Touching the Edge

Italian designers seek to redefine consumers' relationships with objects

by Stefano Caggiano A few years ago, Giovanni Delvecchio and Andrea Magnani worked together on a thesis project in Product Design in Faenza—a little northern Italian city famous for a long tradition of ceramic manufacturing. What the two up-and-coming art designers were doing, however, had nothing to do with ceramics. They were actually conceiving their Resign project, which continues to attract people interested in repurposing …

Big Leaf Manufacturing

The Seattle-based woodworkers use years of experience to take artistic risks

By Sam Bovarnick Roy McMakin opened Big Leaf Manufacturing in 1997 as a workshop for his furniture and architecture firms, but now maintains a level of independence that allows it to take on commissioned projects. Seattle-based Big Leaf has since established itself as one of the finest specialty woodshops in the world, and we recently paid them a visit to see how they go about …

Grapple by Ryan Frank

Testing production limits with modular hanging hooks made of grass

Barcelona-based designer Ryan Frank has invented a modular hanging system called Grapple. The molded hooks have a buckle feature which allows them to be set at different heights along strands of webbing and hold items of various weights, such as a coat, plant, bag or hat. The adjustable system uses just two materials to create a highly adaptable storage structure. The hook design is based …