Brazilian design duo Fernando and Humberto Campana—famous (or notorious) for making chairs and other household objects out of odd materials—are collaborating with Lacoste on a limited line of alligators-gone-wild polos for the company's fourth-annual Holiday Collector's Series. How'd they get picked? Call it typecasting.
[via Dezeen]
I.D. Magazine's Annual Design Review issue hits newsstands tomorrow. For the uninitiated, this is the design snob's Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. If you'd like to take the obsession one step further and actually ogle the winning products (and the runners-up) instead of just gaze at them on the page—that's Best Concept winner R/GA's Flyover Channel, above, and Best Furniture winner Shelly Shelly's Loft Chair for Bernhardt Design, below—Material ConneXion, an international materials consultancy firm, is hosting a summerlong exhibit at its Manhattan showroom. (And don't worry: When Bar Refaeli goes on display in vivo, we'll be sure to let you know.)
Through August 21 at Material ConneXion, 60 Madison Ave., 2nd floor,NYC, (212)
842-2050, materialconnexion.com
[via The Moment]
We usually take our auto porn—like, ahem, the other kinds—in the flesh-and-blood (er, metal-and-oil) variety. But illustrator Seymour Chwast's monograph/sketchbook Seymour, which recently arrived at our offices, makes a case for the merits of the illustrated kind. Chwast—who founded the graphics firm Push Pin Studios in 1954 with fellow Cooper Union alumni Milton Glaser (who designed the "I Love NY" logo) and Edward Sorel (who counts Graydon Carter's Waverly Inn and Monkey Bar restaurant murals among his works)—had a particular yen for cars, returning to them again and again over years of doodling and crafting. The renderings are imaginative rather than literal, paying homage to designers and artists (Chwast's collage Kurt Schwitters's Car is pictured above), but rarely less than compelling. Turns out cars were only one of the guy's many interests; other repeat motifs in the book include hands, monkeys, and shoes. For those, you'll have to buy the thing itself; but for the cars, you can visit Design Observer's slideshow.
Seymour: The Obsessive Images of Seymour Chwast, $26.40, available at amazon.com
The Minnesotan design guys at Blu Dot have been steadily raising their profile for years, a rise that culminated in the opening of their first Manhattan store last November. And though their relative affordability has much to do with that rise, yesterday's "affordable" is looking a lot more like today's "aspirational." Until you're up to (or back to) the marquee price oint, relief arrives by way of an Urban Outfitters-sponsored capsule line, +OO, in stores now. The seven-piece collection picks up the styles of the collective's work, like their celebrated modular storage units, at a fraction of the price. (No piece is over $700, and most are under $300.) There's nothing just like the real thing, but most of the goods here will make fine placeholders.
Lily Pad coffee table, left, $248; Tripod side table, below left, $98; and Slider console, below right, $548; available at urbanoutfitters.com
Atelier van Lieshout's Liquor Master bar cabinet. Finally, someone thought to repurpose a Yeti.
[via Core77]
Looks like Scott Sternberg is not the only style-minded guy with an eye for Legos. The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation announced that the architect's Guggenheim Museum building will be licensed for the Lego Architecture series, released in conjunction with the museum's FLW exhibit, on view now. Though likely more fun for parents than for kids, we're betting this is what Gifted Youngster Christmas is going to look like come December.
$40, available next week at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Store, 1071 Fifth Ave., NYC, (212) 423-3500, guggenheim.org
[via Designboom]
At last night's jam-packed launch party for the Future Perfect's first limited-edition line of furniture, we stopped for a second to wonder: Is this really the time to empty out the lion's share of your successful design store to make way for a gallery of artsy one-offs?
As it turns out, yes. Sipping PBR among the RISD grads milling around the store's backyard, it dawned on us: Now that the city has suddenly become a new Bohemia, pulsing with out-of-work creatives, it's the perfect time to give designers free reign to get weird. All of the designers in the collection are American, from Brooklyn-design stalwart Jason Miller, who contributed the Woolly Chair, to Lindsay Adelman, who crafted an industrial-cool chandelier—even, technically speaking, El Salvadoran newcomers Claudia and Harry Washington, whose caramel leather lounge chair is girded with belt straps down the back (pictured below). As an added bonus, prices aren't as high as you might expect: Compared with its iconic inspiration, Tejo Remy's Chest of Drawers ($65,000), Joel Voisard's new one-of-a-kind Box Cart (above) looks positively thrifty at $6,500. Le prix de Bohème—relatively.
The Future Perfect, 115 N. 6th St., Brooklyn, (718) 599-6278, thefutureperfect.com
Seen here: World Ware II-era Grumman Bearcats, coming to L.A. this weekend for the Planes of Fame show. (A strange choice for International Conscientious Objectors' Day? Yeah, maybe, but history is history—and besides, these things are awesome.)
[via ASB.TV]
Renzo Rosso's quest for Diesel diversification continues: Not long after debuting the line's first furniture collection, he's opened its first restaurant, Circle, in Milan. The decor is Diesel (the custom-designed chandelier boasts a maximalist 8,300 bulbs of different shapes), the wine is Diesel (Diesel Farm's Rosso di Rosso and Bianco di Rosso), and the preferred dress code? One guess.
Via Stendhal 36, Milan, +39-02-42-293-745
