There was much music, beer and good times to be had at our “Sweet Sixteenth” party during New York Design Week which was generously hosted by Phaidon at their amazing flagship store in Soho. They also provided us with space for a special Design Week edition of our Hand-Eye Supply store offering a small selection of goods for creatives including the instant “badass designer” safety glasses—also good for saving eyes!
We’ll admit—the first thing that caught our eye at Wanted Design NYC was the sight of a delicious-looking spread.
Wanted Design launched their first edition during this year’s NY Design Week, featuring an inspiring selection of designers and panel conversations. Offering an alternative to the frenetic crowds at the Javits Center, Wanted Design was held in the La.Venue warehouse in West Chelsea, with lower ceilings, nooks and crannies to explore, and overall a more tranquil, meandering experience.
Designers Christiane Büssgen of C4 and Jesús Alonso of 4lonso combined their passions for food and natural materials to create Project Avolution. Christiane, currently the creative director of WOKA, and Jesús, a furniture designer in Mexico, realized that their collaboration could bear fruit upon the dinner table. Jesús designed a set of tactile wooden bowls and a matching cutlery set, while Christiane re-envisioned her favorite fruit, the avocado, into a set of poetic porcelain pieces.
University of Oregon’s Brittney Rekate’s EcoChair
Brittney Rekate’s modern twist on Rococo was impossible to resist. A spunky, universally chic homage to Marie Antoinette, this chair masters what the Queen of France was never very good at—avoiding waste. This birch laminated plywood design packs flat—completely flat, and the packing peanuts left over in the shipping box can double as filler for the fabric seat cushion and back.
Part of the University of Oregon’s Flat [In]Pact, a show orchestrated by 12 Product Design students; the installation was designed to illustrated innovative design, sustainability and environmental impact via materials, production and choices.
Each of the 12 pieces are hand-finished and assembled using very little glue and no hardware. Light-weight and designed to ship flat to minimize carbon footprint, the designs push consumers to think full-circle—design, construction and travel are all carefully taken in to account, providing peace of mind for designers and buyers alike. If only Marie Antoinette had been so conscientious…France might have been more forgiving.
Flat [In]Pact’s Sustainably-Minded Designs at New York’s Design Week.
Brooklyn’s Uhuru presented War Craft the third “local materials” collection at Noho Design District this year, taking the decommissioned USS North Carolina as their point of departure. The team, led by founders Bill Hilgendorf and Jason Horvath, drew on the theme of maritime warfare for inspiration for the four pieces, going so far as to build the “War Craft Coffee Table Wearing Dazzle” out of planks salvaged from the USS North Carolina’s deck.
The “16/45” end tables allude to “the colossal diameter and caliber of the bullets that were onboard the USS North Carolina” and can be crafted from teak or cold-rolled steel.
When I saw the Wilsonart × RIT finalists in their booth at Javits over the past weekend, it didn’t even occur to me that our own Allan Chochinov had been one of the judges for the competition. The brief for the inaugural Metaproject was simple: “to create a seating prototype that celebrates the richness of Wilsonart International’s lamiate surfacing materials.” Over the course of the semester, the 20 senior ID students in Professor Josh Owen’s class selected a research topic that would ultimately be addressed with a “seating-object typology.”
The original post from three months ago featured the runners-up and second-place winner, though Dan Fritz’s winning design would not be unveiled until ICFF. Thus, the weekend saw the debut of “The Trance,” a piece of furniture that “encourages the act of sitting down and removing oneself from the distractions of daily living.”
Although they had set up shop at one end of the BKLYN Designs booth, RAAD studio is actually based in Lower Manhattan. Nevertheless, their piece had a distinctly Brooklyn-DIY quality to it: among the myriad chairs, desks, lamps and other (international) contemporary furniture at the ICFF this year, RAAD’s “Chicken Co-op” came completely out of left field.
It’s more or less what its pithy title suggests: a ritzy take on a chicken coop (and arguably the biggest leap forward in coop design and technology ever), which makes for “a perfect oddball modernist addition to a city terrace or roof garden.” (For the record, it is perfectly legal to raise chickens in New York City.)
Of course, the unconventional piece would scarcely merit a mention if it wasn’t well-executed…
Photography by Benjamin Lehn for Core77
The 23rd annual International Contemporary Furniture Fair was full of beauty and humor this year with a noticeable sense of excitement amongst exhibitors and buyers. We’re always impressed by the student presence at the Javits Centre and their group shows are getting increasingly sophisticated. Check out our selection of highlights in the gallery and stay tuned for more photo coverage coming shortly!
David Weeks for MatterMade, “Adna Chaise.” Josh Vogel, “Untitled Turning” various woods.
Rounding out our week of coverage we stopped by to see the new MATTERMADE collection at Matter HQ on Broome Street. The second in-house collection from the design retailer highlights the diversity of new American design with incredible new work by Paul Loebach, David Weeks, Christopher Specce, Moorhead & Moorhead, Harry Allen, Bec Brittain and Jonah Takagi.
Paul Loebach’s Glacier is a series of five CNC-milled solid poplar forms. They are substantial yet subtle—the black stain on the wood gives the pieces a more somber appearance although the actual forms are quite dramatic.
Bec Brittain’s copper “A-Shades” cast a warm glow exploring varying degrees of an angular shape.
Harry Allen’s playful reinterpretation of a familiar suburban outdoor sight, now brought indoors. The cedar “Shed” even has a special compartment under the sloped roof, perfect for storing those heavy winter blankets.
More snaps from the MatterMade collection and some independent design from this year’s NY Design Week exhibition.
While designer Rafael de Cárdenas started out in fashion, he’s spent the better part of the past decade making a name for himself as an architect and interior stylist. He’s executed mood-driven concepts for an impressive shortlist of celebrity and commercial clients including Jessica Stam, OHWOW gallery and Nike’s Bowery Stadium.
This year sees de Cárdenas’ first furniture collection, which he launched at Soho’s Johnson Trading Gallery in conjunction with NY Design Week. Core77 jumped at the opportunity to have a brief Q&A with the multitalented creative.
Core77: Furniture design is a natural extension of your work in interiors; is there any reason that 2011 marks your first official foray into that world? I know that you’ve designed at least a few bespoke pieces for clients: is the new collection intended to fill in gaps where you are unable to source vintage or otherwise original pieces, or is furniture design simply another mode of creative expression for you?
Rafael de Cárdenas: The furniture is a natural progression to what I already do—architectural interiors projects. I enjoy the change in scale and its unexpected difficulty. A change in scale is often great, such as with our current work on a ground up 6-story building project with an entirely different set of concerns.
Minneapolis-based art and design studio ROLU (aka rosenlof/lucas, aka ro/lu) focuses on “landscape-related work and furniture.” We got a glimpse of their work at Pin-Up’s Nightstands exhibition, but “Primarily Primary (After Carol Bove, Scott Burton and Sol LeWitt)“—pair of chairs and a side table—was one of my personal favorites from Noho Design District.
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