Philippe Malouin’s Latest Pieces Are Deceptively Sturdy, and Other News

The Design Dispatch offers expertly written and essential news from the design world crafted by our dedicated team. Think of it as your cheat sheet for the day in design delivered to your inbox before you’ve had your coffee. Subscribe now. 

Have a news story our readers need to see? Submit it here.

Mistakes Inform Philippe Malouin’s Offset Collection for Resident

Philippe Malouin admits that some of his most memorable creations arise from mistakes. That may seem like a surprising revelation from a designer whose portfolio—cascading chandeliers for Matter Made, plush armchairs for Established & Sons, and modular sofas for De Sede—almost seem like master classes in precision. But playful errors form the cornerstone of Offset, the British designer’s latest collection for New Zealand furniture brand Resident, which features a range of heavy-duty solid oak furnishings whose legs are slightly askew. 

“I was trying to put a leg on something and then I drilled the hole wrong,” Malouin says. “It was offset. When I put it on, that’s when I had the idea for a larger collection around this new concept.” Encompassing benches, shelving, and coffee, dining, and side tables, Offset has near-limitless arrangements thanks to an off-center threaded connector that enables the legs to locate themselves in adjustable positions. Malouin marvels at the visual effect of the bookshelf: “Instead of having this one leg that’s offset, you get two of them; the idea becomes accentuated.” What does he recommend putting on them? “Lots of photography and fine art books. This is a very solid shelf, so you definitely don’t need to worry about the weight.”

A maze-like restaurant in India enters the “realm of sheer experimental design.”

Combining minimalistic Zen with indigenous Indian materials, the maze-like restaurant Tin Tin in Chandigarh is the result of a variety of global influences. Renesa Architecture Design Interiors outfitted the pan-Asian spot inside the Toy Hotel in geometric mosaic walls and stone and terrazzo in shades of jade, brown, white, and gray-beige. 

Bank of America branches will soon exhibit works by disabled and homeless artists.

Artists with disabilities or dealing with homelessness will now have another outlet to showcase and find buyers for their work. Bank of America is teaming up with ArtLifting, an organization that assists underrepresented artists, to display works at up to 900 branches across the United States, with initial pieces being shown in New York, Denver, San Francisco, Chicago, Seattle, and Houston. Artists will receive 55 percent of the profits from a sale, with the rest going toward ArtLifting and other art groups. “We believe strongly in the power of the arts to help economies thrive and to create greater cultural understanding,” Aron Levine, president of preferred banking at Bank of America, said in a statement. 

Ienki Ienki designs custom parkas for members of the Ukrainian Antarctic expedition.  

Days before Russian president Vladimir Putin ordered an invasion of Ukraine, the Ukrainian fashion label Ienki Ienki announced a collaboration with the country’s National Antarctic Scientific Center. The brand will outfit members of the Ukrainian Antarctic expedition in durable parkas designed to withstand perilous temperatures that may descend to -17°F.  Made by Indian textile factory Majocchi, the outerwear is made using a three-layer fabric bonded with technical mesh that’s waterproof, windproof, and breathable.

Nick Cave will project his dancing Soundsuits onto the facade of Chicago’s theMART. 

Nick Cave is taking over Chicago starting in May, with a career retrospective opening at the city’s Museum of Contemporary Art on May 14 and a video art projection onto the facade of theMART on the Chicago riverfront. The latter, a remix of his 2011 video Drive-By, will feature dancers wearing his signature Soundsuits—bright, enveloping costumes made of everyday objects that obscure the wearer’s gender, race, and class.

“The footage created for Drive-By in 2011 marked a flashpoint in my career,” Cave says. “It was work I made in celebration of my Soundsuit editorial in Vogue magazine. I knew it was a powerful moment to share my work and to get it out of gallery spaces and into homes across the world. I saw it as a way to connect with folks unfamiliar with me or even the power of art. So this footage is imbued with that spirit.” The projections will occur twice per night from May 5 until September 7, with a preview of the projection going on view April 8 at the Expo Chicago Fair. 

Curators of the Ukrainian pavilion at the Venice Biennale are pausing preparations.

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last week, curators of the Ukrainian pavilion at the Venice Biennale have paused their preparations. “We’re not in immediate danger, but the situation is critical and changes every minute,” curators Lizaveta German, Maira Lanko, and Boys Filonenko, along with participating artist Pavlo Makov, wrote on Instagram. “Presently, we’re not able to continue working on the project of the pavilion due to the danger of our lives. We cannot confirm yet that our project will be completed, but we can promise that we will do everything possible to save unique artwork produced by Pavlo Makov and our big team specially for the upcoming biennial during the past five months, and to represent Ukraine in the international contemporary art scene the way it deserves to be represented.”

Today’s attractive distractions:

The U.S. military’s latest piece of robotic technology fixes up a mean salad.

Egyptologists unearth a giant cache of equipment used to embalm mummies.

One critic has high praise for Elden Ring’s “astonishingly rendered” universe.

Maisie Wilen charts new territory at NYFW by dressing a group of holograms.