The List: Our Editors’ Guide to Design-Focused Destinations and Products in June and Beyond

The monthly briefing from Design Anthology’s editors on the most interesting things to see, places to go and products to know

The Clock, Balmuda
Tokyo
Clock

Balmuda has built its name on rethinking everyday objects, and The Clock applies that habit to the bedside alarm. The aluminium body — machined from a single block, 7.5 centimetres across and weighing just 259 grams — takes its cue from the pocket watch, with a single crown for setting the time, alarm and volume. There are no hands and no cover glass: 75 LEDs produce a feature the brand calls Light Hour, marking each hour with a chime and a pendulum motion rendered in light. A stereo speaker pairs a woofer and a tweeter to play seven original soundscapes, while the companion app handles alarms, dial brightness and a second time zone.

Time & Style at Chanintr Craft
Bangkok
Store

Japanese furniture and homewares house Time & Style has taken up residence in Bangkok, on the second and third floors of a building set back behind a courtyard off Thong Lo Road. The space sits within Chanintr Craft, part of the retailer that, since 1994, has introduced names such as Minotti, Bulthaup and Herman Miller to Thailand. The lower floor features solid wood dining tables on castmetal bases, wall-mounted storage and the brand’s Tanazushi shelf, alongside its Stone Garden pieces and washi lamps; the floor above brings in collaborations with designers such as Kengo Kuma and Peter Zumthor. Ceramics, antiques, Japanese and international books and works by Japanese artists are threaded throughout, and the courtyard’s mimosa trees are ever present.

Obok Sojeom, Wanderlust
Seoul
Cafe

In Gwanak-gu, Seoul, spatial studio Wanderlust has designed a Korean dessert cafe named for obok, the five blessings of longevity, wealth, health, virtue and a peaceful death. Designer Kyunghyun Hwang worked in an achromatic palette of black, white and silver, with the five traditional colours of obangsaek used as accents, notably in the floor tiles. Stainless steel, acrylic and glass are set against dyed larch and reclaimed timber, a pairing the studio frames as modern Korean. A turtle sculpture anchors the room, and guests are invited to touch it and carry off a little good fortune.

The Incessant Anxiety Geranium Eau de Toilette, To My Ships
London
Fragrance

To My Ships, the London personal care label that takes its cues from Homer’s Iliad, has added a third fragrance to a range built around restraint. The Incessant Anxiety Geranium Eau de Toilette is made from 99.38 per cent naturally derived ingredients, and leads with geranium — chosen after the house worked through 60 species of pelargonium and settled on one grown in Egypt. Timur pepper lends a green, citrus lift with the whole enveloped by a patchouli base. The 100-millilitre bottle is post-consumer recycled and recyclable glass with a removable spray and a cap of laser-finished bio-resin.

Recycled Pond Sludge Tea Table, Bentu
Guangzhou
Furniture

Guangzhou studio Bentu has turned a pollutant into a tabletop. As the Pearl River Delta’s mulberry-fish pond systems give way to intensive aquaculture, the nutrient-heavy sludge that settles on the pond floors, originally a powerful fertiliser, has become an ecological burden that drives problems such as algal bloom. Working with mud dredged in Shunde, founder Xu Gang developed an unfired ceramsite panel that binds the sludge with slag and fly ash through chemistry, skipping the kiln and the carbon it usually demands. The result is a table of ceramsite panels finished in black, green or white, its faintly granular surface still carrying the tone of the ground from which it came.

Daniel Boddam
Sydney
Store

Rather than open a conventional shopfront, designer Daniel Boddam has folded his new Bronte showroom into his own home. A street-facing foyer on Macpherson Street works as a compact, changing display — a living-room arrangement of his own pieces, among them the Sierra console and Wave chaise — before the space opens into his own residence, where his furniture and lighting are seen as part of daily life. Visits are by appointment, and include Boddam’s personal presentation of his furniture and lighting. The Eastern Suburbs setting pulls the studio away from Sydney’s established design districts and closer to the coastline that informs his work, from wave-like curves to a palette of sandy hues, burnt umbers and vegetal greens. 
Images by Kelly Geddes

Greenlight Burgers, Bespoke Studio
Manila
Restaurant

Squeezed into a 35-square-metre tenancy in Bonifacio Global City — first meant for a convenience store — Greenlight is the first burger concept from Filipino-American chef Alvin Cailan, of Eggslut and The Burger Show. JJ Acuna of JJ Acuna / Bespoke Studio worked the train-carriage proportions hard, lining up counter-height seating, folding tables and a tufted banquette along an open grill whose smoke and noise become part of the room. The palette nods to mid-century Americana without copying it: birch and oak feature, alongside lime-coloured plaster walls, exposed concrete block, green textiles, glossy mustard laminate and a poured terrazzo floor flecked with yellow and beige quartz. A picture ledge documenting Cailan’s journey runs the length of one wall. 
Images by Scott A Woodward Photography

Ashiesh Shah, Carpenters Workshop Gallery
London
Exhibition

Carpenters Workshop Gallery turns to Mumbai designer, architect and artist Ashiesh Shah for a show at its Ladbroke Hall space, running until 20 September. Shah — three times named to Architectural Digest’s Top 50 Interior Designers in India, and Elle Decor’s Designer of the Year in 2016 — builds his work around Indian craft traditions and a sculptural language drawn from geometry and raw material, shaped by the Japanese idea of wabi-sabi and its embrace of imperfection, impermanence and incompleteness. 
Images by Benjamin Baccarani

Small Acts of Permanence, Robert Davidov
Melbourne
Exhibition

For his first body of work as an artist, Robert Davidov — founder of Melbourne’s Davidov Architects — trades buildings for clay. The sculptures in Small Acts of Permanence are accumulated rather than composed: pressed, stacked and negotiated into being, with the clay left to split, bow and occasionally fail rather than be corrected. An ultramarine glaze settles into deep, glass-like blue on the flat planes and thins across the edges, reading the surface rather than hiding it. The forms hover between vessel and fragment, object and architecture. The exhibition runs until 19 July at Oigåll Projects.
Images by Casper Plum

Batik Boy Ruko
Bali
Retail

In Cemagi, Bali, Batik Boy has given its home-grown radio project a permanent address, opening in May. The ruko — borrowed from the Indonesian rumah toko, or shophouse — is part store, part broadcast studio, staging live sessions from the same room where it retails. Founders Davey Massikki and Milou Neelen worked with Hôtel Magique on the interiors, layering Sumbanese ikat, Javanese ceramics, bamboo and weathered steel over rough concrete floors. The clothing is one of a kind: each piece is cut from a single length of hand-drawn batik tulis or hand-stamped batik cap rather than from the roll, so the original pattern dictates the garment. Two of the founders’ rescue dogs appear in the logo, reflecting the human touch. 
Images by Ruben Beeris