View From the Front Row will be highlighting the people, places and things that mattered in 2010 in food, fashion and design picked by our editors and contributors. Weigh in in the comments section, what made your 2010 list?
Does a retrospective mean it is the end? Certainly not for Konstantin Grcic. To finish 2010 he was named Designer of the Year at Design Miami–with an impressive retrospective and also a site specific installation of swing seats.
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Lucas Maassen thinks about his designs. Sometimes in pursuit of the concept the object may loose its traditional functionality, but thats besides the point. His current show “Conceivably, the object is what it seems” at the CITE showroom is full of chairs, but not all of them are for sitting on.
Perhaps the most literal expression of how Maassen designs what he thinks is the Brainwave Sofa. The shape of the chair is based on a readout of alpha activity in his brain the moment he closes his eyes. The 3D graph is reproduced on an enormous scale to create the sofa. It is suggested that this may be the way of design in the future–designers will only have to close their eyes while a computer “prints” the object.
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Partners & Spade is not your typical shop. It is open only on Saturdays and Sundays, and the items for sale include, for example, a drawer full of tiny toy telephones. Further investigation reveals that the store is only one half of the equation–Partners & Spade is also a studio which produces films, books, apparel and conceptual products as well as marketing and branding for corporate clients.
There are so many quirky touches to the space it is hard to convey in words.
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The Design Brief is always thrilled when art and design combine–it makes us very, very happy. Roberto Giulio Rida is therefore the perfect treat, an art designer. Rida makes unique and limited edition pieces of furniture with no concern for trends or mass production. His lamps and furniture are bold and modern, and usually covered with glass and crystal. As quite the collector (Rida is known as an important dealer in 20th century Italian decorative arts), he also incorporates vintage glass and objects d’art into his own creations. He describes it as a collision of science-fiction, the Italian Renaissance and the intensity of mineral light. His work can veer from the sublime to the fantastic to, frankly, wackiness. His work, however, always maintains a very strong point of view, and the Design Brief respects that.
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The Art of Craftsmanship Revisited: New York exhibition is based on a beautiful concept. Groups of students from Parsons, the New School for Design have been teamed with New York artisans sponsored by the luxury brand LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton. The resulting collaborations are intended to celebrate the work of these skilled craftspeople, and to ensure that their unique knowledge is understood and carried forth by the next generation. Enhancing this gorgeous premise, the exhibition is being shown in the idyllic historic houses of Nolan Park on Governor’s Island.
This show is a wonderful forum to explore bite size samples of really fine craftsmanship–here are some highlights:
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The International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF) swept through the Javits Convention Centre recently and it was design overload per usual. It can be exhausting traversing all those booths so here are the Design Brief’s top five picks from the show.
Roll & Hill
Launching at ICFF, Roll & Hill is the brainchild of Jason Miller, who is already famous for his antler chandeliers. Focused just on lighting, Roll & Hill will produce fixtures from some of the who’s who of American contemporary design talent. Standout pieces include the Excel floor lamp by Rich, Brilliant, Willing with adorable matching sconces. The lights use compact fluorescent bulbs with a gold diffuser to banish that pasty fluorescent glow. Ingenious.
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