Dwell Around the World

We sent our fearless leader, editor-in-chief Sam Grawe, around the world this year, from Milan to New York to Los Angeles to London hitting up all the top design shows. While in New York for ICFF, Sam joined former Design Within Reach CEO Rob Forbes and pal Heather Wagner (wife of Readymade editor-in-chief Andrew Wagner) for a bike around the city for the launch of Forbe's new company Public Bikes. Check out their ride.

Stuart Haygarth is well known for his masterful repurposing of detritus, and for his installation at the V&A has transformed a banal staircase into an explosion of color using over 600 meters of cut-off pieces from picture frames supplied by bespoke framer John Jones.

Toward the end of the day Frank and I drove out to the town of Kirkcaldy to visit this Maggie's Center designed by Zaha Hadid. It was her first completed building in the UK and opened in 2006. Look for another post down the line devoted to this structure, which I liked very much.

Here's a shelf in Ariel's studio filled with his products. Some are test cases, others finished and others still packaged up and ready to go.

One of the things I was most excited to see was the Central Library's fifth floor, renowned for its acre-sized reading room, the largest in the country according to Burnette. The cavernous space is made more intimate by the individual reading lamps at each seat, a detail Burnette cribbed from the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris.

The steel case displays a rotating arrangement of art, objects, games, and books, and acts as a screen between the pool deck and the lobby. All of the art in the hotel is produced by local artists. This photograph of a California live oak, printed on glass, is by Stephen Galloway.

Natalie Gray's Blanket Store has been a Frankfurt staple since it opened its doors at this location in October 2009.

Smalti is a specialized glass used in many mosaics, made from a mixture of sand, soda, stabilizing compounds and mineral oxides, which add color. Here is a multi-hued pile of crucibles, or pots, where the ingredients are melted together to produce “pizzas”, or slabs.

After the tour, we headed back into the center of town to grab lunch. Food Shark, the local mobile eatery, did not disappoint. When we arrived promptly at noon, there was already a hungry throng queued up and lounging on Donald Judd–designed furnishings.

The sunlight, which burns bright and then disappears quickly behind the clouds, sends an ever-changing array of shadows onto the piazza.