The Latest Design Trend Is Chairs That Don't Look Like Chairs.
Sometimes, sitting is beside the point.
By Monica Khemsurov
Ultimate Flex
These thoughtfully bizarre concepts and off-kilter forms subvert traditional expectations.
By Eric Mutrie
For "Anti Chairs," Emma Scully Gallery invited six designers to challenge old ways of sitting. New Orleans-based Bradley L. Bowers unveiled Frank, an invitingly cushy upholstered chair modelled after taut muscles.
Touqous Incense Burner by Faissal El-Malak
Designer Faissal El-Malak's ritualistic piece pays homage to the soap towers of Nablus, Palestine. 11" dia x 9" H.
The RCP2 chair, designed by Jane Atfield 30 years ago, became a symbol of the eco-design movement. This chair, made entirely from recycled plastic bottles, sheds light on consumer culture and the environmental crisis, becoming a design example for resource regeneration.
Emma Scully’s “Anti Chairs” show brings together a few of the most experimental designers working today to consider furniture primarily as a conceptual rather than a functional object: Bradley L. Bowers, who made a puffy, iridescent armchair; Jumbo (the studio run by Justin Donnelly and Monling Lee), which contorted a metal barricade to make a bench; and Chris Wolston, who contributed an abstract carpet — his first-ever rug design. Ilana Harris-Babou, an artist who interrogates design culture, presents collages inspired by sitting down on a subway seat still warm from the previous occupant; the unsettling sensation sparked a hunt for images that show the butt imprints left on a chair and took her on a fascinating journey through, among other spaces, online fetish communities and furniture-repair blogs.
The glue holding it all together is the buoyant furniture and sculpture of Emma Scully Gallery, including a delightful, six-foot-tall ceramic fruit bowl by Sean Gerstley and a cast-iron table resembling a giant gray mushroom by Charlotte Kingsnorth.
Designer Jane Atfield brought recycled plastic into furniture design in the ‘90s. She’s ready for the industry to finally catch up.
Curator and scholar Anna Kats takes us to the Caucasus for a tour of five of Tbilisi’s best architecture and design practices: Gypsandconcrete, Material Editors, Rooms, Wunderwerk, and Multiverse. It’s time to learn about the new Georgian architecture.
A chronic experimenter, Bradley L. Bowers moves among the worlds of furniture, lighting and jewelry, challenging assumptions every step of the way.
Discover These Emerging Stars Taking the Design World by Storm
Coast to coast, a fresh crop of creative talents is writing the next chapter in great interior design
Produced by Alison Levasseur
September 8, 2021
International designers, local production: cast iron on display
Eight international designers sent their ideas digitally to gallery owner Emma Scully, who had them made in a foundry in Virginia and exhibited in her new space in New York.
Emma Scully Curates Cast Iron Exhibition Minimizing Environmental Impact On The Planet
written by Sheyda Khalilova - Isola Editorial Team
The creative duo Tiphaine de Lussy and Carolyn Clewer have been collaborating on fashion and art projects for decades. With their latest knit and crochet creations, eyes and mouths are everything.
by Elizabeth Fullerton August 16, 2020
