Anura was initially created for the Wallpaper* handmade series in collaboration with leather manufacturer Santiago Gonzalez. The commission resulted in a stool with a "submissive, animal-like posture." The sulfur-colored version is the latest edition.

To create Pose, Bakker considered "the most elemental and the quickest way to create a bench: two vertical parts with a horizontal bar on top of them, a U shape upside down."

Aldo Bakker designed a watering can that's reduced to the simplest shape possible.

A porcelain reservoir for vinegar.

The Dutch's view from outside.

Avant-garde Dutch designer Aldo Bakker's 3dwn1up chair is built from five pieces of wood: one seat and four "legs," one of which functions as a backrest.

Three Pair is crafted from three abstract stone components that form a stool.

Bakker’s girlfriend, fashion and furniture designer Brecht Duijf, sometimes suggests colors for designs. “I would not have been able to think of these colors,” Bakker says, holding up tiny ceramic chips she selected to determine the palette for Jug, a water carafe with a neck bent over a drinking cup, looking like a primordial creature feeding its young.

Tonus is a sculptural stool made in 2010 from a solid block of oak that continues to swell and shrink like a “living, breathing” creature.

Strong lines on the floor and the walls reinforce the notion of old and new.

Bakker has designed many new kinds of vessels for producer and curator Thomas Eyck, his friend and first patron, including a watering can made of a single copper tube. “With the watering can, I questioned the relationship of its elements. I made the spout, handle, and container continuous and the same size. Everything is now container, handle, and spout at the same time.”

When working in the studio, Bakker says, “I always need to speak my idea out loud. Speaking and sketching at the same time help me to explain the idea. Then I do all the technical drawings myself because they drag me out of the illusion that I am almost there.”

Tiddo Bakker’s In Vena Verbum (Message in a Vein), is a kinetic metal sculpture, with motors and circuitry activated by a houseplant that is stimulated by light. At his eponymous studio that is affiliated with Collaboration O’, Bakker enlisted the help of physicist Henk Jalink and his team at the Centre for BioSystems Genomics to measure the activity and stress level of the plant and transmit that energy digitally to cause the sculpture to move.

“We wanted the wood to appear as natural as possible, so leaving the larch untreated was the first choice,” Bas explained. But the shape of the house would make the wood turn gray unevenly, so they blackened the larch. “The clients were excited with the dark color as it helps the house blend into the trees. They didn’t want the anything excessive or showy.” But blackened timber comes with its own challenges. Since it absorbs more heat, a larger air cavity was built behind the wood to keep it cool.

Aldo Bakker and Louise Campbell collections for Georg Jensen. See it at Rossana Orlandi, Via Matteo Bandello 14-16.

Among Bakker’s cherished objects that began as shapes with no fixed purpose is the 2006 three-legged Urushi stool coated with several layers of transparent Japanese lacquer that seem to “tremble next to each other.” That piece later evolved into Stool, an all-wood version, which won international plaudits on its release in 2010. “Home is very important to me but Brecht has more exquisite ideas about the interior,” Bakker says of their 850-square-foot harbor-front apartment. Duijf designed their coffee table—a beanbag-style base with a solid onyx top—and also scattered tons of little Ikea cushions onto a navy blue couch that the couple’s baby, Zora, likes to play on. Bentwood chairs and a leg splint by Charles and Ray Eames are complemented by sheepskin rugs and Bakker’s sample Stool.

Bakker’s 2010-2011 3dwn1up stool is crafted from elm and comprises a seat and four legs, one of which functions as an unconventional backrest

11th Anniversary: Steel Pitcher by Aldo Bakker for Georg Jensen Living, $380

On the corner of Prince and Sullivan in SoHo lies The Dutch restaurant. A former "leafy corner" that housed the Cub Room for years, Roman and Williams completely renovated the restaurant to have three main dining areas. Inspired by early SoHo, American roadside diners, and Scandinavian modernists like Alvar Aalto, the result is a fresh, cool take on an American classic—a familiar place that is timeless and will age well.

White brick walls and high glossed ceilings clad the interior. At the bar, open wood-and-metal stacked shelving stores various restaurant wares, such as glasses, matchbox jar, and mini condiment containers.

"The entire space is an exercise in looking both forward and back, in combining the formal and the informal—from the history of the space, to the eclectic menu, to the mix design references inside."

Aldo Bakker's stainless steel pitcher for Georg Jensen is as much a sculptural object as a functional one. For Georg Jensen's exhibition at Rossana Orlandi in Milan, each object was displayed as its opposite: an oil pourer set on a platform topped with a thin layer of oil, a water pitcher suspended in a transparent box filled with liquid.

“Who better than the farmer and the farmer's family to know how most effectively and easily to find efficiency?” says architect Alan Barlis. Regional architecture inspired the barn-life structure of the house, an open volume that aides in efficient heating and cooling of the space.

Tom Givone's current weekend abode, nicknamed the Floating Farmhouse, is—so far—his capstone project, a synthesis of personal taste, material experimentation, and historically sensitive restoration: a living laboratory for how to bring the vernacular past into the present.

Overhead cabinets now can be easily swung open for ease of access. The kitchens are priced at IKEA’s usual retails. A 10 by 10 foot kitchen fitted with Sektion cabinets will range from around $1,300 to $2,200, excluding appliances.

The Fume chair was inspired by "simple church and peasants' furniture." The chair contains just enough elements to function as a seat, and no more.

This "local prefab" home on the Isle of Skye is made mostly from materials sourced in northern Scotland. The timber-framed model, meant to evoke the simple agrarian barns of the area, can be constructed on-site in as little as a day and is designed for affordability.

The scraps originate from European cars, and over 200,000 workers in the neighborhood recycle them into vehicles that suit African roads.

Melle Smets and Joost van Onna worked with the local craftspeople to craft a special car, the SMATI Turtle 1, that was featured as part of Design Indaba Expo’s "Africa is Now" exhibition.

Dutch designers Melle Smets and Joost van Onna undertook a project with craftspeople in the Ghanaian neighbourhood of Suami Magazine, where discarded car parts are transformed into new vehicles.

Black and white kitchen tiles add visual interest to this stunning modern kitchen by IKEA.

Black and white kitchen cabinets painted with a triangular pattern add a whimsical touch to this funky kitchen.

Dutch designer Aldo Bakker's abstract, triangular cast Iron Pourer sports a versatile lid and is calibrated for the perfect oil pour. “And when you move it backwards, it immediately draws the fluid in," say Bakker. "I like this – as if the user conquers the can every time."

A tiny outbuilding offers a cozy living space inside a simple shell.

As the facade of a Bates Masi-designed home in Water Mill, New York, rises from eight to 14 feet high, the mahogany planks subtly widen. “It was quite a demand to make of the contractor,” architect Paul Masi says. “But the design was so much about traveling through the site and weaving [the house] together with the deck.”