NYCxDesign, the citywide celebration of design that sweeps through New York every May, has come to a close. After scoping out many a showroom, design fair, and everything in between, Curbed editors have reconvened to reflect on almost three weeks of enticing furniture, home goods, and objets of all sorts. Here's what made a stellar and lasting impression.
Best Use of an Old School Design Technique: Carl Hansen & Son and Hans J. Wegner's reissued CH22 and CH26 chairs
It's no secret that we swoon over Scandinavian design with some frequency. And during Design Week, we were especially besotted with the newly reissued CH22 and CH26 chairs, masterminded by trailblazing Danish furniture maker Hans J. Wegner. The chairs' sleek, sturdy wood frames are complemented by seats of handwoven, hardwearing paper cord that is quite nice to look at it and has a seductive tactile quality. —Asad Syrkett
Furniture Most Due for a Revival: the armoire
Much more heirloom-worthy than its cousin the garment rack, the armoire is both show pony and workhorse. It anchors a room with its big old dimensions, and it stores all your precious crap you can't bear to throw away. (In my case, enough blankets and linens to supply a barracks.) I, and the ICFF jury, especially liked the Crain Cabinet by Egg Collective, for its minimalist lines and subtle detailing. And while cladding an entire room in stone might cost less than Fort Standard's divine new Relief Stone Cabinet, introduced at the Collective fair, I can't resist coveting its three stackable units of soapstone on a maple base. —Kelsey Keith
Useful Tools for Our Dystopian Future: the "Parallel Times" collection created by 20 second year students in the School of Visual Arts’s Products of Design, on display at Wanted Design Brooklyn
Students created products for the future, along with artifacts connected to the designs, and be warned: the future is kind of bleak, but the products are clever. A knife disguised in a Louis Vuitton logo shows Eden Lew’s exploration of design and crime; a secret map woven into a golden necklace connects to Leila Santiago’s app-enabled radio that can print photos from the user’s previous travels; and orb-like portable urns are remnants of Panisa Khunprasert’s wall-mounted altar design to help families cope with death and grief. —Jessica Dailey
New Favorite Intersection: Mercer and Canal
Chelsea-based women's fashion boutique Anthom opened a monthlong pop-up designed by Ladies & Gentlemen Studio, a nice counterpart to L&G's iridescent lighting on display next door at Roll & Hill. The manufacturer—which produces its luxe pendants, chandeliers, and lamps in its headquarters in Industry City, Brooklyn—picked up the studio's Shape-Up lighting in 2015 and Kazimir pendant and sconce this year. You can see even more up-and-coming contemporary designers repped by the furniture gallery Colony, just down Mercer across a gritty stretch of Canal. —Kelsey Keith
3D-Printed Wares That Don't Look 3D-Printed: OTHR
Design Week saw the launch of an intriguing new venture from NYC-based designers Joe Doucet, Dean DiSimone, and Evan Clabots. OTHR's inaugural 12-piece collection elevates common household objects into unexpected design objets, created by a roster of veteran and emerging designers. For folks who've been waiting on the "3D printing revolution" for some time, this is an exciting look at how functional and elegant 3D printed products can be. That's because the designs, ranging from a rounded birdhouse to a geometric bottle opener to a pill-shaped catchall, are made of materials like porcelain, steel, and precious metals, instead of the cheap plastics used in many early 3D printed goods. Stay tuned for new releases to be added every two weeks. —Jenny Xie
The "Wait, Are We in Milan?" Award: the freshly opened Apparatus showroom on West 30th Street
Studio co-founders Gabriel Hendifar and Jeremy Anderson have a complete vision that mixes super luxe materials, massively-scaled lighting, dark walls, rich materials, opulent floral centerpieces, and contemporary California art—all in a converted school gymnasium on the fourth floor of a mid-block building on a nondescript Garment District street. What sounds like A Lot Going On is, in reality, an immersive bit of playacting around what it's like to live with really beautiful things. Don't miss Gabriel's office, which I'm pretty sure would make Anna Wintour swoon with envy. —Kelsey Keith
Children's Furniture You Can Really Live With: Nursery Works and Kinder Modern
For the design-savvy, children's furniture can be a real thorn on the rose of parenthood. Though pastels, primary colors, and more can be deployed well, they aren't often. So, the work of Los Angeles's Nursery Works and New York's Kinder Modern is a refreshing departure, offering clean-lined industrial design you'll want to keep around long after your kid has outgrown a changing table.
At Sight Unseen OFFSITE, Kinder Modern arranged new whimsical, chess-inspired seating produced in collaboration with international designers, while at Wanted Design Manhattan, Nursery Works showcased (alongside items from recently launched sister brand Capsule), a mod, pale blue-gray dresser and other furniture. —Asad Syrkett
Best Joe Colombo Homage: Ana Arana's storage-packed kitchen unit, which debuted in the ICFF Studio supported by Bernhardt Design
The Madrid-based designer created Gali as a individualized response to the daily ritual of food consumption. I think tiny house dwellers would approve, as would Colombo, whose 1963 Minikitchen for Boffi is an obvious precursor. —Kelsey Keith
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