don’t Steal My Thunder’, the piece perfectly replicates London’s iconic Covent Garden Market building, making it seem as if the upper portion of the 184-year-old structure has deta...
Last week, Basque furniture brand Alki debuted the world’s first bioplastic chair, Kuskoa Bi. The impressively smooth result of the plant-based polymer got us wondering: what other intelligent bio-composites are out there? We rounded up five chairs by five designers use some unlikely natural materials. Terroir by Nikolaj Steenfatt and Jonas Edvard Nikolaj Steenfatt...
Some partnerships just produce great things. Peanut butter and jelly. Cookies and milk. Will Bryant and Eric Trine. Their Staycation already inspired us to take a (very) long holiday, and now, we are digging the bright shapes of their Alley-Oop II collection. As a continuation of their work with Los Angeles retailer Poketo, the designers filled the gallery with improbab...
Japanese culture has taken over the world in the last few decades. Whether it is architecture, design or simply art, it is everywhere for a simple reason: it has been able to evolve quickly with time, while preserving a strong link to tradition. Looking at Hayao Miyazaki‘s movies for instance, one quickly realizes that Japanese symbolism is still very present in modern c...
As you may have noticed, our latest e-magazine has hit the virtual stands. We’re talking interiors, hotels, Scandinavian design and fabulous prefabricated houses. From the recent Pop Up House to Jean Nouvel’s prefab precursor, we selected seven noble representations of the genre. But there were many to choose from, and we couldn’t include them all, so we have created a l...
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...
Your bookshelves are bursting at the seams. You frequently walk into traffic because you just can’t put down the latest bestseller. Good news, bookworms. You can now put your hobby (read: addiction) to use! Create a distinctive headboard out of old books! You probably don’t even have to stop reading while you do it. Not into DIY? Check out the headboards on ArchiExpo.
Blurring lines can be a messy business, but some do it well. Sebastian Errazuriz would be one of the skilled few. Born in Chile and based in New York, he dances between art and design like he dances between two continents. His exploratory and experimental work can be found in New York’s Museum of Art and Design, the Mint Museum, the National Museum of Fine Arts in Santia...
During our visit to the Paris Design Week in September, we attended the Drawing Glass exhibition at the plush St Sulpice Christian Lacroix boutique. The Italian design workshop Fabrica presented a limited edition collection of glass pieces. In the face of computer domination and the rise of 3D printing, the workshop’s purpose was to bring a group of designers back to ...
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 ...
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...
