CITYist

Have You Heard? is our weekly roundup of items we may have previously missed (or would like to remind you of again). So as you plan the week ahead, take a look at our cherry-picked selections of what’s hot in art, music, film and fashion right now.

Sometimes less is more. At least that’s the case with Blu Dot’s office furniture, whose simple yet appealing designs helped the brand win an award at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair in May. Cant, the desk named for its unusual cantilevered frame, stands on four solid walnut legs and is complemented by the Scoop chair, an aluminum seat-shelled desk chair with an ivory exterior. Contemporary and minimal, the pieces are for the post-Ikea era, where everyone wants clean lines but doesn’t necessarily want to see the exact same pieces in all their friends’ homes.

Tim Byrne looks in the mud for inspiration. Out of the mud behind shuttered factories, he’ll pull his material: discarded machinery. Cast iron gear cranks and supports will be married to wood or glass to create tables and benches. In the ultimate act of post-industrial repurposing, Byrne creates contemporary furniture from yesterday’s debris.

Fans of Anthropologie know that although their quirky fairy tale clothes possess a certain romance, its the French country chic home wares that often steal the show. The whimsical mega-store’s Rockefeller Plaza outpost is playing host to a Kunst, gallery exhibition of Dutch design, featuring furniture from up-and-coming designers Jetske de Groot, Tania Grace Knuckey, Valentin Loellmann and Charity Musoma van der Meer. Score an Alice and Wonderland side table, a mid-century styled chair or a distorted daybed bench (ranging from $298 to $4,800) at the limited-time gallery through July 12th.

Now you can buy a luxury bedroom in a box. Well—it would probably arrive in several boxes. Thanks to the glories of the Internet and the talents of interior designer Monique Breaux, you can enjoy all the benefits of custom-made furniture from a style professional without ever having to look at a human face. With 13 living rooms starting around $6,700 and seven bedrooms starting around $4,300, BuyPoshRooms.com comes complete with couches, beds, rugs and even art work and accent pieces. We think this bedroom looks fit for a cougar—leaving no doubt the rooms are all designed to ooze money and sophistication. And no one will know you got it from a delivery man.

An eye for fashion usually translates into an eye for décor. Just ask Scott Hill, a former Ralph Lauren visual merchandiser, who takes old photographs, historical documents and sketches and uses them to upholster vintage furniture. Now that’s recycling. Hill’s creations can be found in his East Village shop, Old Village Hall, along with pillows, tote bags and other vintage finds—often covered in antique scrawl.

A while back, we mentioned Bottega Veneta’s design competition, a contest for Japanese architectural students that would culminate at this year’s Salone del Mobile. Well, that time is here, and the winners have now been revealed—three students who produced stark, modern structures with rather avant garde ideology behind them. So, world-class innovation, or something you can pick up at your neighborhood Ikea? Take a look and be the judge.

Emeco’s classic 1006 Navy Chair—which if you don’t know it by name, you definitely know it if you’ve ever sat down in just about any restaurant, hotel or office—is getting even more iconic with the help of Coca-Cola. But while the new chair might look like the original, it’s construction is drastically different; each of the new 111 Navy Chairs is made out of 60 percent recycled polyethylene terephthalate, which in layman’s terms, roughly translates to recycled Coca-Cola bottles.

We’re starting to hear a lot about this whole Milan Design week thing—formally known as the Salone del Mobile International Furniture Show. It also appears to be all the rage for fashion designers to act as patrons for ambitious furniture makers—first Bottega Veneta, and now Roberto Cavalli. These wooden pieces, which look like they belong in The Museum of Natural History, are noteworthy for their weirdness, if nothing else.

Just in case you’ve always wondered what it would feel like to sit in a crumpled ball of alumnium foil, Tokujin Yoshioka has got you covered. His avant garde chair sequence, dubbed “Memory,” will be featured in April’s upcoming Milan Design Week.

For those wary that Japan is surpassing the U.S. in technological rigor (or did long ago), here’s a new frontier to worry about: design. Furniture design, that is. Renowned Italian house Bottega Veneta is hosting a competition amongst the architecture students at the University of Tokyo to create a piece of furniture, and creating a pop up store housing their own signature products while they’re at it.

Acne, the Swedish design company known mostly for its denim, started off as anything but. The very first thing founder Jonny Johansson designed was, in fact, not a pair of washed-out Scandinavian jeans but a conference table. In that vein, the company is releasing a four-piece collection of squashed and squished sofas —which, in their use of bleached and hand-dyed indigo upholstery and minimal, futuristic shapes, are not much of a departure from their fashion after all.