At this year’s International Contemporary Furniture Fair, Herman Miller raised a toast — and gave special guests a glimpse of upcoming designs — at the High Line room of the Standard in New York City. Read more
It may be named for its focus on contemporary furniture design, but ICFF always offers up a few accents and accessories that inspire my home-office-product-loving heart. Take a gander at a six smart items that caught my eye at the 2011 show in NYC over the weekend.
1. The Rhombins These desktop-size modular storage solutions from AMAC are made using Cereplast, a plant-based bio-plastic. Available for pre-order at The Utility Collective.
2. Abysse Lamp We love the combo of clear crystal with a fire-engine-red cord in this simply elegant lamp. Available at Baccarat.
3. Bow Bin German designer Cordula Kehrer used rattan and plastic to create these mixed-material wastebaskets. Available for pre-order at Areaware.
4. Smart Pebbles – Universal Cradle Stack two to three of these non-slippery, silicon-made “pebbles” to hold a phone; use two side by side to prop up a laptop and keep it cool. Learn more at yourpebbles.co.kr.
5. Alarm Dock Dock your iPhone and stay on time using a flip-clock app and this basic beech-wood design by Jonas Damon. Available for pre-order at Areaware.
6. Cappello Lamp You’ll be charmed by the paper “cap” (or “cappello” in Italian) of Molo’s marble-based lighting (your desk will be, too). Available at molostore.com.
We had a busy day yesterday with bloggers from all over the blogger-sphere dropping by our booth. It was great to finally put faces to names. Definitely look out for Jaime Derringer ‘s ICFF round-up on Design Milk. And for an extraordinary array of interviews with designers you can’t go past PSFK – plus their map has been a great guide through the ICFF maze. PSFK’s senior editor Dave Pinter dropped by the booth yesterday armed with two very serious looking cameras. You can check out his coverage here. We spent a bit of time with Lloyd Alter from Treehugger. We’re thrilled to announce we will be sharing stories with Lloyd over the coming months. Look out for those. Lloyd was particularly impressed with Wastberg’s paper lamp (pictured above). I put him onto the lovely Cappello lamps (below) by Molo – a great little desk light for Lifework readers.
Day 1 here at ICFF and it has been a very busy morning. I finally got to see the new Eames Aluminum Group (EAG) pieces and they are pretty amazing. It’s been fun watching people almost double-take as they see the chairs in their outdoor setting. The booth was inspired by Eero Saarinen’s Miller House which in turn inspired Ray and Charles Eames in their EAG pieces. But more on the story over on Discover next week. The pieces will be available to the public next Spring.
We’ll have a slideshow with images from photographer Paul Warchol - a step up from my iPhone snaps! I think I made Paul a bit nervous waving the phone around but I couldn’t resist posting some pics of us setting up this morning.
This week is a busy one here at Lifework. I’ll be in Columbus, Indiana for a few days visiting the Miller House (pictured below) and then to New York for ICFF (where we’ve got lots of exciting new stories to share with you).
The Miller House history is intrinsically tied to Herman Miller. The home was commissioned by J. Irwin Miller, a wealthy industrialist, and his wife Xenia Simons Miller in 1953. Miller and his wife hired Eero Saarinen to design the house, Alexander Girard to work on the interiors and Dan Kiley to take care of the landscape architecture. Girard’s fabrics for Herman Miller feature heavily throughout the home. And it was Girard that got the Eameses involved. He saw the need for outdoor furniture and called on his friends Ray and Charles to design chairs for the verandah. A year later the Aluminum Group lounge chair was in production at Herman Miller. (More on that story later this week!)
Above: Saarinen and Eames met at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. (Image via SMOW)
In 2000 the house was designated a National Historic Landmark. Dan Kiley, was still living and the house was still occupied by the Irwins. Today the house is open to the public for tours. In fact, the first tour is tomorrow and I will be on it – camera in hand. I’m very excited to share this beautiful house with you.
Learn more about the home at the Indianapolis Museum of Art site and the Miller House Symposium, Friday, May 20. Dwell magazine also has an excellent slideshow of the house here.
Ghislaine Vinas, who recently won Benjamin Moore’s 2010 Hue Award, is based in New York and was one of our visitors at the Herman Miller stand during ICFF. Ghislaine’s interiors are a warm take on modernism that utilize a strong and saturated color palette. Here we talk to the designer about her work space at the country home she bought 6 years ago.
How long have you worked from home? This is my desk at our country home in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. We bought the house in 2004, spent a year renovating it and have been working on the interiors ever since. Being an interior designer, designing my own house is torturous and I don’t think I will ever be finished! If I need to get work done during the weekend and I’m not out on the deck with my laptop, you can find me here. I mostly use the time away from my New York City office to look for inspiration and to come up with new ideas.
And where is home? Home from Monday – Friday afternoon is downtown New York City. I’ve lived in the same loft for over 20 years right on the Hudson River. We work from the loft too. But life is crazy in the city and after my husband and I had our two little girls we decided to get a country house near my sister in Pennsylvania. So Friday evening to Sunday evening our home is in the country. It’s a little old farmhouse that my husband and I lovingly renovated with the help of my sister’s husband, Glenn who is a contractor.
Describe your style? How would you define your aesthetic? I would say that my style is modern, fresh, clean happy and a wee bit quirky. I like things that can be cleaned off easily, I dont like too much clutter but I like that my home reflects who I am. I get enjoyment out of being surrounded by things I have found around the world or even in my back yard from local garage sales or flea markets.
As an interior designer with multiple clients how do you keep your office organized. The New York apartment pictured above seems typical of your work – strong bursts of color against a fairly minimal backdrop of white? We specialize in one style – we are not an office that does traditional through to contemporary – we stick to simple happy modern – this helps keep our samples to a minimum and has helped clean up things a lot in the NYC office. Over the years I have honed my style so I dont want fabrics or other samples lying around that I dont intend to use. Two years ago we got rid of all our brochures and binders and it was such a relief to “clean house” Everything is online anyway so we are good at bookmarking our favorite sites and pieces.
We keep all our fabric samples in drawers – there are 16 big drawers all color coded. Our tiles and other materials we keep in drawers too for easy access. We have big boxes that we keep sample in on projects we are currently working on and its always great to see how all the materials start coming together. All other material is kept in giant client binders – these binders contain everything from plans and elevations to color inspiration and specific furniture pieces. The binders are evolving constantly as we work on the projects.
Are there any particular computer programs you find really useful? I used to have interns do weekly color copies of magazine inspirations and I kept them in a giant lateral file but now we use Evernote to organize all my inspirational images as well as furniture pieces that I really dont want to forget. So now when I am looking for something its such a breeze to find.
When you are designing a home office what do you keep in mind? I keep in mind that peoples lives are busy and we dont always have time to put things away – this means that a stack of bills on the desk top may be reality. So a nice paper tray could be a smart investment. I try and reduce clutter by having upper cabinets that are easy to reach from a seated position that can store unattractive real life things you need at your desk. Also essential is a good “box box file” drawer right next to the desk. Top drawer for essentials including check books, good hand cream and lip balm , second drawer for stationary and stamps and the bottom drawer for filing monthly bills. You also need good lateral files for all the other things that need filing like taxes and investment, school and other info.
An attractive trash can under the desk never hurts . Its always nice to have a beautiful cup holder for pens and stationary and a beautiful stapler, tape holder and paper clip holder. Recently I have started working with personal organizers so that my clients can have perfect tabs on all their files holders and just the right drawer dividers.
Is there any piece of home office furniture you covet? I love the Airia desk (and seriously not because its for Herman Miller) and I adore the big e15 table especially in yellow (above). I dream of having a giant desk like it. I love my vintage saarinen chair that I have in my PA house. I had it reupholstered in a brilliant magenta – it makes the perfect desk chair.
What is a desk accessory you can’t do without? A cup of coffee in my right hand. I would really love to get a set of “Anything” desk accessories (below).
What would you change about your own workspace? Well, my little spot in PA is kinda perfect for me but my office in New York needs help. In New York we sit at long white counters and although I can look out the window at the river from where I sit, I would love to have a freestanding table to work from. I would love to get a giant table maybe vintage or Baroque looking and have it shop finished in a crazy color – like fluorescent red. Then everything around it would be white. A giant inspiration board is the second thing on my wish list. My little space in PA feels personal and has an aesthetic, my New York space is about function and lacks personal style.
What do you most love about your space? Well, my space in my PA house is very special to me – it’s full of fun little memories because all the pictures on the wall were given to me either by the artist themself or by friends. I love looking out the window and daydreaming. There are always bunnies out there in the spring and summer and it’s so ridiculously idyllic that it makes me smile. I love my comfy magenta chair and the pop of color the rolling file add. I love that I can go out and pick some flowers from the garden and put them on the desk. In the pictures are peonies from my front yard.
What inspires you? Anything bright and happy. I love seeing unexpected color combinations. I love seeing things that are out of scale – an image of something small that has been enlarged or visa versa. I love animal objects. The beach is my favorite place in the world and inspires me. I love my girl’s (Mia Soleil and Saskia Luna) art work. I love designing with my husband Jaime. I am inspired by very smart people who are also creative and who don’t take themselves too seriously. Collaborations with clients get my heart racing. Graffitti and urban wall art is beautiful and surprising.
Images: The PA office: Jaime Vinas, the New York apartment: Eric Laignel
Eames Demetrios chaired a talk with local designers last week as part of ICFF at ABC Carpet & Home. It was the perfect opportunity to road test the news Eames Molded Plastic Chairs. As you can see everyone was sitting pretty! Eames spoke about scale referring to the Power of Ten film his grandparents produced and the 10/10/10 celebration this year. October will certainly be an interesting month. I intend to catch up with Eames and get more details on the celebration. Look out for more info here.
What do you get when you get when you tell students at Pratt Institute to immerse themselves in another culture and create products that demonstrate they understood what the experience was all about? Well, you get boxes that turn into chairs, ceramic wallets, kinetic toys—and a whole lot more.
It’s all part of a partnership with Herman Miller whereby industrial design students were charged with coming up with a theme, then executing their ideas in a competition. The prize? A booth at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF). The students’ theme “Empathy for Culture” and the resulting creations won them a place at the show.
Herman Miller lent some of its people, namely Fabienne Munch, Gary Smith, and Tim McLoughlin, to provide guidance to the students throughout the creative process.
“Empathy for culture is beyond feeling for others,” said Fabienne, Director of Ideation for Herman Miller. “It appeals to a peculiar understanding of a culture’s own dialectics: what’s visible, what’s invisible or taken for granted; what’s felt, what’s cognitive; what’s conscious, what’s unconscious; what’s symbolic, what’s ephemeral?”
“They helped us to not only focus on our concepts, but also made us realize that our ideas were valid as designers,” Sara McBeen, a graduate student at Pratt, said about the guidance provided by Herman Miller. “Each of us found our own way to stay true and honest to the messages we were trying to communicate with our pieces. These kinds of opportunities are invaluable in shaping where we will go from here.”
McBeen’s project, the Aata table, “reflects the coming together, socializing, and sharing so strongly exhibited in Middle Eastern culture,” which she chose to investigate after traveling there and “appreciating their generosity, goodness, and hospitality.”
Kevin, an undergraduate at Yale won today’s give away of the Klein Reid tops. He looks pretty happy about it! The other two winners are Matt (below), a student at Kendall, and Mary (bottom), a kitchen specialist. There’s still one more set to give away. Stop by tomorrow and leave your business card for a chance to win.
Check out Emily Pilloton’s Design Revolution Road Show. The exhibition is held in a refurbished Airstream and covers design that empowers people. There’s a great interview with Emily inside the trailer on Metropolis’ site. Yves Behar, who designed the Leaf and Ardea lights for Herman Miller, has two pieces included in the exhibition – his XO laptop and Y Water (the bottles double as children’s blocks).
