Notes from NYCxDesign 2026: The Best Furniture, Installations, and Design Moments We Saw in New York
From RISD furniture and Swiss modernism to Marc Newson rarities and Lexus door acoustics, New York Design Week once again proved why the global design world still shows up for NYC. Here, design expert Gerardo Torres shares his notes from the field.
A Note on Reputation
New York Design Week, or NYCxDesign formally, gets knocked around a lot. It's smaller than Fashion Week, they write. It pales to Milan’s Salone, they say. The events are hard to find, they groan.
Maybe so. But baby, this is still New York, which means everyone still comes out. The hunt for the next show is worth the effort. Among thousands of works; treasures await. By the end, you get a genuinely good snapshot of where the design world is right now— absent our fashion friends— all in one chaotic trance.
Note 1: Don’t Sleep on Student Design Work
There's something about a student showing their work in New York for the first time. The freshest thinking in the room almost never comes from the biggest booth.
Students from the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design at the University of Arkansas had a lovely display of 3D-printed lamps at the Afternoon Light Design Fair. Seemingly every design fair nowadays has a 3D-printed lamp moment, and usually it's exactly what you expect. This wasn't. These kids pulled genuinely organic shapes out of that process.
The RISD Furniture Design department bested even the most seasoned manufacturers at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF) with their craftsmanship.
Screenshot 2017-01-02 at 01.35.00 PM by Russ Fogle. Image: via RISD Furniture Design.
Russ Fogle showed a chair titled "Screenshot 2017-01-02 at 01.35.00 PM", a lyrical re-imagining of Shaker furniture. The screenshot timing is related to the death of the third living Shaker, Sister Frances Carr.
Cranbrook Industrial Design students with support from artist Leon Ransmeier and designer Fabien Cappello put on a show called Objectos de Hojalata: trays, carafes, and other handsome home objects made from hand-worked Mexican sheet metal.
Objectos de Hojalata, featuring work by Cranbrook Industrial Design students. Image: via NYCxDesign.
The objects had this lovely tension of having forms very much in the now, but rendered in traditional craft.
Note 2: StudioTwentySeven leads a return to Beauty
At one point, I sat down with Nacho Polo and Robert Onuska, the founders of StudioTwentySeven in Tribeca, to talk through their latest exhibition of collectible furniture, Tessuto.
The collection was conceived by French designer Francesco Balzano during his residency at the Villa Medici in Rome. This was exquisite textile craft in conversation with modern forms. The standout piece was the “TESII3” chair, which made me think of what Marie Antoinette would have commissioned from Donald Judd. Beautiful.
TESII3 chair by Francesco Balzano. Image: via StudioTwentySeven.
Note 3: Swiss Design, Vitra, and the Eames Connection
The Consulate General of Switzerland presented Frame in Frame – Swiss Design in Motion at the always chic WSA building. Curator Christian Herren, in partnership with PIN-UP Art Director Ben Ganz and designers Panter&Tourron, used contemporary furniture by Swiss brands Lehni and Vitra as the backdrop for films from the 60’s.
Frame in Frame – Swiss Design in Motion presented by the Consulate General of Switzerland. Image: via Frame in Frame.
The first film they showed was the Eameses' Powers of Ten. I've always found the Swiss admiration for the Eameses quite endearing. There's something in there, the two very different design universes of Los Angeles and Basel, recognizing each other. It was great.
Notes 4-6: TEFAF, Marc Newson, and Seeing The Real Stuff
Most of us know the feeling of walking into MoMA and seeing something you’ve only seen in pictures for the first time. The long-running TEFAF Art Fair delivered that feeling for me.
At the fair, Carpenters Workshop Gallery brought Marc Newson's Pod of Drawers, made in 1987, at the very beginning of one of design's most dazzling careers. Its cousin, the Lockheed Lounge, auctioned for $3.7 million in 2015.
Pod of Drawers (1987) by Marc Newson. Image: via Carpenters Workshop Gallery.
Standing in front of it, I felt the particular awe that comes from being in the presence of early genius, the very proof that someone arrived with a completely new way of doing things. Famously, Marc never returned to rivets, finding their character too overpowering for everything that came after. Can you imagine the Apple Watch strap having rivets?
Galerie Laffanour partnered with French silversmith Puiforcat to show serving wares by Donald Judd and Rachel Whiteread. Whiteread's Silver Set 2025 brilliantly renders corrugated cardboard in silver. People stopped in front of them and just stood there, grinning.
Silver Set 2025 by Rachel Whiteread at Galerie Laffanour. Image: Gerardo Torres.
Paris-based Galerie Patrick Seguin brought exact miniature reproductions of Prouvé demountable structures to give well-heeled buyers an idea of what their backyard in Montauk could look like.
Miniature reproductions of Prouvé temporary structures at Galerie Patrick Seguin. Image: Gerardo Torres.
I won't pretend I didn't want one. I just don't have the space. Or the wallet. I’m sure they’d make a great shed for a chair collection.
Note 7: Woodwork at NYCxDesign
Kyle Stahler’s “Anna Chair” at Camber Atelier. Image: via Camber Atelier.
Camber Atelier's Kyle Stahler brought the best woodwork of the week. His Anna Chair is exquisitely made by hand in Detroit, and feels like a more organic Naoto Fukasawa. It’s beautifully sinuous, but fully resolved. An excellent piece of design.
Note 8: Montana and American Furniture Design Beyond New York
The most exhilarating show I saw all week didn't come from New York. Placed Gallery, out of Livingston, Montana, brought Put Together, a group exhibition featuring over 24 American designers.
Put Together by Placed Gallery. Image: Simon Leung via Placed Gallery.
My favorites were Dotan Appelbaum, Jake Coan, and beeep. Their work is surprising, optimistic, and inventive, the clearest snapshot I saw all week of where American furniture is heading. Put Together felt like the kind of American design that makes you feel like things might actually be okay. Which is not a small thing to feel right now.
Note 9: The Unexpected Collab at The Future Perfect and Dudd Haus
Design gallery The Future Perfect collaborated with Dudd Haus on Dudd Lite, a plug-in lamp exhibition featuring 120 lamps made by 120 different designers. Yes, one hundred and twenty individual light-emitting objects.
Dudd Lite. Image: via The Future Perfect.
My favorites were “The Paste”, a retractable glowing tube of toothpaste by Mohammad Asgari and Andrew Laska, and “NiteFränk”, a wooden sausage by Koba (Sam Acuff). Both made me laugh. Both made me think. That's the combination I'm always looking for.
Note 10: Lexus.
Lexus, yes, the car company, set up shop in Times Square with a series of events that were open to the public, including a live demonstration by Alex Alpert, executing his signature line work on a Lexus IS. Lexus also hosted a technical session with William Chergosky, the Chief Designer at CALTY, the brand’s interior design studio in the Americas.
Lexus at NYCxDesign, collaborating with Alex Alpert. Image: Lexus
The brand has always been design-forward in a nerdy way. Chergosky talked about the Lexus interior design process, including, specifically, the design process behind the sound car doors make when you close them. I did not expect to find this fascinating, but I did.
The brand capped the week with a lavish launch party for their newest vehicle, the TZ; a monolithic yet minimalistic block of an SUV.
That's design week, really. You think you know what you're going to care about, and then someone marvelously explains the acoustics of a car door closing, and you realize you don't know anything about design at all.
Which is, of course, why we keep going.
About the Author
Gerardo Torres is an Art Director based in New York, New York, but you'll have the most luck finding him at Grace Farms in Connecticut, or the Vitra Schaudepot in Weil am Rhein, Germany, looking at chairs. He's been a designer at Anagrama, the Harvard Innovation Lab, and the Center for Health + Technology. He writes about design at The Gerardo Guide (Instagram).
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