The Schlumberger Research Center Administration Building, located in Ridgefield, Connecticut, was completed in 1952. Known locally as “The Philip Johnson Building,” the single story structure housed research scientists and the executive team for an oil and drilling equipment company. It’s set atop an underground garage, and designed in a style architecture fans will recognize as quintessentially Johnson.

It’s a shame we don’t have before-pictures. If we did, we could take in the full transformation of the building, which sat empty for a decade and required extensive restoration. It took BassamFellows eight years to complete the historic renovation, keeping all of the steel, glass and brick bones that make the building so special and accenting them with contemporary elements for a fresh update on midcentury modern style.

If there’s one defining feature of the space, it’s the abundance of natural light streaming into the glass and bricked-in spaces. The result is a feeling of connection to the natural world while remaining protected from the weather, traffic, and activity outside. There’s something serene about the simplicity of the pale gray bricks combined with warm wooden trim. The simple lines and stylish furniture from the firm’s collection reinforce this peaceful vibe.

The central courtyard, with its showcased curving evergreen tree, grounds the structure, and gives it a dash of extra personality. Operable panels allow free air circulation when the weather is nice, so adjacent lounge areas almost feel like they’re outdoors.

BassamFellows uses the building as their headquarters, design studio and showroom. To make sure they did justice to the original structure and its primary architect, they researched the building’s original ratings at the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library of Columbia University.

From the architects: “By converting areas that were originally designed as secretarial pools, BassamFellows created large lounge areas that serve as collaborative spaces. This minor change gives the building the perfect mix of private vs. public space and feels completely in step with contemporary ways of working. It’s a wonderful testament to good design that the building is as relevant today as it was radical then. The restoration project recently received a preservation award from Docomomo US.”

Prior to renovation, this building was “virtually unknown” as an example of Philip Johnson’s work. Now, it’s a fitting tribute to the American architect best known for his “Glass House” in New Canaan, Connecticut (1949), sculpture garden at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (1953), and Johnson building at the Boston Public Library (1972).

Led by Craig Bassam and Scott Fellows, BassamFellows is a multidisciplinary firm producing architectural projects, modern interiors and high end furniture.

From the firm: “BassamFellows’ pioneering Craftsman Modern aesthetic, which marries architectural authority with a minimal-artisanal philosophy, was introduced with the debut of the iconic BassamFellows Tractor Stool at the 2003 Salone del Mobile in Milan. From its inception, the company has focused on building relationships with some of the world’s leading craftspeople, whilst forging innovative and intelligent collaborations across the worlds of architecture, branding and design.”

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The lines include more than 80 stunning, unique pieces that can complement rooms of almost any size or color palette. Styles range from sleek and modern, to retro and iconoclastic, to classic and antique. Materials vary from metal and rattan to rubberwood, lightweight Scandinavian wood, and mango wood. Any collection you or piece you choose can help make your home the ideal place to kick back, relax and enjoy the onset of autumn.

Aria Curved Metal Collection

Concentrating on tubular forms for frames and bases, the Aria Curved Metal Collection cuts a minimalist profile from bedroom to living room. Thin legs and inset fine points give the beds a delicate quality, a rack built to showcase record collections is ideal for a den or living room, and the white-on-white theme throughout is smartly smashing. Prices for beds are under $600, racks and small tables are under $200.

Huxley Mid Century Modern Collection

Tree-huggers will love the Huxley Mid Century Modern Collection for its stylish use of rubberwood—hailed as “environmentally friendly” since it comes from plantation trees that have already served a practical purpose. The dense grain of rubberwood is aesthetically appealing, and less likely to warp or shrink than other materials.

The rich wooden finish of the pieces in this line is warm and inviting, and the collection features nostalgic pieces from the mid-20^th century. The assortment is designed for smaller spaces and is priced mid-range.

Lita Wood Slatted Collection

If you’re a fan of sleek, modern lines and light-as-air wood that pairs well with casually draped upholstery and chic slatted styles, the Lita Wood Slatted Collection will fulfill your decorating desires. From storage cabinets with adjustable rods and drawers, to kitchen carts that make entertaining easy, the pieces in this group are a little pricier than the others, but accordingly elegant.

Mikko Rattan Collection

Combining rattan and metal, the Mikko Rattan Collection harkens back to the diverse styles of the 60s and 70s, updating those older designs with refinement and class. Curved rattan over sections of exposed iron add a welcoming flair to the beds, and from settee sofas to bedroom dressers, the pieces have a warm, comfortable feel. Prices range from $180 for a nightstand to $800 for beds and chests of drawers.

Virginia Carved Wood Collection

Classicists will swoon over the Virginia Carved Wood Collection. This bedroom set features carved mango wood accented by metal, and includes a simple, mid-century vanity with a curvy tri-fold mirror. Whether you choose a natural wood finish or opt for the white collection, the vintage lines and tastefully underplayed details evoke old-fashioned romance. This collection is priced in the midrange—from the vanity listed at $480 to the queen bed at $800.

The new collections are available in full online. Select pieces are for sale in designated showrooms nationwide.

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A lot of today’s kitchen designs are still based on the assumption that all homes require full-sized cooking appliances. But that’s not always true, especially in urban environments. Many people just don’t use their kitchens that often, or they’re only cooking for themselves. It’s about time we collectively rethink what we need from our kitchens (and the rest of our homes) and ask for designs that are more functional for modern lifestyles.

One concept that aims to save space and look good doing it is the Ordine from Adriano Design, a set of stove burners (or “hobs,” as they say in the UK) that hang on the wall when they’re not in use. The designers, brothers Davide and Gabriele Adriano, rightly point out that the common stovetop and oven range combo seen in most contemporary houses doesn’t meet everyone’s needs.

Today’s urban homes are getting smaller, so space is at a premium. Plus, more people than ever live semi-nomadic lifestyles, moving frequently for their jobs or to check out new cities. It makes sense to make home interiors more modular and transformable, tucking away seldom-used items so they don’t take up valuable square footage.

The Ordine stove breaks out of the ordinary in a variety of ways. First of all, its two-burner design is just the right size for many people who only cook every now and then. It features a touch-screen interface to adjust the temperature or set a timer. When it’s hung back up after use, it barely takes up any space. Plus, it has a high-tech look that fits in with other gadgets around the home, which is more than we can say for most kitchen appliances.

“Ordine! A revolution that will change the cooktop concept, a ‘burner’ that you freely place whenever you need to on our job and then, when you have finished, you just need to hang it like a cooking utensil or pot,” the designers say. “More freedom to interpret cooking space, modularity, grading … a small brick. Ordine transforms and creates a new order in things … in the kitchen … Ordine is a revolution — a deconstruction of the induction hob as we know it today. The hob is no longer an irremovable block in your kitchen, where the distance between the nozzles is never enough when you are cooking with larger pots. With Ordine, you will decide at what distance the nozzles need to be while cooking and how to put them back, leaving the surface free when you don’t need to cook.”

Flexible and adaptable, the Ordine is a clever way to free up space in small kitchens. Imagine how cool it would be if your entire kitchen was modular like this, so you had total control over how all the elements were arranged.

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Coffee is an American pastime like football and barbecuing burgers. Most of us are not human without our first cup of Joe. But when it comes to coffeemaker design, we typically think … Italian. Or German. Wrong. Norway is where it’s at. Norway has a huge coffee culture; not the artisanal espresso brews that have swept our nation as of late, but black, classic filtered coffee. Cue Wilfa.

This Nordic electrical appliance company designs gorgeous coffee makers such as the Wilfa Svart Manuell. Winner of the Award for Design Excellence from the Norwegian Design Council, it is an object crafted – in cooperation with super barista and coffee connoisseur par excellence Tim Wendelboe – for pour-over style, manual hand-brewing. This process invites to slow down and be in the moment, because you pour the water over the ground coffee yourself. Even better, it doesn’t create as much waste as the popular pod and K-cup machines. The kettle holds 1.2 liters, and you can use regular Melitta filters.

If that’s too much effort on a bleary-eyed morning, check out Wilfa’s Precision Coffee Maker, an elegant automatic filter brewer. Aficionados of this award-winning coffee maker rave about its precision temperature and water control, and the fact that it brews a “coffee to the Golden Cup standard of the Specialty Coffee Associations of America (SCAA) and Europe (SCAE).” It’s available in sleek aluminum and stylish black. Learn more at www.wilfa.no and shop at www.williams-sonoma.com.

“I have spent a lot of time over the past 2 years together with Wilfa giving them feedback and teaching them about coffee. The first result was the manual brewer “Svart Manuell”, but that was meant as a teaser and a tool for the coffee geek to play with while we waited for the automatic version. There is a lot of technology and work put in to this pretty coffee brewer, and I think it looks awesome. It also brews really good filter coffee, but still you need to get your basics right like any other brewing techniques:

• Use traceable and freshly roasted and ground coffee of high quality
• Use clean fresh water with low mineral content (Tap water in Norway is perfect in most cases)
• Use precise measurements. I recommend 60-70g per litre of water depending on how strong you want it. Use a scale to measure.
• Make sure you grind the coffee to the right particle size. Too coarse will give you a watery and sour taste. Too fine will lead to bitter tastes.”

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Making tea has always been a soothing ritual, whether you use tea that comes in bags or loose-leaf teas that you load into an infuser. The Dreaming Whale tea infuser from Gongdreen is a sweet take on plain, boring tea infusers.

Meant to look like a whale in the middle of a pleasant dream, the Dreaming Whale opens its mouth to hold your loose-leaf tea. Close the mouth and dip the whale into a mug of hot water and you’re minutes away from your comforting beverage.

Water enters and exits through small holes in the whale’s body, gently joining tea leaves and hot water in a happy infusion of the restorative drink enjoyed around the world.

The whale’s cute water spout is used to swish around the infuser as the tea is being made. But it can also be detached and used as a stirrer or decoration for your beverage of choice. This would definitely make a cute gift for the tea lover in your life, and it only costs $13. Get it at Gongdreen, where you can find other tea-related items and loose tea as well.

“Do you know the sperm whale? The oil of the sperm whale is known to be one of Earth’s best natural elixirs. The motif of this product is a sperm whale dreaming a peaceful dream somewhere in the deep sea. It’s like drinking Earth’s best natural elixir!”

“Slow down your day with a Dreaming Whale tea break. You can enjoy the tea time when your tea is gently brewed through the Dreaming Whale’s tummy.”

“Open the cap of the whale’s belly under the whale’s body and add the tea. 
If you use the “stream of water” to put the whale in hot water, you can pump it conveniently.  You can see the water coming up. If you want to stir tea, just use the ‘stream of water.'”

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Design Bar, Note Design Studio

Swedish design firm Note was invited to create the Design Bar, a restaurant and bar within the fair that aims to highlight a particular Nordic designer. In a romantic palette of pinks, blushes, and burgundys, the Design Bar exemplifies the best that Scandinavian design has to offer: class, purpose, and generosity. With the idea of making a warm and inviting zone to contrast the harsh Swedish winter outside, Note created a variety of seating areas, from round tables with plush seating, to linear bars upholstered with woven fabrics, attended to by wood and leather high stools, all immaculately detailed.

Maissi Bench, Studio Kaksikko

Finnish design firm Studio Kaksikko presented their Maissi Bench, an exercise in precision and craftsmanship. The bench is a purist’s dream, with asymmetrical, curved rails and a simple wooden plane for the seat evoking the stair balustrades and industrial pipes on which the bench was modeled.

Prison Furniture Prototypes, University of Bergen Students

A slightly unusual, yet highly commendable, set of furniture was debuted at the design festival. Students from Bergen’s faculty of design worked with staff from Norway’s correctional services to create a range of furniture designed to be more hospitable to inmates. A curved daybed aims to promote relaxation, a twin-backed chair offers to ease anxiety post-release by “hugging” the user, and a minimal standing lamp has been created with an easy design that can be replicated in a prison workshop.

Best Stand, Kinnarps

British office-furniture designers Kinnarps took away the prize for best stand. Their multi-platform construction was clad in blue, semi-opaque panels and acted as a testament to the brand’s 75 year history. The stand won for what the judges considered its reinforcement of the brand’s core identity, the fundamental purpose of a stand at a trade fair.

Outdoor Furniture, Tom Fereday

Australian-born industrial designer Tom Fereday channeled his outdoor lifestyle to create a collection of sturdy, durable and water-resistant chairs and a table designed for outside use. Created for Australian brand SP01, the furniture adheres to principles of honesty in their design. The chairs are formed by overlapping slender strands of metal wire to form ergonomic shells.

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Designers prefer to think about a whole composition than a single piece, yet the way home hardware works does not always lend itself to this approach. Take the classic dichotomy of door+handle, for example – no matter how classic or modern, these are generally considered separate objects.

Albed has taken a slightly different approach, dispensing with knobs altogether and building the opening-and-closing functionality straight into the cores of doors themselves. Now if only they could do something about those hinges, too (so cleverly concealed but no doubt still there when the doors are opened). Handle-free doors might sound strange, but they operate in a cool way.

From recessed pull handles (and push buttons) to curved built-in handles that seem to fold out of the surface, these designers have developed a line of (both real working and concept models) that illustrate various other ways to reconsider the age-old relationship of major opening and minor fixture. Fad, trend or timeless design? Hard to say – we will see how people feel about getting so closely in touch with their everyday door.

“Venturing beyond the limits of imagination: RING is INNOVATION capable of surprising us once again; the handle is a circular hole hiding a SOPHISTICATED opening technology.”

“Habits are hard to lose, but when faced with the ELEGANCE of the BLOW door, one is faced with the essence of simplicity. The vertical grip of the handle becomes a natural operation. The door panel is no longer fl at, its form shapes into a wave and the handle is its inside groove.”

“Albed was founded in 1964 with the idea of making high-quality design aluminium complements. It has developed its style and its own production skills, while maintaining its original goals. Our products are made entirely in italy, with raw materials that comply with all environment and safety criteria.”

“A wide ranging production of doors, room dividing systems and walk-in wardrobes. These solutions can adapt to any space, to furnish rooms while creatively optimising every area of the home and office in a refined, thoughtful and innovative manner. Technology, know-how and our production cycle that is entirely an internal process, allows us to make products and offer a “tailor-made” service for every furnishing need.”

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Making its North American debut in February 2019 on the “Big Fat America Tour,” Dixon’s new collection is designed to hug the body in a variety of seated positions. The rounded cushions on these dining chairs, lounge chairs, and bar stools encircle you with molded foam when you sit down. The London-based designer says the “extreme simplicity” of their components, including the glossy black metal bases, is a testament to form following function “while maintaining a humorous silhouette and a reductionist aesthetic.”

There’s something instantly iconic about these chairs’ shapes, particularly in this palette of black, gray, beige, and ivory. The aim of FAT, and of many other Dixon designs, is to strip out all unnecessary complexity, leaving behind a refreshingly usable object that’s also gallery-worthy in its own right. The design process played a significant role in these results, starting with quality materials and intriguing shapes and using full-sized mockups and prototypes to produce pleasing proportions.

For OPAL, Dixon formulated a custom tinted white opalescent polycarbonate for the globes to produce a ghostly ethereal effect of soft, diffused light. The spheres were then blow-molded for a shape that’s just imperfect enough to appear organic. The collection is comprised of two different-sized pendant lamps, a surface-mounted lamp, a vertical floor lamp, and an arcing floor lamp.

Dixon notes that new technologies help spur his creative approach to these new pieces, particularly when it came to lighting. The digitization of the manufacturing industry is providing designers with unprecedented freedom to experiment with innovative new materials and small production runs of concept products.

Dixon’s website reads: “Tom is a restless innovator who works mainly in lighting, accessories, and furniture. From his departure point in the early eighties welding salvaged steel into radical furniture, he has constantly reinvented himself through a series of different design lives — working on luxury Italian goods with Cappellini, Creative Director at Habitat and Artek, creating plastics company Eurolounge, and finally instigating his own eponymous brand in 2002 to rethink the product designer’s relationship with industry.”

“The latest chapter of Tom’s design journey began in 2002 when he left corporate life to create his own eponymous brand as a platform for a series of new adventures in the design of products and interiors. 15 years on, Tom Dixon is now a widely celebrated global force in interior design, with hubs in New York, Hong Kong, London, Los Angeles, and Tokyo. Our 600 products range from lighting to furniture, from tableware through to fragrance, and are distributed in over 65 countries; they are instantly recognizable for their sculptural qualities and engineered materiality.”

Selected items from the FAT series of upholstered seating are available for purchase online at Tom Dixon’s shop, starting at £725 GPB (about $980 USD).

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