Need to Know
29 : 05 : 18

Despite having the digital world at our fingertips, there’s a strong disconnect between people and loneliness is fast becoming an epidemic. According to a recent Cigna survey, only about half of Americans have meaningful in-person social interactions. Several designers showing at NYCxDesign this year tackled loneliness and used design to reconnect people.

Brad Ascalon’s ‘Island Collection’ was a series of interlocking seats, table surfaces and planters embedded in the recently pedestrianized Times Square. The modular seating encouraged passers-by to converse and engage in one of the city’s busiest enclaves and was part of a larger showcase of seating and signage that question the role of human connectivity in urban centers.

Meanwhile, textiles brand Block Shop presented ‘Reading Room’, a brightly coloured space featured rugs and pillows in bold hues that invited visitors to sit down and reconnect, either with each other or by themselves with a selection of curated books.

Design student Juho Lee from the School of Visual Arts designed ‘Yaja’ to subvert Korean hierarchical traditions preventing men from freely socializing. The double rocking chair faces different directions and brings men physically closer and encourages informal conversation and connection as equals.

The alluring visual identity of beauty brand Glossier is instantly recognizable, with its iconic pale pink packaging. As part of Sight Unseen OFFSITE, furniture designer Kim Markel teamed up with Glossier and transformed discarded packaging from the cult beauty brand into a line of furniture that further evolved Glossier’s clever branding strategy.

Markel launched her collection ‘Glow’ in 2016, which featured a series of objects made using recycled plastic in translucent, pastel shades. ‘Glow’ continued to evolve when Markel partnered with Glossier with a new series of works including cabinets, side tables, mirrors and chairs, using the beauty brand’s packaging that resulted in Glossier’s signature pink hue. The beauty brand is already in consumers’ bathrooms but with the ‘Glow’ series, Glossier redefines how it communicates to its customers and can be part of their living space. Central to the collaboration is solidifying Glossier as being in the forefront of creativity, supporting local female designers, sustainability and style.

The current political climate in America has heightened the levels of anxiety in the design community and digital magazine Sight Unseen responded by launching Design for Progress last year, an initiative to raise money to protect these groups through design. This year, Sight Unseen continued its efforts with Field Studies, an ongoing project within the scheme, and invited 13 interior and furniture designs and paired them up with 13 luminaires from film, fashion and art to create one-off pieces to be sold to raise money for a charity of the pair’s choice.

Some of the standout projects include the collaboration between Russian designer Harry Nuriev of Crosby Studio and artist Liam Gillick, whose series of steel and Plexiglas light structures were poetic and conceptual. Proceeds from sales will support the Naked Heart Foundation, which focuses on children with disability in Russia. Also included was Christopher Stuart and Julia Dault’s bronzed mirror sconce backlit by LEDs emitting a soft glow, with proceeds going to environmental and reproductive health care charities that have been affected by Donald Trump’s changes to policies.

The cross-pollination of disciplines challenged each pair to discover a new perspective and provoke a dialogue around the role of design as an agent for change.