Artists Tanya Aguiñiga and Porfirio Gutiérrez weave a compelling web of works reflecting their heritage as part of the indigenous Oaxacan diaspora and their contemporary Southern Californian approach to fiber arts. Aguiñiga, who is showing a self-portrait made of woven cotton rope with terra cotta casts of her hands, says such works allow her to “fully delve into larger issues of identity, place and politics, always at the forefront of life at the borderlands.” Read the full article here.

A Cadillac’s aerodynamic and slightly futuristic silhouette. The geometric motel signs dotted along American highways. Pastel-hued trailers and colonial homes. But also the Shakers’ approach to essential and functional interiors and deconstructed architecture with a pinch of surrealism. These and more formed the basis for Stefan Beckman’s set for Wallpaper’s dream American house, a backdrop to our celebration of American furniture design. Read the full article here.

Artist and activist Tanya Aguiñiga led “Border Quipo/Quipu Fronterizo” (2016–18), part of the AMBOS (Art Made Between Opposite Sides) Project. For her performance, the artist and others roamed between cars and pedestrians on both sides of the San Ysidro border crossing, speaking to commuters trapped in the gridlock, and handing them two strands of thread to tie into a knot. Aguiñiga collected these knotted threads and assembled them into a quipu, an ancient Incan recording device, hanging it on a billboard for all the commuters to see. As people completed the task, she initiated conversations about the border and immigration, and thus the quipu also became a stand-in for oral history. Read the full article here.

From reinventions to classic wood designs to large community design projects, the Chicago furniture and object designers featured below demonstrate a wide range of material and aesthetic sensibilities in the city on the shore of Lake Michigan. Chicago is the third largest city in the United States, and is well-known for its architectural legacy, being home to the world’s first skyscraper.

“Chicago is an interesting city to be a designer in,” designer and University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) associate professor Sung Jang told Dezeen. “It’s big enough to have variety, but small enough that a lot of us know one another and are able to ‘follow’. I think a lot of Chicago’s designers tend to have some type of link with the industrial past of the Chicago and the midwest area – the heavy manufacturing, important furniture makers, maybe other materials-driven making practices.” Read the full article here.