New York’s design industry is driven by independent talents and studios that emerged around the Great Recession. Limited resources and high rents lead many autonomous practices to share space, organize group exhibitions during and outside NYCxDesign, and collaborate on new designs. Self-production and self-promotion are central, with occasional support from centralized galleries and retail concept spaces such as Assembly Line. Built from the successful interior practice General Assembly, Assembly Line provides furnishing and finishing solutions for trade professionals and individual customers and hosts solo exhibitions for emerging designers. During New York Design Week, it launched Kawabi and Christopher Merchant’s Amica lighting collection, positioning itself as a patron gallery that showcases and helps produce designs. The collaboration pairs Merchant’s extruded ceramic process with Kawabi’s reinterpreted joinery and papermaking techniques, creating fused expertise and results greater than individual contributions.
"New York's design industry, defined by an ever-thriving community of independent talents and studios that arguably first emerged during the Great Recession of 2008, is unquestionably resourceful and inventive. Making do with limited resources and exorbitant rents, many autonomous practices come together to share space, mount group exhibitions during and outside of the annual NYCxDesign festival, and increasingly collaborate on fresh designs. Unlike in Europe, where it is slightly easier for independent talents to partner with established manufacturers, self-production and self-promotion are the name of the game here."
"There is, from time to time, help from centralizing galleries and retail concept spaces like Assembly Line. Derived from the wildly successful interior practice General Assembly, this hybrid platform has become an essential resource, purveying various furnishing and finishing solutions to fellow trade professionals and individual customers alike. Over the past few years, it has also played host to several solo exhibitions debuting new collections by New York's flock of fledgling designers."
"With the launch of Kawabi and Christopher Merchant's Amica lighting collection during this year's New York Design Week, Assembly Line is positioning itself as a patron gallery: one that not only showcases new designs but also helps produce them, making critical connections between talents and manufacturers while linking talents with other talents. As evident in this deftly imagined offering of pendant, table, and wall-mounted luminaires, the results of the latter arrangement are often greater than the sum of their parts."
"There is a pairing, matching, and ultimately fusing of expertise: distinctive design vocabularies that complement each other. In this case, it is Merchant's captivating extruded ceramic process and Kawabi's-Aaron and Irisa Na-Chan Kawabi's-masterfully reinterpreted traditional joinery and papermaking techniques. Both have primarily applied their"
#independent-design-studios #new-york-design-industry #assembly-line #lighting-design #collaboration-and-production
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