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The Top Stitch #11

June 23, 2020 by Lee Ness Leave a Comment

The Top Stitch

Your weekly digest of news in the world of Design, Upholstery, Furniture and Interior Design, brought to you by Global Upholstery Solutions.

15 brands create special products for Pride Month 2020 – Architectural Digest

2020 has been a difficult year for the world, with the pandemic taking over. With several gatherings and events being cancelled all around, Pride Month is seeing parades moving to a virtual setting than on the streets. Standing in solidarity with the LGBTQIA+ community, some of the top international brands have launched special collections depicting Pride colours. Not just that, through this, they are also raising money and making donations to organisations that work towards bettering the life of people from this community. If you are looking for some vibrant, fun and colourful picks, check out these brand offerings.

Read more….

Life at SparkPost: Designing for Pride 2020 – SparkPost

On my first day at SparkPost just over a year ago, my boss told me the team wanted to print a Pride t-shirt for employees and asked if I could design something. To be honest, I didn’t really expect to do any work on my first day, but I jumped at the opportunity.

It was the eve of the most colorful month of the year and corporations were already washing their logos with a rainbow mask in support of LGBTQ+ rights. Erica, the Social Media Queen, was planning a well-rounded internal celebration and I wanted to ensure the design was more than simply a rainbow behind our logo.

Read more….

June Design Challenge: Pride – Creative Action Network

June is Pride month and we’re seeking designs celebrating LGBTQ rights all month long! Proceeds will support Courage Campaign. Submit your design during the month of June to be featured!

Creative Brief

June is LGBT Pride Month and events will be held across the country to celebrate hard-won victories, shine a light on current fights, and to commemorate the Stonewall riots. With marriage equality now the law of the land there is a lot to celebrate, but there are also attacks on the LGBT community everyday that require persistent vigilance.

For this month’s challenge we’re seeking Pride posters & t-shirts that celebrate LGBT rights and victories. Proceeds will support Courage Campaign, an online community powered by more than one million members, instrumental in the fight for marriage equality.

Read more….

Over the Rainbow: Colourful Decor to Celebrate Pride Month – the Rug Seller

Celebrate LGBT Pride Month by incorporating rainbow accents with a universal appeal. If you’re looking for pieces to perk up a dull room, then rainbow is the way to go. Whether your aesthetic is whimsical or slightly more sophisticated, we have just the thing!

A home full of colour seems to have a stronger heartbeat, inspiring creativity and conversation. Colourfulness is perhaps symbolic of embracing uniqueness, allowing for differences to speak, making room for personality.

For those of you that are neutral lovers, you surely need a little colour. Here are some simple ways to incorporate more colour into your homes.

Read more….

Eight products by African designers selected by Africa by Design – dezeen

Africa by Design is a platform that promotes designers from sub-Saharan Africa. Founder Chrissa Amuah spoke to Dezeen about the programme in a live interview earlier this month and here presents a selection of products from the stable.

Amuah, who also runs London-based studio AMWA Designs, established Africa by Design to give the design talent in the region “the respect that it is due”.

“What leads me naturally to the design of my heritage is that there’s soul in it, there’s life and it goes beyond surface level,” she said. “I was doing research that I was coming across so many other incredible African designers that just didn’t have the platform to showcase their work in a way that I’ve benefited from.”

“That’s where the idea of Africa by design was born: this idea of creating a platform that celebrates the best of African design talent and showcases it to the world in a way that hasn’t been given the respect that it’s due.”

Read more….

Does design hold the answer to later-life loneliness? – Icon

It may not be an infectious disease, but loneliness is an epidemic that has significant consequences for health and disproportionately affects older people. Eugene Marchese, founder and CEO of Guild Living, believes that residential designs appropriate for later life could be the remedy.

In her timely book A Biography of Loneliness, published last year, the cultural historian Fay Bound Alberti traced the origins of a condition which for many is now an unavoidable part of daily life.

Loneliness, Alberti believes, is now woven into the fabric of our society. Such is its ubiquity that prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, some commentators were describing loneliness as a national, or indeed global, epidemic.

Just a few months into a new year, a new decade, and a different kind of epidemic arrived. Now, almost all of us have recent experience of what it is like to feel shut off from society.

Read more….

Eames, Cobonpue, Starck, And More: 15 Of The Most Iconic Chairs You Should Know – Tatler

The seat of power beckons with these popular pieces from designers around the globe
In the old days, chairs were often associated with royalty and nobility. During the Renaissance, it eventually became more common, with designs that reflect the vibrant costumes and furnishings of the period. Today, chairs are considered one of the “essentials” in the living space, with material options and forms going beyond the box. Check out these iconic chairs that had withstood the test of time and are still as covetable as when they were first released.

Read more….

Knowing Your Design History is Crucial to Aesthetic Innovation – Eye on Design

In the most iconic scene of The Devil Wears Prada, Andy (Anne Hathaway) nonchalantly dismisses two nearly identical blue belts in a room full of fashion forward elites. Andy’s icy, terrifying boss Miranda (Meryl Streep) retorts with a diatribe so full of vitriol that it effectively knocks Andy down a peg. It also illuminates Andy’s own naive contributions to the very stylistic machinery she so blithely critiques: Miranda traces the origins of Andy’s “lumpy blue sweater” all the way back to the explosion of the color cerulean in Oscar de la Renta and Yves Saint Laurent’s early 2000s runway shows, before filtering down to department stores and eventually discount retailers where Andy “no doubt, fished it out of some clearance bin.”

Read more….

Patricia Urquiola’s RUFF Chair Is Like a Seated Hug – design milk

Moroso’s RUFF lounge chair relies on binary geometry to create a sculptural dialogue between seat and backrest. Spanish designer Patricia Urquiola created RUFF so that both armrests and back are one piece, wrapping around the seated individual like a hug. They get to feel the comfort, while viewers get both curvy and straight architectural lines to admire.

Urquiola found inspiration for RUFF in the art of Eduardo Chillida, the renowned sculptor who lived in San Sebastián. “I can operate in many different fields, but the affinity with art, and the thing that all different forms of art have in common, is that they are forced to offer two components that can’t both be missing at the same time: poetry – you have to have poetry – and construction. Otherwise, you don’t get art,” wrote Chillida.

Read more….

Exclusive: Segway, the most hyped invention since the Macintosh, ends production – Fast Company

Steve Jobs said it would be bigger than the PC. Some dubbed it the most hyped product since the Apple Macintosh. An era of secrecy bubbled up in the year 2000 about an invention that would change the world as people knew it. People speculated it was a hydrogen-powered hovercraft, or a device that would break the rules of gravity itself.

Instead, it was a two-wheeled, self-balancing personal transport device called the Segway. Created over the course of a decade by Dean Kamen, a man already made impossibly rich by inventing a key technology behind medical IVs in his basement, it was released in December 2001 for $5,000 (the cost of a low-end motorcycle, despite the fact that a Segway’s top speed was 10 mph). At the time, Kamen said it would be “to the car what the car was to the horse and buggy.”

Read more….

Why Buying Contract Furniture for Hospitality is No Longer Ethical. -LinkedIn

I know that is a big statement to make, but bear with me. Is it ethical as a business with an environmental or sustainability policy to buy furniture that they know is going to be thrown into landfill in a very short space of time? Also, is it ethical to waste money and other resources on something that is ‘disposable’ but shouldn’t be?

Before the chaos of the last few months, my team and I were working on a product that would break this cycle, but it wasn’t easy. One of the problems with commercial furniture is that tastes and styles change quickly – as few as a couple of years before a bar or restaurant gets a refresh. What is hip and “on-fleek” today, is old and outdated tomorrow. That’s assuming the furniture isn’t already well past it’s use-by date and needs replacing anyway because of it’s ‘economical’ construction.

Read more….

Creation/recognition – Seth godin’s Blog

If you buy an old painting at a garage sale for $1,000 and then sell it for $25,000, was the change in value due to a change in the magic involved in the creation of the painting, or is it because the market now recognizes the painting for what it is (and was all along)?

When Alta Vista refused to pay a million dollars to buy Google, was the problem in the value of what Google had, or in Alta Vista’s recognition of that value?

There’s often a significant lag between the creation of something useful and when the market recognizes it.

That’s an opportunity for speculators and investors, who can buy before the recognition happens.

And it’s an opportunity or a trap for creators, who might get disheartened about the lack of applause and upside immediately after they’ve created something.

Read more….

The Top Stitch #10

June 16, 2020 by Lee Ness Leave a Comment

The Top Stitch

Your weekly digest of news in the world of Design, Upholstery, Furniture and Interior Design, brought to you by Global Upholstery Solutions.

BADG Virtual Concept House – Black Artist and Designers Guild

As we contemplate the other side of this COVID-19-induced shelter-in place protocols of the last several months, we at BADG expect to emerge into a new future with new terms.  Some areas will remain recognizable, while others will be necessarily re-defined.  A future that has been conceived by none.  In this future, our homes are reinforced as the center of our lives: family life, work life. At the center will be the core principles of our general well-being and the protection of our bodies from potential harmful agents in the outside world.  We embrace the possibilities of this future home sanctuary in the BADG Virtual Concept House (“Concept House”) and seek to demonstrate what this new future may hold in the context of dwelling for peoples of the Black diaspora.

Read more….

Excited to Share – I Was on the Radio – Beyond the Built Environment

On Saturday February 22nd had the the honor of being a guest on the Jennifer Hammond Show, SiriusXM UrbanView, Ch 126.

I spoke about advocacy and how I am fighting to make our profession and our world more equitable and just. I spoke at length, about National Organization of Minority Architects and the organization I founded Beyond the Built Environment.

Read more….

About Blacks Who Design – Blacks Who Design

Blacks Who Design highlights all of the inspiring Black designers in the industry. The goal is to inspire new designers, encourage people to diversify their feeds, and discover amazing individuals to join your team.

If you’re a Black designer, this site’s for you

There are great designers all across the industry. Hopefully this project inspires you to see yourself among the ranks.

If you’re not a Black designer, this site’s for you too 🙂

  • Reply to a recruiter: Tired of recruiting emails? Instead of hitting archive, reply with a link to this site.
  • Target your mentoring: Dedicate your lunch breaks towards mentoring people that might not normally get access to you.
  • Volunteer: Consider blocking off some time to teach design to younger students.

Read more….

#AskUsAnything: inclusive remote working – Creative Equals

This week, we tackled one of the main challenges facing all line managers right now: remote working inclusively. We – along with our panel of industry experts – had a frank discussion about the ways we can manage the complex switch to remote working.

Even the most astute amongst us hardly anticipated such a dramatic change in mandatory home working to happen so quickly. Offices that weren’t online-based were forced to scramble to assemble the appropriate equipment virtually overnight. Managers who had spent their careers resisting flexible working had to adapt to a new challenge. Teams were cut down with little warning.

But: the reality is that normal ‘work from home’ and ‘flexible working’ practices can never apply to our current situation. We can’t cut-and-paste our usual guidelines for working out of the office to a global pandemic. With this in mind, we called out to our industry experts to offer their guidance and support for businesses leaders feeling challenged right now.

Read more….

MOLD Magazine’s LinYee Yuan on design and the food crisis – deem

I’m a design journalist and for the past decade I’ve been writing primarily about industrial design. As an editor for the industrial design website Core77, I attended design festivals around the world. In 2011, I started seeing really interesting projects, usually by students, that addressed or confronted different facets of our experiences around food including growing, packaging, transporting, storing, selling, and eating food.

Read more….

The ANTIFA drum machine by Nicolás Kisic Aguirre – Design Indaba

The Peruvian designer’s open-source projects are a combination of sound, architecture and the mind.

Architect, open-source designer and Design Indaba Speaker, Nicolás Kisic Aguirre, has created an instrument dubbed the Momoprot or Módulo Móvil de Protesta (mobile protest module). The Momoprot is a way to generate collective noise, unify protestors against the same objective.

This unlikely sounding creation has been described as an Anti-fascist Drum Machine or Antifa Drum Machine, a name coined by Marcel Zaes,  and has been used to raise the voice of far-left dissent in public protests.

Read more….

Möbius – Untying The Gordian Knot – Reupholstery Limited

We are a business and don’t want to get into a “look what we can do” campaign of something that had no commercially viable application. Our new product offering, Möbius, is a major commitment for us.

We have developed a product offering that will allow hospitality businesses to refresh their furniture with very high-end products without a high investment cost and meet their increasingly important environmental and sustainability objectives. That being said, it was far from easy!

 

Read more….

Climate Designers Give Themselves a Name and a Purpose – Eye on Design

Stirred by collective anxieties, designers organize beyond corporate confines to draw the industry’s attention to the climate crisis

Last August, Greta Thunberg crossed the Atlantic from Europe to the US by solar-powered boat, with the Fridays for the Future movement in tow. Halfway around the world, the Amazon and much of Australia was set ablaze. The same year, the global Climate Strike galvanized movements like the Sunrise Movement and the Extinction Rebellion and created palpable political momentum for a Green New Deal. At the same time, in the design world, there were not one but two design triennials championing international designers who are confronting the climate crisis, and the American Institute of Architecture declared the climate crisis “a top priority.”

Read more….

Banksy Colston Statue Proposal – dezeen

Graffiti artist Banksy has created a sketch for a slavery memorial in Bristol that would incorporate slave-trader Edward Colston and the protesters who tore his statue down.

Banksy, whose identity is unknown but who is believed to come from the city of Bristol in south west England, posted his proposal on Instagram.

His sketch shows the statue of slave-trader Colston, which was torn down from its prominent position near Bristol’s harbour as part of a Black Lives Matter protest on Sunday, returned to its pedestal.

Read more….

Sofa Trends for Your Interior Design – Black Interior Designers Network

For most people, the sofa is the focal point of their living room. It is a welcoming element that will capture the eye of most of your visitors when they come into your home.

Because the sofa is such an essential part of your interior design, you want to go with one that looks great and complements your other furnishings perfectly. With that in mind, here are some current sofa trends you will want to look out for.

Read more….

JIM BIDDULPH & LIONHEART IN CONVERSATION – Design insider

Architecture and poetry may not seem likely bedfellows.  In normal times we tend to navigate the built environment with our heads down, performing functional tasks rather than finding inspiration in dancing golden daffodils or floating lonely clouds.

But London-based poet LionHeart sees things differently, and organisations including Grimshaw Architects and the Saatchi Gallery are some of the first to get on board with his unique approach, each making him their first ever Poet in Residence.

Read more…

Discussing Design with product designer, Karim Rashid – SBID

Visionary and prolific, Karim is one of the most unique voices in design today. With more than 4000 designs in production, over 300 awards to his name, and client work in over 40 countries, Karim’s ability to transcend typology continues to make him a force among designers of his generation. His award-winning designs include democratic objects such as the ubiquitous Garbo waste can and Oh! Chair for Umbra, interiors for Morimoto restaurant, Philadelphia and Semiramis hotel, Athens, and exhibitions for Corian and Pepsi. Karim has collaborated with clients to create democratic design for Method and Dirt Devil, furniture for Artemide and Magis, brand identity for Citibank and Hyundai, high-tech products for LaCie and Samsung, and luxury goods for Veuve Clicquot and Swarovski, to name a few. Karim’s work is featured in 20 permanent collections and he exhibits art in galleries worldwide. Karim is a perennial winner of the Red Dot award, Chicago Athenaeum Good Design award, Interior Design Best of Year Award, and IDSA Industrial Design Excellence Award. Karim is a frequent guest lecturer at universities and conferences, globally disseminating the importance of design in everyday life.

Read more….

The Top Stitch #9

June 4, 2020 by Lee Ness Leave a Comment

The Top Stitch

Your weekly digest of news in the world of Design, Upholstery, Furniture and Interior Design, brought to you by Global Upholstery Solutions. This week we focus on a special #blacklivesmatter theme.

10 influential black designers from past to present – lucid press

At Lucidpress, we’re passionate about great design and inspiring everyone to create beautiful things. So we’re delighted to bring you this list of 10 influential black designers, reaching back to the beginning of the 1900s and continuing up to the present day. Let’s dive in!

We Stand Together Against Racism: Black Lives Matter – Design Milk

At Design Milk, we post pretty pictures + products but behind all those pictures, there are human beings. People are always, always more important than stuff. We are heartbroken and saddened at the continued unfair and unjust treatment of the black community.

We use our platform to inspire and challenge people to look at things in a new way. It’s time to turn that lens on ourselves. We care deeply about this issue and need to be the change. There is a lot of work to do in the design + architecture community. We stand in solidarity against racism, oppression, violence and injustice. We encourage you to do what you can to help, whether it’s donating, protesting, joining organizations, reading books, listening to podcasts on race and diversity, or having difficult conversations. Now is the time to take action.

Black Lives Matter: graphic design’s role in the protest movement – Design Week

Graphics and communication design is crucial to spreading the message of any movement, and Black Lives Matter – which was founded in 2013 following the acquittal of George Zimmerman, the man who shot 17-year-old student Trayvon Martin – has a prominent page on its website for social media graphics. Social media is a key target area, and the relatively young movement has played into this aspect. The Twitter page itself has over 600,000 followers, while Twitter users have replaced their profile names in honour of the movement. Its Instagram has over 2m followers.

Four Black Creatives on the Importance of Building and Cultivating Community – Eye on Design

The creative technology industry has a diversity problem. Put differently, both industries—creative and technology—have some real work to do when it comes to building welcoming, inclusive spaces for people of diverse racial backgrounds. Though there’s a thriving community of people of color working at the intersection of art, design, and technology, when it comes to jobs and recognition, they’re woefully underrepresented in comparison to their white counterparts.

 I can’t imagine – Seth Godin’s Blog

There’s just no way to be sure what it feels like. Other people, people in our lives or out of it, people who look like us or don’t. Your mileage will vary, your experience will be different. Some started with a huge head start, some with a disadvantage they couldn’t possibly deserve.

Of course, the “I” is really we. No matter who we are, we can’t truly know what it feels like for someone else.

It may be that we can’t imagine what it’s like to be the victim of systemic distrust and profiling. Or what it’s like to worry about putting food on this table for that family. Or what it’s like to be fighting a chronic illness or being unjustly accused of a crime.

ARCHITECTS AND DESIGNER STAND AGAINST RACISM ON INSTAGRAM – Archipanic

Humans – Thousands architects and designers joined the viral event including David Adjaye, Vyrgil Abloh, Ini Archibong, Sam Baron, Another Human, Tom Dixon, Yinka Ilori, Ron Arad, Rockwell Studio. With them also influential magazines such as Wallpaper, Dezeen, Designboom and Design.Milk.

Posts were published either without caption or with the #blackouttuesday hashtag which has been launched by Black Lives Matter. The human right movement fights violence and racism against black people. George Floyd was murdered by a police officer kneeling on his neck for almost 9 minutes on Monday 25 May in Minneapolis.

Graphic designers share illustrations and resources in support of Black Lives Matter – dezeen

Graphic designers are supporting the Black Lives Matter movement and current protests, sharing illustrations and links to resources that people can use to help others and educate themselves. We’ve rounded up just a few of the many artworks created to spread the message.

Worldwide, people are joining marches in solidarity with protestors in America condemning the death of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and other black men and women who have died at the hands of police officers in the US.

9 Brilliant Black Designers and Architects You Should Know – Dwell

Often incorporating elements from their roots in the Caribbean, Africa, and different regions in the U.S., these leading black designers come from diverse backgrounds that inform their forward-thinking work. Read on to learn more about some of the most inspiring black designers working today—and hear what they have to say about diversity in the design world.

Nelson Mandela An exclusive exhibition of the great man’s drawings – WePresent

Nelson Mandela is one of the most important figures of the 20th Century. But the more someone becomes a symbol, the easier it is to lose sight of the person. It gets harder, but even more interesting, to try and work out what they were really like.

Mandela and his legacy have been discussed, dissected and glorified by hundreds of writers, historians and artists. His own book, The Long Walk To Freedom, opens a window into his mind. But when he was asked in his later years to create a series of drawings, art became an outlet through which he could interpret his own life.

Featured BIDN Designer of the Month – Black Interior Designers Network

Nikki Klugh is an interior designer, a wife, and mother to four wonderful sons, & an advocate for living a life filled with luxury, excitement, and deep joy every day.

With over 17 years of interior design experience and a passion for creating spaces that support and improve your overall well-­being, Nikki will design a home that makes you feel like a better you. Nikki’s one-of-a-kind design method focuses on designing unique spaces that are beautiful, functional and restorative –  she refers to them as Sacred Spaces. As a professional member of ASID, IIDA, BIDN, a certified interior designer, and a mentor to others, she is not only passionate about designing, Nikki is dedicated to the field of interior design.

What does hope look like to you? See how these artists have depicted it – TED Ideas

“Today, more than anything, life needs hope,” says TED Fellow Yana Buhrer Tavanier. That word is the driving force behind a diverse and colorful art campaign called Spring of Hope. Tavanier is the Bulgaria-based cofounder and executive director of Fine Acts, a so-called “playground for social change” and a global nonprofit that uses art to empower activism.

The 14 most important design ideas of the decade, according to the experts – Fast Company

We may not be able to point to a single object that reshaped the world as fully and as swiftly as the iPhone, but the 2010s saw the introduction of Tesla’s Model S, which used seductive design to push the entire car industry to rethink its dependence on fossil fuels; the proliferation of the pussy hat, which gave visceral form to the #metoo movement; and the rise of social media platforms, which have arguably done more to manipulate our social and political reality than any other recent invention. If the ’00s were design’s formative childhood in the third millennium, the 2010s were its wild teen years—more mature and confident, sure, but also prone to screwing up royally.

Wall Panels Galore

May 18, 2020 by Lee Ness 1 Comment

Although during lockdown we have been limited to the type of work we can do – but being part of the healthcare supply chain we have stayed open throughout – it is worth reminding our readers of the type of work we do on a regular basis and so this fantastic project with hundreds of wall panels is a great place to start.

This project was for a high end nail salon and had a beautiful, calming ambience. All the wall panels were manufactured and installed by our team including panels on the doors.

The frames for the pedicure treatment chairs were manufactured elsewhere as the client wasn’t aware we had our own frame-making facility. This made the upholstery more difficult as we tend to make frames with our upholstery methods in mind, but by the time we had been appointed as the upholsterers the orders were already in with the other frame-makers.

The fabric chosen was Warwick Lovely. This is a great feeling fabric, but the striations through the fabric mean it cant be railroaded- which creates its own challenges.

The wall panels were mounted on split battens so they could easily be removed for access.

All the work was carried out by our Projects team which manufactures the high-variation bespoke products and also delivers on-site work. Our Projects team operate in a different factory to our Production Upholstery teams and have their own sewing, glue spraying and foam preparation facilities.

Our Commercial Upholstery capability covers everything from high volume parts – such as seat pads and full chairs – for offices, theatres, schools, cinemas to bespoke projects with high variation. Each project is issued to the appropriate cell within our operation to ensure the highest value for our customers.

This is why our customers keep coming back to them. We tailor our response to their needs and have the capability to produce a very wide range of different products – from high volume to one-off.

The Top Stitch #7

May 11, 2020 by Lee Ness Leave a Comment

The Top Stitch

The Top Stitch interior design

Your weekly digest of news in the world of Design, Upholstery, Furniture and Interior Design, brought to you by Global Upholstery Solutions.

Brewdog

For this post, I’ve added a LinkedIn link because the video is perfect. however, the extract content below is from a blog post so I’ve linked back to that one at the bottom.

This is a hugely challenging time for our bars. Here at BrewDog, we are all longing for the day when our team are back in our bars, serving world class craft beer to our awesome community again.

Although the future for hospitality businesses is incredibly uncertain, we remain very optimistic that customers will soon crave the social interaction and escapism of visiting pubs, bars and restaurants.

With that in mind, whilst we eagerly await official guidance from the government, our amazing bars teams have been working on various proposals, which we think will help us welcome customers back in to our bars when it is safe to do so, and offer them an environment where those customers can feel relaxed and safe.

Read more

What is The Circular Economy? – Ellen MacArthur Foundation

A circular economy is based on the principles of designing out waste and pollution, keeping products and materials in use, and regenerating natural systems.

Where we have come from

A transformation in our ability to make things changed society.

We’ve been at a turning point before. In 1684 Thomas Savery invented the steam engine and it changed everything. This invention kick-started the industrial revolution, which transformed our ability to make things. Raw materials and energy were seemingly infinite, and labour was readily available. For the first time in history, goods were mass produced.

TOP 100  INTERIOR DESIGNERS TO KNOW IN 2020 – LuxDeco

The LuxDeco 100—previously the LuxDeco 50—returns with twice the number of talent for its second issue. The annually published list highlights and celebrates the world’s leading interior designers for the creativity, positive impact and commitment to luxury design which they contribute to the design world.

Celebrating incredible interiors and sharing them as inspiration for our community is one of our duties as a leading platform for luxury interiors. The design world is brilliantly diverse and replete with interior designers who are creating waves that will be felt by generations of designers to come. The LuxDeco internal selection panel was able to narrow the field down as it focused on three criteria: creativity, industry impact and commitment to luxury design.

Kaoi studio designs modular Ebba chairs based on Ettore Sottsass’ Memphis movement – dezeen

This modular chair collection by Thai design studio Kaoi takes cues from the 1980s Memphis Group, featuring four graphic armrests that can be mixed and matched to offer different aesthetic “personalities”.

Designed in collaboration with THINKK studio, Kaoi’s Ebba chair collection is composed of three deckchair-style seats that can be brought to life with four variations of armrests.

WantedDesign Manhattan Online Conversation Series – WantedDesign

WantedDesign partners with Design Milk + Clever to keep WantedDesign Manhattan Conversation series alive!

In response to the cancellation of the 2020 fair, we put together an online program with new episodes of Clever podcast and live talks, between May 11 and May 22, 2020.

“At first, when we heard about the cancellation of WantedDesign Manhattan. we were sad, we had LIVE episodes planned, and we looked forward to seeing all our friends and absorbing all of the latest design inspiration – it’s an important hub of connectivity and community for the design industry. Then we got fired up. We couldn’t just stand by and not do anything about this – so, Clever, already adept at remote recording and digital distribution, is working closely with WantedDesign Manhattan and Design Milk to keep the Conversation Series alive!” – Amy Devers, co-founder Clever

A tribute to creative minds who changed the world – WeTransfer

WeTransfer believes creative thinking has the power to change the world. So every year, we pay tribute to the creative minds we’ve lost whose lives and work changed the way we think, the way we see and the way we understand.

Anyone from the team can nominate a figure we should pay tribute to, and our supertalented community of artists do the rest.

The Sonoran Collection Shines a Bright Light on Weaving – design milk

We’re as antsy to spend time outdoors as you are, making the Sonoran Collection release from HOLLY HUNT all the more exciting. Its second outdoor furniture collection draws inspiration from the topography and creature forms found in the Sonoran Desert in the southwest United States.

HOLLY HUNT worked together with a group of weavers in Southeast Asia to develop new techniques – a double weave with a vertical wrapping – and materials for a more streamlined look.

74 CREATES STUDENT AMENITY SPACE FOR SYMONS HOUSE IN LEEDS – Design insider

Multi-award-winning interiors and architecture practice 74 has completed a stand-out student amenities project for client London and Scottish Student Housing within their new-build Symons House student accommodation block in Leeds. 74 also created the project’s branding and wayfinding.

Symons House, designed by Leeds-based architectural practice Cunniff Design, takes the form of a reverse L-shape building, with seven storeys located on its lower horizontal plane and twenty-one on the vertical upright section.

Chair Times: A History of Seating – From 1800 to Today – Dexigner

Vitra is streaming ‘Chair Times’ – a film that documents the many-sided world of chairs – for free during this particular time. The film charts a course through an ocean of chairs.

In Chair Times, Vitra Chairman Emeritus and former CEO Rolf Fehlbaum speaks with experts in the design field, including designers Hella Jongerius, Antonio Citterio and Ronan Bouroullec, architects and collectors Arthur Rüegg and Ruggero Tropeano, architect David Chipperfield, Director of the Vitra Design Museum Mateo Kries, Vitra Design Museum curator Amelie Klein, Jochen Eisenbrand and collection curator Serge Mauduit.

Focusing on 125 objects from the Collection of the Vitra Design Museum, the conversations explore the development of chairs over centuries, examining them as ‘portraits of their users.’

Need a fresh perspective? See the world like a horse does (or a cow or a cat or an ant …) – Ted

Almost never, says Alan Hook, a design researcher at Ulster University in Northern Ireland: “We understand the world from a very fixed human-centric point of view … so [we] can’t really understand what it must be like to be a different creature.”

Meet some human designers who are breaking down the barriers. In Ireland, Denis Connolly and Anne Cleary have created a series of meta-perceptual helmets that allowed wearers to view the world through the stereo vision of a hammerhead shark or the separately rotatable eyes of the chameleon. To get as close to being a goat as possible, UK designer Thomas Thwaites (TED talk: How I built a toaster from scratch) built himself a prosthetic goat legs and a prosthetic rumen (goat stomach) and took to the Swiss Alps to graze on grass.

Stella McCartney in conversation with Sir David Adjaye – Clerkenwell Design week

As part of Design Museum’s continued #DesignDispatches series, next week features pioneering British designers Stella McCartney and Sir David Adjaye. Join them on Wednesday 13 May 2020 as they talk all things fashion and architecture.

A brief history of the Bubble Chair – Icon

Eero Aarnio’s iconic Bubble Chair is a clear, ball-shaped seat that hangs from the ceiling

The Bubble Chair is a true icon of the 1960s. Designed by celebrated Finnish designer Eero Aarnio, the chair was decidedly futuristic at the time it was launched. A spin-off of his earlier Ball Chair, the Bubble retained the same circular shape, but instead of standing on a leg it hangs from the ceiling.

The Ball Chair was designed in 1963, and is also known as the globe chair. At the time it was designed the Ball Chair’s shape was completely unconventional. The chair’s spherical form creates a unique acoustic around the user.

The Top Stitch #5

April 27, 2020 by Lee Ness Leave a Comment

The Top Stitch

The Top Stitch interior design

Your weekly digest of news in the world of Design, Upholstery, Furniture and Interior Design, brought to you by Global Upholstery Solutions.

Why we need creative confidence – Ted

In 2012, IDEO founder and longtime Stanford professor David Kelley took the TED stage in Long Beach and shared a deeply personal story. It was the tale of his own cancer diagnosis, of finding a lump in his neck and being told he had a 40% chance of survival. This was clearly a sobering moment, but he wasn’t sharing the story to seek our sympathy. Rather, he wanted to talk about his resulting epiphany. “While you’re waiting for your turn to get the gamma rays, you think of a lot of things,” he said drily. “I thought a lot about: ‘What was I put on earth to do? What was my calling? What should I do?’”

VDF and Ron Arad present an exclusive video showing the development of Arad’s Don’t F**k With The Mouse chairs – dezeen

VDF teams up with Ron Arad for the video launch of a new series of sculptural chairs – including one that commemorates Brexit – followed by a live interview with the designer at 2:00pm UK time.

The London-based designer and architect created the movie for VDF to explain how he developed the chairs, which were originally supposed to be exhibited at the OTI Gallery in Los Angeles. However, the show was cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic.

New chairs are based on Arad’s classic Big Easy

International Womens Day

Earth Day 2020 Sustainable Fabrics – Global Upholstery Solutions

Eco Fabrics and Sustainability in the Upholstery Industry

It’s plain to see that we are in a growing world and industry where sustainability, recycling and repurposing is at the forefront of projects and is becoming more and more an important credential or specification. With this being the case, the information gathered below will enable us to assist those customers who are required to include such accredited fabrics to their portfolio.

Ybox Offices – Tel Aviv – Office Snapshots

Alex Meitlis Design was tasked to design the offices for Ybox, an entrepreneurial and construction company, located in Tel Aviv, Israel.
The concept was to build a gold box in the open-plan office that created the interest in the large open space without competing with the view.

The box is facing the “living room” an open space with various seating and an active bar serving as the center of the office.

From the living area you can see the developing skyline of Tel Aviv and this view is perfect for a construction company.

We decided to use only natural materials that come from the construction world – concrete, wood, glass and metal (brass).

Surviving The New Normal – LinkedIn Pulse

While it is difficult to predict the future, it seems probable that food delivery will become a more permanent feature in many hospitality businesses. The demand for food delivery has increased and it seems likely that once the government-imposed lockdown is over, many customers will continue to remain apprehensive about visiting pubs and restaurants. This apprehension may well continue until an effective vaccine or treatment for Covid-19 is developed.

Moroso Presents the Multifunctional Taba to Live, Sit, Talk, and Work – design milk

With every design fair and event shelved for the foreseeable future, Italian furnishings brand Moroso just released a new collaboration with Swiss-Argentinian designer Alfredo Häberli – the Taba collection – online. Häberli created the collection of multifunctional seating for public and private spaces as destinations to live, sit, talk, and work. Taba includes eight pieces – a sofa, two armchairs, a bench, and four ottomans – featuring soft curves and overlapping organic lines that embrace comfort and conversation. Each sculptural piece can stand alone but configured together they play off each others meandering curves.

Interior Design Industry: Life in Lockdown – SBID

With lockdown measures extended and social distancing continuing to impact industries world-wide, we’re sharing more industry perspectives from across the interior design profession. SBID Accredited designers and manufacturers provide their personal insights into how they are dealing with daily life and work in lockdown during the coronavirus pandemic.

“I tweaked a few things” – Seth’s Blog

The easiest way to get a contribution, advice or feedback is to present something that’s 90% done.

If you ask too early in the process, if you’re hoping for conceptual insights, you’ll probably be disappointed.

Style steal – modern desert – Fabric of My Life

The ‘desert decor’ trend has been an undercurrent in interiors for the past few years but has really come to the fore for Spring Summer 2020, so there are plenty of accessories out there just now that can help you achieve the look. The basis for the trend has to be the current obsession with houseplants – in particular cacti – which is certainly one of the quickest and easiest places to start, but I’d also recommend embracing the soft arid tones of the desert (think sun-scorched hues such as warm terracotta, creamy saffron and burnt adobe red), woven rattan textures, handcrafted wicker-style baskets, and chunky handmade pottery and ceramics.

Benjamin Moore releases 2020 Colour of the Year palette – Pippa Jameson

Benjamin Moore releases their 2020 Colour of the Year palette containing ten harmonious hues. The unique group of ten versatile shades, including First Light, ranges from the dark and mysterious, to soft and playful. The palette seamlessly delivers modern paint colour pairings that combine optimism with understatement, a timeless way to lighten up a home and embrace a modern look. For more 2020 paint trends

A brief history of Marcel Breuer’s Wassily chair – Icon

First a student then a teacher at the Bauhaus, Marcel Breuer designed many innovative pieces. His Wassily chair is the most iconic.

Hungarian-American architect Marcel Breuer was known for his innovative furniture design and use of tubular steel. Though he created many pieces of furniture in his time, the Wassily chair is his most iconic piece.

The chair was designed in 1925, inspired by a bicycle frame. It is made of curving tubes of steel and leather slings that create a seat that is ergonomic and comfortable, yet still highly sculptural and minimal in form.

Ten Beautiful Pieces Of Furniture To Spend Your Stimulus Check On – Forbes

In mid-March, congress passed the CARES Act, which set aside funds to give approximately 140 million Americans up to $1200 per adult in a household plus an additional $500 per child under seventeen years old, to help stimulate the economy during the coronavirus pandemic.

If you aren’t using your check to stay afloat, purchasing new furniture is a great way to use it. Even when social distancing mandates are lifted, most of us are still going to be spending a lot more time at home for the foreseeable future. So what better way to stimulate the economy than to improve your living space?

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