art and design – DesignApplause

philadelphia design district premiere exhibition.

Apr 11, 2018

the philadelphia design district will be celebrating its premiere launch event with a press preview and vip opening on friday, 13 april 2018. this showcase will feature designers, artists, and world-renowned brands, celebrating philadelphia as the newest urban design destination. curated by mona ross berman interiors, an acclaimed philadelphia-based interior design studio, the event invites those to challenge the trends of design.

the showcase at the bridge building, a new landmark in old city recently completed by architects gluck +, will be open to the public on select days between 14 > 28 april. the two-week pop-up showcase will be host to four public events, representing the elevated degree of design (products and services) available in old city and the philadelphia area.

exhibition events
nakashima: then and now
book signing & talk with mira nakashima
friday, april 20th 6-8pm

raw to refined: unconventional materials
artist dialogue between gregory nangle & mark khaisman
friday, april 27th 6:30-7:30pm

springtime in paris
floral classes with petit jardin en ville
sunday, april 15th 2-3:30pm

meet the designer
brunch with mona ross berman
saturday, april 28th 11-1pm

a chicago first: dutch designer piet boon at haute living.

Oct 4, 2017

please join us for an intimate, lively, and thought-provoking mixer with dutch design master, piet boon, whose creations range from furniture, lighting, and luxury interior projects, to collaborations with porsche and land rover. piet will be presenting design insights of his furniture collection, and sharing his thoughts on the balance between functionality, aesthetics, and individuality in design.

studio piet boon, founded in 1983, creates striking contemporary furniture, interiors, architecture, and product designs. the brand is world-renowned for its exceptional craftsmanship, quality and vision, with a portfolio of corporate, commercial, and private clients in over 46 countries. piet boon is best known for his clear, no-nonsense style, as well as his exceptional use of colors and materials, creating practical and unfettered simplicity in his designs.

haute living is proud to have been the first furniture retailer to introduce the piet boon furniture collection to the united states in 2008, and remains one of the few select showrooms to represent his work today. guests will have the opportunity to meet and talk with piet boon one-on-one, network with industry insiders over refreshments, and discover the true essence and meaning of the piet boon collection!

about haute living
the haute living showroom, located in chicago’s river north design district, has become an integral part of the chicago design community and a destination for architects, interior designers, and design enthusiasts from all over the world. known for consistently promoting emerging designers and progressive brands, our thoughtfully curated collection represents the very best in modern and contemporary design today.

mca hearts chicago.

Oct 2, 2017

this year marks the 50th anniversary of the museum of contemporary art chicago. to celebrate, the mca will be hosting a free, weekend-long event entitled mca hearts chicago consisting of programs, speakers, workshops, and interactive artist projects that highlight the history and future of the museum of contemporary art as well as chicago. an engaging discussion will be held by activist and singer jamila woods, and there will be a special guest performance by rapper, producer, and entrepreneur lupe fiasco. additional festivities will include the official launch of the museum’s community engagement space, the commons as well as the opening of the newest collection exhibition, we are here.

cooper hewitt high school student design challenge. #thinkoutside

Jan 17, 2016

cooper hewitt, smithsonian design museum announces the launch of student design challenge #thinkoutside, its first-ever nationwide competition for high school students, inviting them to submit ideas for an outdoor chair inspired by objects from the museum’s collection. organized by cooper hewitt in collaboration with target, the challenge’s winning chair design will be manufactured by the retailer for exclusive use in the museum’s recently redesigned arthur ross terrace and garden. the deadline for entries is feb. 21.

inspiration (above) purse – early 17th century | silk and metallic macramé | museum purchase from au panier fleuri, mcneil and general acquisitions endowment funds. (below) wrapping cloth (pojagi), sewn and pieced silk – ca. 1900 | museum purchase from roy and niuta titus foundation fund.

“as the nation’s design museum, we have the responsibility to encourage and celebrate our country’s aspiring young designers,” said caroline baumann, director of cooper hewitt. “our student design challenge is an amazing opportunity for students to express and share their design creativity with the world, and i am thrilled that cooper hewitt will give these talented young designers recognition for their vision and ingenuity.”

“design is an essential part of target’s dna—it’s infused into the best of everything we do,” said todd waterbury, chief creative officer, target. “working with cooper hewitt, an organization that’s at the epicenter of cultivating and celebrating great design, allows us to share target’s passion with a new audience and connect students to our own design team, helping young designers bring their ideas to life.”

inspiration (above) vase – ca. 1960 | made by salviati & company (murano, italy) | gift of michael lewis balamuth. (below) sugar bowl and creamer – ca. 1928 | designed by ilonka karasz | manufactured by paye & baker manufacturing company | gift of george r. kravis ii.

cooper hewitt will showcase, in a special online exhibition, the designs of five finalists and four honorable mentions, to be announced march 4. the winner will be announced on april 4, and the winning design will be manufactured into seven limited-edition chairs—five will be installed in cooper hewitt’s arthur ross terrace and garden and unveiled during national design week from oct. 15–23, and two will be awarded to the winning designer.

additionally, the finalists will work with members of target’s internal design team, via videoconference in early march, to help them refine their chair designs in advance of the presentation stage of the challenge. during the weekend of april 1, each finalist will visit new york city to attend a workshop with target designers at cooper hewitt, and to present his or her design to the student design challenge judges.

inspiration (above) man’s hat (ashetu) (cameroon), mid- to late 20th century | crocheted cotton, wood splints. museum purchase through gift of mrs. william goulding. (below) ph artichoke hanging lamp – 1958 | poul henningsen | manufactured by louis poulson & co

caroline baumann and todd waterbury will be joined by a world-class panel of creative experts to evaluate the finalists’ designs and select a winner in early april, including walter hood, principal and founder, hood design; steven keating, head of performance footwear design, puma; rachel shechtman, founder, story; tana smith, youtube star “tanamontana100” and author; and tony whitfield, associate professor of art and design, parsons school of design. susanna sirefman, president of dovetail design strategists, is the competition advisor overseeing the development and management of the competition.

in mid-may, the winning designer will travel to target’s headquarters in minneapolis, where target designers will give the winner a firsthand look at the prototyping and manufacturing process for his or her chair.

the student design challenge is an extension of cooper hewitt’s educational outreach initiatives: designprep offers free in-depth design education programs to more than 1,000 new york city high school students each year, introducing them to college and career opportunities in design, and design in the classroom, which introduces students in grades k–12 to design thinking and learning through interactive workshops, has reached 80,000 students in six pilot cities with plans underway to take the program nationwide.

for more information about the student design challenge #thinkoutside, including eligibility requirements, submission guidelines, rules and conditions, and resources for students and teachers, visit [ cooper hewitt | design challenge ] the website also features a comprehensive design lesson plan that teachers may use to encourage their students to participate in the challenge.

founded in 1897, [ cooper hewitt ] is the only museum in the united states devoted exclusively to historic and contemporary design. on dec. 12, 2014, cooper hewitt opened in the renovated and restored carnegie mansion, which offers 60 percent more exhibition space to showcase one of the most diverse and comprehensive collections of design works in existence. the renovation of the carnegie mansion and museum campus was recognized with leed silver certification. currently on view are 9 exhibitions and installations featuring hundreds of objects throughout four floors of the mansion, many of which draw from the museum’s permanent collection of more than 210,000 objects that span 30 centuries. the fifth installment of the museum’s popular contemporary design exhibition series, “beauty―cooper hewitt design triennial,” on view from feb. 12–aug. 21, will celebrate design as a creative endeavor that engages the mind, body and senses, and will feature more than 250 works by 63 international designers organized around seven themes: extravagant, intricate, ethereal, transgressive, emergent, elemental and transformative. visitors can experience a full range of new interactive capabilities, including the opportunity to explore the collection digitally on ultra-high-definition touch-screen tables, draw their own designs in the immersion room and address design problems in the process lab.

minneapolis-based [ target corporation ] serves guests at 1,805 stores since 1946, target has given five percent of its profit to communities, which today equals more than $4 million a week.

2015 chicago architecture biennial events 8>14 november.

Nov 7, 2015

[ 8 > 14 november calendar ] The Chicago Architecture Biennial is free and open to the general public at the Chicago Cultural Center and sites across the city. The event is supported by the City of Chicago and the Graham Foundation, with additional support from the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, and the Chicago Park District. All funding for the event is privately raised, with significant investments from BP and SC Johnson.

‘Sustainable Housing’ by Tatiana Bilbao SC was one of the few full scale houses reconstructed for the show. It is a prototype for affordable housing for the architect’s home country of Mexico. Photography: Tom Harris, copyright Hedrich Blessing. Courtesy Chicago Architecture Biennial

The Sculpture Objects Functional Art and Design Fair (SOFA) is the premier gallery-presented art fair dedicated to three-dimensional art and design.

Critically acclaimed and continuously running since 1994, what distinguishes SOFA from other top art events is its focus on three-dimensional artworks that cross the boundaries of fine art, decorative art and design. Presented by art galleries and dealers from around the world, SOFA CHICAGO is open to the public and all artwork is for sale.

The fair also includes an acclaimed lecture series and special exhibits exploring the artworks on view and surveying new trends in the art world. A VIP program includes exclusive events tailored to high-profile gallery clients and collector/museum groups.

For a complete list of exhibitions, public programs, supporters, media partners and program partners, visit [ Chicago Architecture Biennial ] which launched 3 October 2015, and will run through 3 January 3 2016. @chicagobiennial @GrahamFound @ChiCulturCenter

design miami 2014. preview.

Nov 17, 2014

above> peter marino: design miami/ 2014 design visionary award winner

above> zaha hadid’s site-specific installation at design.05 miami / recent photo of the moore building

ten years ago, a small fair for collectible design named design.05 miami launched concurrently with art basel miami beach. located in the moore building in the miami design district, it offered a selection of fifteen invited exhibitors, with the stated aim of bringing museum-quality galleries together with the best collectors, connoisseurs, and designers from around the world in one of the premier destinations for art and design.

fast forward 10 years. rodman primack, executive director of design miami/ stated, “the fair grew out of the need for a consolidated marketplace that would act as a platform to showcase the range and strength of what was then a fledgling market.” adding, “since then, the collectible design market has really changed in scale; it’s internationalized and diversified, and this is reflected very clearly in the fair. design miami/ has changed the way galleries engage with their audiences. i am excited to see this ecosystem bringing so many distinct viewpoints and aesthetics together.”

above> a rare photo (designapplause can never get him to pose) of muecke with a model of the pavilion concept

[ pavilion commission ]
minneapolis-based designer jonathan muecke has been commissioned to create the pavilion for the tenth anniversary of design miami/.

the design miami/ pavilion commission has become an important feature of the fair. an ephemeral extension of the fair space itself, the pavilion is at once an exhibit and a piece of functional temporary architecture. while the commission is traditionally given to an early career architect or studio, for its tenth anniversary design miami/ has selected a designer whose practice reflects the multifaceted nature of the fair itself.

alexandra cunningham cameron, creative director at design miami/ commented, “for our tenth anniversary, we wanted to pay homage to the type of young designer that design miami/ wishes to champion – one who experiments with materials, form and scale; who is as much a theorist as a maker; and who challenges us to consider how we relate to the world built around us.”

muecke studied architecture at iowa state, interning at the architectural office of herzog & de meuron in basel, switzerland before studying design at the cranbrook academy of art. muecke has evolved a design practice that resists standard divisions between design, art and architecture, instead focusing on refined forms that investigate notions of positive and negative space that relate to humanscale.

centered around a double-layered circular structure with apertures at both poles, muecke’s design miami pavilion (dmp) is designed on a human scale, rejecting monumentality in favor of lightness and variability.

above> in a not so rare photo of peter marino in leather on metal on leather. a leather vest pricked all over with metal studs, leather wrist guards with metal spikes, a leather hat with a metal skull, a strand of leather hanging from his neck which holds some metal knives, leather belt, metal belt buckle, metal knuckles with skulls, leather pants, leather boots. all the leather is always black.

[ new initiatives ]
design miami/ is launching two new forward-looking initiatives this year: the exhibition strand design curio, and the design visionary award.

conceived as contemporary ‘cabinets of curiosity’, the four independently curated design curio booths scattered throughout the fair will take the widest possible view of design practice. they will go beyond the scope of collectibledesign to embrace diverse fields from science and technology, to handcraft,and from unrealized prototypes to esoteric collections.

[ design visionary ]
the inaugural design visionary award recognizes peter marino. with this award, design miami/ recognizes marino for his achievements as an architect, for his knowledge and status as a collector of design, art and the decorative arts, and for the impact he has had as an advisor on contemporary and twentieth century design to his numerous clients.

commenting on the first edition of this award, primack stated, “this award is about recognizing the figures that have really propelled the world of design in the broader sense. peter is a great talent, and is also an amazing patron of others’ talents. his knowledge of furniture, his ability to create collections in design and his work with leading brands to help them understand the importance of bringing design voices into their world have substantially impacted the market and the language of design”.

marino founded his eponymous architecture, planning and design studio in new york in 1978 having trained with i. m. pei and george nelson. early clients included andy warhol, yves saint laurent and pierre bergé, and gianni and marella agnelli.

[ 2014 exhibitors ]
ammann gallery – cologne
antonella villanova – florence
caroline van hoek – brussels
carpenters workshop gallery – london & paris
carwan gallery – beirut
casati gallery -chicago
cristina grajales gallery – new york
demisch danant – new york
edward cella art + architecture – los angeles
erastudio & apartment-gallery – milan
galerie jacques lacoste – paris
galerie kreo – paris
galerie maria wettergren – paris
galerie pascal cuisinier – paris
galerie patrick seguin – paris
galerie vivid – rotterdam
galleria o. – rome
gallery diet – miami
gallery seomi – seoul & los angeles
hostler burrows – new york
jason jacques inc. – new york johnson trading gallery – new york
jousse entreprise – paris
laffanour – galerie downtown – paris
louisa guinness gallery – london
magen h gallery – new york
moderne gallery – philadelphia
nilufar gallery – milan
ornamentum – hudson
pierre marie giraud – brussels
priveekollektie contemporary art + design – heusden aan de maas
r & company – new york
southern guild – cape town
victor hunt design art dealer – brussels
volume gallery – chicago

[ special exhibitions ]
of the 35 galleries at design miami/ 2014 11 are among those that participated in the first year of the fair in 2005. several of these founding galleries present special exhibitions that celebrate the growth of the collectible design market over the past decade. these include a display dedicated to public commissions in france from the 1960s and 70s from demisch danant; an exhibition on the functional, durable furniture created for universities by charlotte perriand, jean prouvé and le corbusier from galerie patrick seguin; a monograph on rick kauffman’s new york art et industrie gallery and the creative crossover surrounding it from magen h gallery, and newly commissioned works debuting at the fair with cristina grajales gallery, galerie kreo, r & company and nilufar.

[ special commissions ]
design miami/ 2014 features a significant number of special commissions, including works in glass, stone and acrylic. ammann//gallery presents the sakala vase by satyendra pakhalé, his first work in blown murano glass; galerie vivid presents commissioned works by finnish-born designer janne kyttanen, which take the designer’s 3d printed aluminum sedona bench as their point of departure; max lamb creates a granite lamp for johnson trading gallery made over six days using stitch drilling, and jeweler ted noten unveils a table – his first foray into furniture – at ornamentum.

[ a bronze age ]
it may have associations with the earliest days of human craft, but bronze is very much the material of the moment at design miami/. from artist jewelry to monumental decorative works, via furniture and lighting, the cast metal is deployed across multiple formats at this year’s fair. casati gallery introduces the work of chicago-based designer steven haulenbeek with a collection of bronze mirrors, furniture, lights and objects all distinguished by the ‘chaotic texture’ produced by casting in ice. carwan gallery debuts furniture pieces combining bronze, onyx, mother of pearl, resins, fine inlaid wood and silver-plated brass by italian architect vincenzo de cotiis. carpenters workshop gallery shows a new collection of iconoclastic architectural-themed bronzes from studio job; and new furniture pieces and jewelry by claude lalanne are exhibited by louisa guinness gallery.

[ cabinets of curiosity ]
spanning the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, design curio/ presents four immersive environments of objects, textures, artifacts and ideas that truly challenge and contextualize familiar design narratives. this first edition, in celebration of the fair’s 10th anniversary, emphasizes surprising installations of scientific research alongside handcraft and creative production. these include oceanic art and design endeavor coral morphologic’s blue room, offering a coral-eye view of miami’s aquatic waterscapes; beijing’s gallery all presenting naihan li’s latest installation from her i am a monument series, recreating beijing’s cityscape to a scale of 1:100 with billowing smog rising amongst buildings reimagined as furniture pieces. koenig & clinton and joe sheftel gallery partner to present a collection of sottsass objects interacting with works by the memphis group in a jewel-box space; patrick parrish gallery invites visitors to experience the vertiginous grid-based exhibition: surfaces on which your setting and sitting will be uncertain, displaying a group of sculptural furniture objects by ro/lu with matching clothing designs by various projects.

event> design miami/ 2014 @designmiami #designmiami
dates> 3 – 7 december 2014
venue> meridian & 19th street miami beach, usa
december 3-4/ 10am-8pm
december 5/ 11am-8pm
december 6/ 12-8pm
december 7/ 12-6pm

LACMA teams up with three LA design stars for spring.

Apr 23, 2013

LACMA teams up with three LA design stars for spring. the project showcases limited-edition, shoppable pieces inspired by works in the museum’s permanent collection. the dress by gregory parkinson for the ‘wear lacma‘ project in 2012