5 Influential Women in the World of Modern Design

We’ve celebrated women all month long in our Friday Five column in honor of Women’s History month, but we didn’t want it to end there. While design has long been a male-dominated field, we’re finally seeing the balance shift with more and more notable women not just entering the arena, but taking over and permanently cementing their names in history. Today, we’re taking a look at five influential women in the world of modern design who deserve to be household names.

Photo courtesy of Cecilie Manz

Fresh off a Designer of the Year win from Maison&Objet 2018, award-winning Danish designer Cecilie Manz continues breaking the mold in the design world working with major brands, like Fritz Hansen, B&O, Muuto, Duravit, Georg Jensen Damask, Iittala, Fredericia Furniture, and more, creating everything from bathtubs, furniture, speakers, lighting, textiles, objects, and glassware. Her Scandinavian roots prominently show through in each of her designs with a clean, minimalist approach that brands and consumers both appreciate.

Beoplay P2 Bluetooth speaker for B&O Play

Caravaggio lighting for Fritz Hansen \\\ Photo by Christian B / YELLOWS

Aitio shelves and storage boxes for Iittala

Photo by Laurel Golio, courtesy of Metropolis Magazine

Japan-born, Brooklyn-based Nao Tamura brings a clean, serene aesthetic to everything she creates, no matter what material she’s working with. Whether it’s wood or glass, her thoughtful designs merge both her Japanese and New York cultures resulting in pieces that very easily fall into the category of art and not just product design. Along with many awards under her belt, the prolific designer works with a multitude of brands, including nanimarquina, Hem, Wonderglass, Established & Sons, HBF, Nikari, and Artek ,to name a few.

Quill rug collection for nanimarquina

Kanso Bench with Table for HBF

Flow[T] chandelier for Wonderglass

Photo by Evan Miller

Lauren Larson is 1/2 of the duo behind Material Lust, a New York City based design studio she co-founded with partner Christian Swafford. The pair met at Parsons The New School for Design where she earned her BFA and quickly got to work steadily building a diverse portfolio of forward-thinking work that redefines the dark side of design. Their bold work stands out for all the right reasons, leaving a majestic impression that you’ll never forget and never want to. From furniture, lighting, textiles, art, an experimental space named the ANNEX, and a side endeavor called Orphan Work, it’s no doubt that Larson, and Material Lust, will continue breaking the chains and leaving basic design behind.

Crawl Chair

Opioid Painting

002 Pendant from Orphan Work

Photo courtesy of Cristina Celestino

Born in Pordenone, Italy, Cristina Celestino first worked as an architect after graduation before changing gears to focus on interior architecture and design. She founded her design brand, Attico Design, in 2009 when she moved to Milan and since then has been designing for brands like Seletti, Fendi, Tonelli Design, Nilufar, Fujifilm, Bulgari, and Sergio Rossi. Her partnership with Fendi in 2016 led to The Happy Room collection, which made its debut at Design Miami/, featuring pieces that were indeed happy. She has a knack for the way she boldly uses materials and her unique color palettes, resulting in her interiors being as equally mesmerizing as her pieces of furniture and design objects.

The Happy Room for Fendi

Laguna glassware by Attica Design

Sergio Rossi boutique

Photo by Noah Kalina

Neri Oxman is an Israeli-born architect, designer, and researcher based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where besides founding Mediated Matter research group, she is also a professor at the MIT Media Lab. She earned her PhD in Design Computation as a MIT Presidential Fellow, coining ‘Material Ecology’ to describe the research she was doing. Oxman’s award-winning work can be found in permanent locations, including the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), Boston Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), the Smithsonian Institution, and the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum. She blends technology and biology in her work, a rarely occurring mix in the design world, pushing the boundaries of art and design and paving a way that’s never been seen before.

Vespers mask \\\ Photo by Yoram Reshef

Mushtari 3D printed wearable \\\ Photo by Yoram Reshef

Ancient Yet Modern installation for Lexus Design Award

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A DesignMarch Recap + Five Icelandic Designers on Our Radar

Earlier this month we traveled to Reykjavik, Iceland to celebrate DesignMarch’s 10th anniversary and check out the latest and greatest on the Icelandic design scene. During these festival days, the entire city of Reykjavik was alive with excitement and pride as everyone (including the mayor of Iceland and Björk herself – true story!) traveled the design circuit to explore exhibitions, installations and showrooms. We came, we saw, we soaked. Here’s a recap of our favorite moments:

During DesignTalk, we listened to Dr. Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg who just finished her PhD and wrote her entire thesis about the idea of better. She asks: “What is better? Whose better? And who gets to decide?” At a time when designers and companies are striving to innovate for the better, create for a better future, and better today’s environmental issues, she encourages the design community to dig deep and question whether a design truly is better. For example, is a ground-breaking technologic device made in factories of poor conditions and low wages truly better? If synthetic biology can help rejuvenate forests, can we consider the industrialization of nature better for the world? An insightful talk that ended on a hopeful note, we left feeling inspired.

Paper designer Bea Szenfeld gave a delightful presentation about designing for Lady Gaga and Björk and the challenges of working with paper to create her dresses and sculptures.

MUN Studio

We stopped by DesignMUNch, an exhibition celebrating Icelandic design. MUN is run by four female designers that focus on creating beautiful objects and furniture that are designed with intention. The brands are MUN are ANNA THORUNN, bybibi, FÆRID, North Limited and IHANNA HOME, with Studio Flétta participating in DesignMarch for the first time.

Designer Chuck Mack with his ARCO desk for Design House Stockholm

At Epal Design, a home + design store in Iceland, we checked out a showcase of popular design objects and furniture that were all created by Icelandic designers, like the Notknot, the original knot pillow designed by Ragnheiður Ösp Sigurðardóttir of studio Umemi.

Notknot cushion designed by Ragnheiður Ösp Sigurðardóttir of studio Umemi

PyroPet candles designed by Thorunn Arnadottir

Tree coat hanger designed by Katrin Olina Petursdottir and Michael Young

The Retreat at the Blue Lagoon

No trip to Iceland is complete without a trip to the Blue Lagoon, where we learned that the popular tourist destination is expanding! Opening in May with a soft opening in April, The Retreat is a new luxury hotel that’s built right into the volcanic landscape of the surrounding lagoon. The new expansion includes a new restaurant and a new spa area that offers a more private experience as you soak in the lagoon’s geothermal seawater.

The Retreat at the Blue Lagoon

Almost every hour of the three days we were at DesignMarch was spent discovering emerging designers or new Icelandic collections. Here are five of our favorites:

Founded in 2017, FÓLK is an Icelandic design and lifestyle company founded by Ragna Sara that works with progressive designers to create modern homewares, furniture and lifestyle products focused on sustainability, responsibility and transparency. The brand unveiled their latest collaboration with designer Ólína Rögnudóttir called Living Objects, which includes stacking glass vessels and metal + stone object that can be used as a candleholder or a vase.

USEE STUDIO is a conscious creative studio founded by Halla Hákonardóttir and Helga Kjerúlf that prides itself on its focus for sustainable, eco-friendly products that are also fun and create a feel good vibe. The studio won the Reykjavik Grapevine Design Awards “Product Line of the Year” for their USEE blankets.

Copenhagen-based Icelandic designer Dögg Guðmundsdóttir of Dögg Design experiments with asymmetrical folded forms using aluminum, metal and oak to create a modern take on traditional objects, like candleholders, wall hooks and storage containers.

Inspired by Iceland’s rugged but majestic landscapes, designer Hilda Gunnarsdóttir creates womenswear that is feminine, effortless and bold for her fashion label, Milla Snorrason. For each collection, she focuses on a specific place in Iceland that inspires the graphic prints and thus, names the collection after its origin. At DesignMarch she collaborated with ceramist Hanna Whitehead to create an exhibition that showcased both their talents. Hanna also had her own exhibition at the Iceland Culture House to show her latest ceramics collection, Another Dialogue.

Design duo Þórey Björk Halldórsdóttir and Baldur Björnsson of creative studio AND ANTI MATTER (&AM) explores the space between design and art. Their Modular collection puts the consumer in the designer seat by allowing him/her to create a stand/pedestal or a purely decorative object, showing that functional objects can be art and vice versa.

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