An Insider’s Guide to This Year’s Los Angeles Design Week/End
The third edition, which is on through October 4, features an abundance of local makers and brands
Los Angeles Design Week/End, which returns this year for its third edition (through Oct. 4), is remarkable for two reasons. One is the pronounced local focus: Where global design weeks often revolve around major international brands, “We have such an abundance of makers and smaller brands and artists,” says founder Holland Denvir. “Having a fair that focuses on them first is really important in L.A.” The resulting program showcases the uniqueness of the local creative community, with a lineup of events that could seemingly only happen in L.A.: a film festival at the microcinema, an embroidery workshop along the Los Angeles River, lessons in intuitive woodworking, midcentury home tours, and at least one party with a mechanical bull. This year’s 140 participants run the gamut of architecture firms, historic residences, fashion studios, restaurants, woodshops, and more. “If you’re in the creative world, which almost anything in Los Angeles is, you’re welcome to participate,” Denvir says. “The vibe of the festival is the more the merrier.”
The other remarkable feature of LAD/W is its transformation of a notoriously sprawling, car-dependent city into a series of walkable experiences: Over the course of four days, the itinerary unfolds as a roving “progression” across the map, focusing on one adjacent neighborhood after the other. “The city can be a tough nut to crack,” according to Denvir, who hopes that LAD/W resolves the stressful guesswork for out-of-towners. Making the most of visitors’ time in L.A., they added, the progression removes the hazards of rush hour traffic. “It’s designed in a way that you don’t have to drive more than 10 minutes.”
Below are some of the can’t-miss highlights from this year’s edition.
1. Design in Motion Film Fest
Billed as “a long day of shorts,” the inaugural edition of the curated “Design in Motion” film festival showcases bite-sized features on the topics of interior design, architecture, photography, and more, with all-day designer hosts Adi Goodrich and HUBBAHUBBA studio’s Jake Harrison. The venue, Now Instant Image Hall, is also an attraction in itself, best known for the floor-to-ceiling, velvety green upholstery of its intimately scaled screening rooms. The film festival conveniently wraps up in time for the Chinatown After Party at the nearby Café Tondo, a former mechanic shop transformed by Aunt Studio into a sidewalk cafe illuminated by red neon lights.
Now Instant, 939 Chung King Rd, Los Angeles. Thursday, Oct. 1, 12:00 p.m.—7:30 p.m.
2. The Living Room We Carry
Occupying the quintessential formerly industrial Arts District loft, DAGA is an event space that feels like a living room, furnished with vintage and contemporary objects sourced between Seoul and L.A. Its LAD/W event presents work by contemporary Korean artists, like Kwon Taeho + Oh Seungtaek’s contemporary riffs on traditional woodworking, Hyunju Kim’s sculptures made from hanji paper, and Yoon Junho’s ceramics inspired by buncheong slip-decorated stoneware. Artists will be present to lead craft workshops, and house-infused soju will be served. Before the party, peruse exhibitions at the nearby showrooms of Allsteel, Kvadrat, and Vitra.
DAGA Space, 837 Traction Ave, Los Angeles. Friday, October 2, 6:00 p.m.—10:00 p.m.
3. Subliminal Woodcarving
Leading a session in communal, improvisational whittling, artist and woodworker Ellie Richards invites guests to get lost in the process and allow their intuition to take hold. The event takes place in Eagle Rock’s Home Guts, a lifestyle and furniture store by artist Tim Biskup, full of records, vintage office supplies, and works of art.
Home Guts, 4136 Verdugo Rd, Los Angeles. Saturday, October 3, 11:00 a.m.—4:00 p.m.
4. Los Angeles Sets a Table
Rethinking the group show as a dinner party, designer Cathy Callahan and branding agency Thoughtforms Studio invited more than 30 L.A.-based artists and makers to collaboratively furnish the dining room. The resulting place settings, presented at Ravenhill Studio in Glassell Park, emphasize handmade textures, wildly contrasting patterns, and one-of-a-kind objects. Highlights include, but are not limited to, Peter Shire’s color-blocked, geometric teapots; Buddy System’s astoundingly realistic paper florals, arranged in ceramics by Linda Hsiao and baskets by Twenty-One Tonnes; folkloric candletoppers by Wendy Polish; and Ravenhill Studio’s experimental flatware made by galvanizing cloth.
Ravenhill Studio, 2122 Cypress Ave, Los Angeles. Sunday, Oct. 4, 3:00 p.m.— 8:00 p.m.
5. Paul McCobb Museum
Around 2005, purely as a hobby, former skateboarder Yogi Proctor began diligently collecting and studying the work of Paul McCobb, an influential American midcentury designer whose name never quite achieved the household status of contemporaries like Herman Miller or the Eames. Two decades later, Proctor is now a leading McCobb authority, having amassed both an encyclopedic knowledge and 7,000 pieces of the late designer’s work. His private Silver Lake home serves as a “living museum” to all things McCobb, where collection highlights include furniture from his best-selling Planner Group line, as well as his lesser-known textiles, vintage Esquire spreads, and other deep cuts.
Private residence. Address provided with appointment. Sunday, October 4, 11:00 a.m.— 4:00 p.m.