Dashilar is is one of the oldest and most famous “hutongs”, or alleyways, of Beijing, and probably one of the closest to pictures in our imagination of the old city—narrow streets, red lanterns, rickshaws and all kinds of Chinese paraphernalia. Located outside Qianmen Gate, South of Tian’anmen Square, the…
Continue Reading…
Nice finds from an array of stores cropping up during ICFF
Design fans in town for ICFF can take a slice of the festivities home with them this year, thanks to an exciting array of shops popping up around NYC this weekend in conjunction with the main furniture fair. Whether you’re into the custom-crafted, meat-inspired balloons at Japan Premium Beef or want the latest from your favorite designer at The Future Perfect, there will be no shortage of intriguing goods to choose from.
Montreal-based member’s only design site iGet.it will make their US debut with a brick-and-mortar shop at Wanted Design. The store will sell a variety of items culled from their online offerings, as well as exclusive products commissioned specially for the iGet.it at Wanted Design pop-up like the Sleepy Lamp by Busso and Shonquis Moreno’s Fabrik Silk Scarf.
Located at 269 11th Avenue.
Rising experimental design duo Chen Chen and Kai Williams return home from their “Factory” installation in Brazil with a brilliant take on the classic dollar shop. The $99 Store will stock an assortment of their signature resin works in addition to their new plastic block necklaces.
Located at 22 Bond Street.
NYC’s revered design shop The Future Perfect has so much up their sleeve they’ve created a second Manhattan location during Design Week. The temporary location will house a nationally exclusive range of furniture from Piet Hein Eek, a host of affordable items selected by The Art Institute of Chicago and new works from Matthew Hilton, Lindsay Adelman and Donna Wilson for SCP.
Located at 2 Cooper Square.
Members only design site Fab tapped Belgian designers Quinze & Milan to fill FLOR with a colorful burst of over items for its first physical shop. Expect to see everything from bright red piggybanks from Ladies & Gentlemen Studio to shiny orange Hideo Wakamatsu suitcases in this vast array of covetable goods.
Located at 142 Wooster Street.
Online design magazine Core77 has created an ode to NYC with All City All Stars, a pop up offering creative wares from 35 designers across the city’s five boroughs. The enticing lineup includes Rich Brilliant Willing, Uhuru Design, Kiel Mead, Talitha James, Harry Allen and more.
350 Bowery at Great Jones Street
Popping up at Great Jones butcher shop Japan Premium Beef is Chicago-based Balloon Factory, who will be handmaking beef-inspired latex balloons in shapes like various cuts of meat. Pick up a porterhouse, flank, filet mignon, t-bone or variously sized sausages and see how the crafty team constructs such an intriguing take on the ubiquitous balloon.
Located at 57 Great Jones Street.
We asked Lindsey Adelman to create a custom speaker for a unique audio experience during NYC Design Week
Advertorial content:
Best known for her hand-blown glass and sculptural brass lighting fixtures, Lindsey Adelman is no stranger to exploring the limits of industrial design. Driven by this pionering spirit, Adelman’s studio, in collaboration with Kiel Mead of the AmDC, teamed up with Sonos to create the “Soundalier”, a centerpiece for the Sonos Listening Library being held at The Standard East Village at Noho Design District during NYC Design Week 2012. This gorgeously inventive speaker fixture embodies Adelman’s bold design while showcasing the supreme quality and adaptability of the wireless Play: 3 speaker from Sonos.
Inspired by Mead’s initial idea and starting from a photoshopped collage, Adelman repurposed an existing BB.05.01 lighting fixture by replacing the globes with speakers, customizing it to create a piece that demands attention. “It’s new. I love that the form has integrity but is also quirky. The way the speakers are so massive next to the skinny brass arms, you wouldn’t think the frame couldn’t hold their weight. It’s really unexpected and fun,” says Adelman.
The raw brass frame has been given a dark bronze patina to play off the clean aesthetic of the Sonos Play: 3 speakers, making for a beautiful juxtaposition that nicely compliments the other designers showcased in the Listening Library. The Soundalier will be suspended above the custom-designed room holding a collection of design pieces by the likes of Pete Oyler, Evan Dublin and The Future Perfect to create a truly unique listening experience.
The exclusively designed Soundalier and its accompanying collection of designs curated by Kiel Mead will be shown in the Sonos Listening Library at The Standard East Village as part of the Noho Design District. Exhibit hours are Friday 18 – Monday 21 May 2012 from 12 Noon to 7:00 p.m.
The legendary designer on art and design, working with a rock star and staying fresh after 20 years with Kartell
Known nearly as much for his confident and quirky personality as for his innovative use of single mould injected polycarbonate, Philippe Starck has spent the last few decades changing the norm in product design. From an alien-like lemon juicer for Alessi to organically-inspired sofas for Cassina, Starck has expanded minds with innovative—and sometimes questionable—designs as one of the most prolific designers in contemporary culture.
While in Milan for Design Week we had the rare chance to catch up with the “über designer” himself during the debut of his latest collection for Italian furniture brand Kartell. Standing among a sea of cameras and curious fans, Starck reflected on his history with the iconic brand, working with a rock star-turned-furniture designer and the relationship between art and design.
Kartell is not a company, it is a philosophy. Thirty years ago I had this intuition that the future must be democratic, and I invented the idea of democratic design. Which is rising the quality, cutting the price and trying to give it to everybody. The only weapon, the only tool I found to do it was monolithic injected plastic. Twenty years ago it was not easy and the only company that had this philosophy was Kartell.
That’s why today everybody says that this booth is the center of the fair. Yes, it is because we deserve it. Because 30 years ago, even before the family of Claudio Lutti, Kartell had this vision. And I can tell you at this time it wasn’t very fashionable to speak about injected plastic this way—it meant cheap, bad things for low people and things like that. We had the courage to built a real proposal, a philosophical proposal, a political proposal. And finally we won. Because we are now at the beginning of the decline of Western Occidental civilization. People have less money but still want quality because we know what is quality, it’s difficult to change. And we must reinvent ourselves and reinvent our new economy of poverty. And Kartell is in the right place to do it.
Lenny is a friend of my daughter’s and finally after years she introduced me and we became friends. One day Lenny told me ‘I want to become an architect, a designer’. I said Lenny you are smart, very smart. When I see your different houses I am very impressed. Perhaps you can become a designer, become an architect. That’s why I brought him into the new SLS Miami Hotel and I brought him to Kartell. And you know where the design is boring him. You have thousands of models here and it’s always the same proposal—the same angle of view. Lenny can bring the fresh air of the night. Designers, we are from the day. He is from the night. We wake up at seven, he goes to sleep at seven. That changes the angle of view. We shall see. He is a young designer, he starts today. He has to work, so we shall see. But he is in a good position, he is very very smart.
It’s him. You know I don’t want anybody to tell me what I have to do. I don’t want to tell Lenny what he has to do. We gave him a chair. We gave him a nice opportunity to play with it and make what he wants. It’s life, we have to keep his freshness in mind.
Not the design. The life. Myself. I don’t try to be young, I try to be timeless. And to work with young people, to be married with a young beautiful wife, to have a young baby of 10 months—that makes me timeless, because I’m old now. That makes a difference. For example Friday morning we leave and Friday at noon I will be at my table working like a devil.
I’ve never just been about strict geometric, I’ve been known even more for organic lines. I have enough imagination to make both, or more. But this candle piece I made with Maggiar is about the magic of love. Because if you see the two pieces alone they cannot stand up, but together they make an art piece. This is about love. That’s why we decide to do it and I thank Maggiar for bringing this very nice idea, this very iconic and simple idea.
Clearly, it’s not the same word. It is not an art object, just a symbol of love. I am not an artist. I am just trying to be a designer, but it is not enough. And I’m not sure that the confusion now between art and design is very good for design. It is very good for art, because they have nothing more to say. But in design, finally we are more rich than in art.
Malleable OLED technology in a lighting exhibition
Blackbody is an OLED home lighting brand launched in 2010 by the Italian-French company Astron Fiamm. Located in Toulon, France, the company develops and produces OLED-based lighting solutions with the help of established and emerging designers, and for Milan Design Week is presenting a selection of new products as part of the “Wonderoled” exhibition at La Triennale, conceived by Aldo Cibic and Tommaso Corà.
We were struck by the flexibility and incredible range of possibilities that OLED can open to the future of design: the technology lasts 20,000 hours, is 100% recyclable, doesn’t contain any polluting components, is heat-free, glare-free, 2 mm thick and can produce any color of the visible light spectrum. In a way, OLED is both concrete and malleable light, to be shaped and used as a real material that can lead to totally new innovation.
Wonderoled by Blackbody starts with “I.Rain” by Thierry Gaugain, a long-time collaborator of Philippe Stark, who opened his studio in 2011. I.Rain is a modular lighting system wherein each component hangs from the wall shaping clouds from which light falls down like rain.
“Teka” by Aldo Cibic reinterprets the classic cabinet, turning the piece of furniture into a lamp thanks to the addition of a series of light circles. The traditional look of the container is in gentle contrast with its content, creating an object that looks like a new classic.
Nature serves as the inspiration for other two projects by Cibic, “The Wish Tree” and “Blossoms”. “The Wish Tree”, designed in collaboration with Tommaso Corà, is a hanging chandelier, but at the same time a sculptural and minimalistic object. The Cibic design is “Blossoms”, a metallic tree whose branches terminate in imaginary OLED buds.
Wonderoled
17-22 April 2012
Triennale di Milano
Viale Emilio Alemagna 6
20121 Milano, Italy
The satellite fair returns for its second iteration
When we attended Wanted Design‘s inaugural debut during NYC Design Week 2011, we knew that the fledgling venture was a force to be reckoned with. While ICFF remains the main attraction, Wanted Design drew our attention for bringing American and New York-centered design into conversation with the dominance of the Milan and Stockholm Design Week crowd. Spearheaded by French founders Claire Pijoulat and Odile Hainaut, the satellite fair has grown from meager origins to include 50 exhibitors alongside a multitude of talks, workshops, presentations and social spaces.
This year’s Wanted Design will be returning to take over 22,000 square feet of the Terminal Warehouse (former home of the historic nightclub “Tunnel“) as designers both domestic and foreign gather to show their wares and spread ideas. Focused on the city’s creative community, the response from last year’s event bodes well for the four days of design celebration to come this May.
Pijoulat and Hainaut created Wanted Design in part to combat the major shortcomings of design fairs—namely, the lack of interaction between creatives. With this in mind, the 2012 event will feature a conversation series as well as a stream of workshops with eminent designers and craftsmen. Manhattan Neon—a decades-old vendor of neon works—will be hosting a neon-centric workshop. An exhibition entitled “New Finnish Design” celebrates Helsinki as the 2012 World Design Capital, and 3M Architectural Markets will be presenting an experimental installation called “Lighfalls” in partnership with Todd Bracher.
Also on tap is the “Design Students Challenge“, which calls on students from six design schools in the U.S. and France to build a lighting prototype in the span of three days. Using one material, one concept tool and one fabrication tool, the students’ creations will then be judged by the public and a panel of design professionals. Focusing on the Americas, highlights from the fair include a group exhibition of Brazilian design curated by Objeto Brasil as well “America Made Me”, an exhibition that bridges fashion, art and design curated by Bernhardt Design.
As with last year, the 2012 exhibition will feature a pop-up shop curated by iGet.it with domestic furniture, accessories and objects for sale in-store and online. Cafe Intramuros, sponsored by Intramuros Magazine, will be serving La Colombe Coffee and is one of a few spaces offering creatives a chance to sit, meet and discuss ideas.
There will of course be some stellar design objects premiering and showing at the fair. While many of the specifics remain to be seen, major events include a book launch from Rizzoli, a showcase of next-generation designers hosted by Dwell and DWR as well as numerous new products and prototypes.
Wanted Design
18-21 May 2012
Terminal Warehouse
11 Avenue between 27th and 28th
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
