Weird and Wonderful Decor Designers
Freaks and chics.
The work of Brecht Wright Gander Studio.
When it comes to decor and interior design, it can feel as though everyone is doing the same thing. Maximalism is coming back in style, and the design trends for 2021 are all about emphasizing the baroque and the loud. We’ve put together a list of designers with styles so singular they couldn’t possibly be mistaken for anything but one of a kind .
Brecht Wright Gander Studio
This U.S.-based designer makes items that are confusing, colourful, and above all experimental. Combatting what he has called “decadent functionalism,” whereby the design industry solves problems it has created, Gander produces pieces that forefront contradictions, libidinal energies, and amorphous qualities in material. Straddling the pernicious boundary between design and art, his work continues to both enthuse and transgress.
Noda Designs
Founded by designer Nora Voon, Noda is a studio that started by bringing together off-kilter design items to the Canadian market. Recently, the studio has expanded into making its own bespoke pieces designed to infuse colourful oddities into otherwise banal spaces.
Dorothylab
Dorothylab, an Italian daydream turned reality thanks to Elisa Bortesi and Elisa Galli, takes elements of the drab or forgotten in Italian rustic design and revives them with objects that could have come straight from the pages of Minotaure. On its website, the brand talks about its newest project, twenty D: “an idea born of the desire to lovingly and gently rediscover and update those good things of bad taste—as so effectively defined by the sarcasm of the poet Guido Gozzano—which are part of the domestic experience of most Italians.”
Sylvia Lee
Lee is the executive director at Jeff Goodman Studio, a glass studio devoted to pressing the material to its physical and conceptual limits. For DesignTO 2021, Lee designed a series called Telescope with Avenue Road. These pieces are meant to turn everyday items like mirrors and stools into portals by using the studio’s special Chroma glass.
