Gotham goes global: From Milan to the Middle East, NYC designers take on the world

By Melissa Feldman and Carrie Seim

Published April 29, 2015, 7:30 p.m. ET

Spring marks the beginning of the annual international design season — with major fairs, exhibitions and events from Milan to Manhattan to the Middle East.

As the season kicks off, we headed to the front lines of design: the recent Design Days Dubai and Milan’s Salone del Mobile. Our focus? Top NYC talent making their mark both at home and abroad.

We report on the best of the best — along with must-know global design galleries and shops.

EMIRATE AESTHETIC: A REPORT FROM DESIGN DAYS DUBAI

Sheik Mansour Al Maktoum with Design Days Dubai director Cyril Zammit and Juan Garcia Mosqueda. Chito Pachica

Design Days Dubai, which this March featured captivating works from 20 countries and six continents, is quickly climbing the ranks of the world’s most elite design fairs — and drawing a coterie of NYC-based gallerists, architects, designers and buyers along for the ride.

Benjamin Aranda — co-founder of the NYC- and Tucson-based firm Aranda\Lasch, whose work has been exhibited at New York’s Museum of Art and Design (MAD) — made the desert trek to give an architectural talk and present one of his pieces during the fair, which drew a record 13,500 visitors.

“Design Days Dubai’s emphasis on both contemporary and local work is a really powerful and distinctive mix,” Aranda tells The Post. “I’ve been inspired by the traditional architecture and design that comes out of this region — it’s the birthplace of those motifs and patterns that come from mathematics and geometry that we see all over the contemporary design world.”

“Low Chair” by Aranda\Lasch via Gallery All. Handout

That includes his own “Low Chair” (displayed at the fair by Gallery ALL), engineered from silver-and-gold stainless steal forged into origami-like, crystalline geometrics.

NYC’s Chamber gallery also made its Dubai debut, showing playful works from Studio Job such as “Horse Bust (chess piece),” a re-engineered (but fully functional) vacuum cleaner mounted with a horse head, complete with a gilded mane, menacing red-LED eyes and a snout that sniffs when it’s switched on.

The “Horse” stood sentry near custom rose-gold falcon perches from Italian designer Massimo Faion, stainless-steel octopus-shaped chairs by the Paris-based Guillaume Piechaud (you can find those same chairs in Dior’s new boutique on Greene Street in NYC) and a grouping of glossy, black-lacquer wooden vases evoking a congress of abaya-clad women. Those “Arab Dolls” — created by Lebanese designer Carlo Massoud and presented by Beirut-based Carwan Galley — journeyed to Dubai via New York’s Armory Show, where they were shown just a few days prior.

Such creative international exchanges “are something we all need to foster, as gallerists, as designers, as curators,” Chamber founder Juan Garcia Mosqueda notes. “Part of the idea behind opening our space at Design Days Dubai is that we felt there was a void that needed to be addressed.”

Meanwhile, a grouping of swirling, undulating, acrylic glass tables from international starchitect Zaha Hadid — whose first NYC condo project (520 W. 28th St.) will soon hug the High Line and whose coffee tables were exhibited at MAD in NYC in 2013 — were on offer from the London-based David Gill Galleries. “Zaha’s furniture appeals worldwide, from east to west to north to south,” founder David Gill tells The Post. “People are really looking to an international market for something that is unusual — people have broken walls to get her tables into their homes.”

And NYC-based designer Norma Kamali, who’s created fashions for Beyoncé, Lady Gaga and Rihanna, presented a dozen striking black-and-white carpets she’d designed to support the Fatima Bint Mohamed Initiative. The hand-knotted carpets were woven by — and help fund — talented female artisans in Afghanistan.

“The idea was to encourage the collaboration between a modern designer with traditional ways of weaving carpet,” explains Anne Cabanel, a publicist for FBMI. “Buyers from all over the world then support the women in Afghanistan who want to work.”

A perfect exemplar of the blend of the design cultures that abounded at the fair, cleverly timed to coincide with Art Dubai, both of which are making the Emirate a new magnet for art and design lovers from around the globe.

“Diversity is the lifeblood of design,” fair director Cyril Zammit says, urging more NYC-based creatives to show off their wares in Dubai. “We need to push the door even more.”

DOLCE VITA: DETAILS FROM MILAN’S SALONE DEL MOBILE

New York-based art and architecture firm Snarkitecture — whose latest project debuted in Milan, where the 54th annual Salone Internazionale del Mobile just wrapped up April 19 — gets its name and inspiration from Lewis Carroll’s poem “The Hunting of the Snark,” which describes “an impossible voyage of an improbable crew to find an inconceivable creature.”

That sentiment sums up this year’s fair — where architects, retailers, interior designers, stylists, journalists and design groupies gather each April in search of hipper-than-hip products and innovative interior trends.

At the Rho fairgrounds, 310,000 visitors perused furniture exhibits — and the Euroluce lighting fair — while simultaneous parties and events were hosted as part of the citywide celebration called Fuorisalone.

While Milan is still the place for discovering international cutting-edge furniture design, New York makers and manufacturers have gained prominence as witnessed by the increase in product debuts.

Husk Chair, via moroso.it. Alessandro Paderni

They include Design Within Reach, R20th Gallery and Cara McCarty, Curatorial Director of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, as well as NYC-based designer Marc Thorpe, a Milan veteran whose Husk chair for Italian manufacturer Moroso was inspired by an ear of corn.

Thorpe says about the social aspect of working in Milan, “the work gets done over prosecco and pasta,” adding, “it’s not about design, but about developing a relationship over time.”

In the historic district of Brera, architects Alex Mustonen and Daniel Arsham — the duo behind Snarkitecture — presented an all-encompassing installation for the minimalist Swedish fashion brand COS, consisting of 30,000 perforated white fabric strips hung from the ceiling. Inspired by the Spring/Summer 2015 collection, the firm’s souvenir products included a tilt coaster, a white cement pillow key holder and a desktop memento made from marble dust (available at COS; 129 Spring St.). “Being here (in Milan) is like the perfect reminder of how we’re searching the void,” says Mustonen.

Sand painting collection, by Madeline Weinrib. Madeline Weinrib

Textile designer Madeline Weinrib, granddaughter of the founder of ABC Carpet, carried on her family legacy with the introduction of her Sand Paintings Collection of carpets and fabrics, colorful, hand-woven geometric patterned carpets and textiles that were showcased at Alberto Levi Gallery in Milan.

Weinrib was inspired by desert architecture and the Spanish abstract expressionist Antoni Tapies, who uses dirt, sand and crushed marble in his works.

Entrepreneur and design impresario George Beylerian began his career in 1964 selling contemporary Italian home furnishings at his New York shop Scarabaeus.

Now five decades later, Beylerian was back in Milan at the Palazzo Litta with the launch of Design Memorabilia, his latest venture which includes a tabletop collection consisting of 32 objects — from salt and pepper grinders to flatware — all original products by the masters of Italian industrial design. The affordable range was created with a nod to the food-themed Expo 2015 (available at moma.org).

Tory Burch’s “lettuce ware” collection. Marco Cella

“It was a little surreal to see our work in another country, but a nice way to ease into understanding the international scene,” says Milan newbie Crystal Ellis, who, along with Stephanie Beamer and Hillary Petrie, is the design trio behind Egg Collective.

The three met in St. Louis at Washington University before moving to New York in 2011 to launch their design brand.

Their chic lighting — including the hand-blown glass and oak Tyler Table Lamp — was showcased at the Milan outpost of the Soho retailer BDDW, while a marble cake stand was featured across town on Via San Gregorio as part of Wallpaper Magazine’s Handmade exhibit.

American retailer Design Within Reach (DWR) represents a bevy of designers who presented work in Milan this year, including Jason Miller, David Weeks and Egg Collective.

DWR CEO John Edelman was seen strolling around town and observed: “To see Brooklyn designers showing their work in Milan demonstrates an evolution in the design industry.

I’ve consistently praised Brooklyn as a hotbed for fresh design talent, and it’s wonderful to see that the Europeans have embraced the movement.”