Discover New York Design Week 2021

Like all other aspects of the city, New York’s annual design showcase NYCxDesign comes roaring back to life with several unprecedented moves since being derailed by the global pandemic. For starters, the design festival’s two stalwart fairs – the International Contemporary Furniture Fair and Wanted Design Manhattan – will come together for the first time to show under the sprawling roof of the Javits Center. Bringing the breadth of ICFF together with Wanted Design’s eye for emerging talent, and an expanded speaker programme, ICFF + Wanted Design Manhattan Talks, this co-location breathes new life into the cornerstones of NYCxDesign.

This year’s timing of the festival, which typically takes place in May, also coincides with Salon Art and Design, a show known for bringing together vintage, modern and contemporary design alongside 20th century art. With both entities exuding an international flavour, but  armed with a strong local turnout, the overlapping of both events means galleries and design showrooms all over the city are putting their best foot forward this week.

NYCxDesign: New York Design Week highlights

ICFF + Wanted Design Manhattan

For the first time, ICFF and Wanted Design Manhattan join forces to show under the Javits Center’ newly expanded roof during NYCxDesign. At ICFF, one of the highlights comes from Bernhardt Design, which unveils three new collaborations, with Luca Nichetto, the Italian brand Plank, and the California-based designer Cory Grosser. At Wanted Design Manhattan, where a wide range of emerging talent has always held the spotlight, the Boston-based surface design studio Tomma Bloom has been jointly given the fair’s Best of Launch Pad 2021 accolade, alongside lighting designer Echo Zhan.

14 – 15 November 2021
Javits Center
429 11th Avenue

Salon Art + Design

There are highlights aplenty at this year’s Salon Art and Design fair. Spread out in the Park Avenue Armory, some of the gems to be found in 2021’s well-heeled presentation include new monolithic furniture by the Belgian designer Pieter Maes at Atelier Courbet, a fresh array of tactile sculptures by Ian Collings at The Future Perfect and Liam Lee’s psychedelic objects that draw from the natural and biological world, presented by Patrick Parrish Gallery. 

11 – 15 November 2021
Park Avenue Armory
643 Park Ave

DeMuro Das x RISD design competition

During New York Design Week, international design firm DeMuro Das presents the fruits of a design competition that was organised in Spring 2021 with graduate students from the Department of Furniture Design at Rhode Island School of Design, who worked under the guidance of RISD Associate Professor Patricia Johnson and Jean Lin of Colony. Students were asked to design a pair of pieces: one to be fabricated in class by themselves and the second to be produced by DeMuro Das’ factory in New Delhi, India. Exhibited in the firm’s Manhattan showroom, the three winning designs, from Alexis Tingey, Virginia Gordon, and Maxwell Taylor-Milner, represent vigorous rounds of research and a comprehensive creative approach that mirrors DeMuro Das’ own global perspective. 

12 November – 1 January 2022
900 Broadway, Suite 1001

‘Before Yesterday We Could Fly: An Afrofuturist Period Room’ at The Met

Installed within one of the museum’s storied period rooms from the 19th century, ‘Before Yesterday We Could Fly: An Afrofuturist Period Room’ is a new long-term exhibition curated by production designer Hannah Beachler that brings together art and objects reflecting the African diaspora from within The Met’s collections to foreground generations of Black creativity. Inspired by the real-life story of Seneca Village, a vibrant Black community that flourished on New York’s Upper West Side from the 1820 to 1850s, and was destroyed by the City of New York to make way for Central Park, the exhibition poses the question – what if this community had been given the opportunity to thrive?

‘The Met’s distinguished collection of period rooms presents not only outstanding objects and displays, but also complex relationships towards history and authenticity that call for reinterpretation and intervention. As the first to present a constructed space of now and tomorrow rather than a filtered perspective on the past, the Afrofuturist Period Room offers an important opportunity to start new dialogues and illuminate stories that are yet to be told within our walls,’ says museum director Max Hollein.

From 5 November 2021
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Avenue

Under/Over East by Marta in NYC

Building upon last year’s memorable survey of toilet roll holders at Marta, Los Angeles, ‘Under/Over’ makes its way to New York with a new selection of design-savvy receptacles. The exhibition’s latest iteration is curated by Emmanuel Olunkwa and produced in collaboration with the sustainable toilet paper company Plant Paper. It unveils new designs by Simone Bodmer-Turner, Minjae Kim, Nifemi Ogunro and Ellen Van Dusen, which are not only on display in the Lower East Side, but also installed within the bathrooms of cherished local haunts around New York City as an open invitation for design fans and passers-by to interact with the pieces.

13 November to 31 December 2021
106 Eldridge Street

Matter Made’s MMXXII collection 

Matter has been flying the flag for New York design since it first opened its doors in 2003. It has matured into a design brand, gallery and platform with its own furniture label under its belt. The new Matter Made MMXXII collection features a new family of lighting from Jamie Wolfond, lighting and furniture from founder Jamie Gray and expanded collections from Faye Toogood and Ana Kraš. Matter’s longtime showroom space on Broome Street has also evolved to become Matter Projects, a venue solely for hosting exhibitions. 

13 November – 23 December 2021
405 Broome Street

Atelier de Troupe x CC Tapis

Cultures collide beautifully in this joint effort between the LA-based furniture label Atelier de Troupe and the Milanese rug brand CC-Tapis. Inspired by both companies’ cultural origins and the aesthetic of Berber carpets, Le Tapis Nomade is a global pastiche – designed in California and Italy, made in Nepal and presented in New York. The modernist rug design comes in three colours:  wheat, forest and sand. It will be on view at Atelier de Troupe’s Soho showroom alongside its other furniture pieces, and with new moody images of the rug installed at the iconic midcentury Milan residence Casa a Tre Cilindri, designed by Angelo Mangiarotti and Bruno Morassutti in 1959.   

11 – 18 November 2021
19 Mercer Street

William Gray for Stellarworks and Calico Wallpaper

The veteran design studio Meyer Davis unveils two collaborations with Stellar Works and Calico Wallpaper this week. Launched together under Meyer Davis’ product label William Gray, the new offerings include a pair of bespoke wallcoverings – the botanically inspired ‘Wilds’ design and the more collage-driven ‘Ephemera’ pattern – that are displayed alongside pieces from the brand’s existing furniture collection with Stellar Works. Transforming Stellar Works’ New York showroom into an evocative living room setting, the warm and eclectic display is hospitality at its best.

11 November – 31 December2021
57 Lispenard Street

‘Join’ at Colony showroom

Colony brings 12 American designers together to explore the meaning and complexity of togetherness after such a prolonged period of being apart. Amongst the new work being presented in the show ‘Join’ is a mother-son collaboration from Bec Brittain, realised in lighting form; an occasional chair from Studio Paolo Ferrari that was designed transatlantically; and a series of vessels from Grain, created in honour of a family member lost during the pandemic. ‘We are all trying to find our footing in this new reality,’ says Colony founder Jean Lin. ‘We’ve never been more acutely aware of the importance of community and collaboration, and chose this theme to honour this inherent need to come together.’

11 November – 10 December 2021
324 Canal Street, 2nd Floor

INFORMATION

NYCXDesign runs from 11 – 18 November 2021 across the city
nycxdesign.com