Welcome to The Buzz, our monthly roundup of design world news and inspiration for Design Miami’s discerning community of creatives and collectors. Enjoy!

Jacques Dumond at Demisch Danant

Now showing in New York: Demisch Danant presents its first solo show dedicated to twentieth century French architect and designer Jacques Dumond. A continuation of its ongoing dedication to scholarship on French design, the gallery spent the past 15 years researching, locating, and collecting Dumond’s work in order to present an exhibition that properly represents his output. Dumond’s career spanned the 1930s-1970s, during which time he crossed paths with several important figures in the history of French design, and the show focuses on his work from the ’50s-’60s. While Dumond is widely respected, his furniture is rarely seen, as it was specifically designed for architectural projects or businesses such as banks, stores, and company offices—and the show sheds new light on Dumond’s impressive portfolio. ’Til April 1

“His formula ‘New materials + New technologies = New forms’ was the motto of his mission and his vocation as a Modernist.”—Demisch Danant

Designing for Dignity: Deem Journal x MCA Chicago

Launched in 2019, Deem Journal focuses on design as a social practice, drawing on a diversity of perspectives across disciplines, backgrounds, and generations—often from individuals who don’t identify as designers—to expand the way we think about design and its impact on the world. Tomorrow, March 4th, Deem and MCA Chicago present a symposium that builds on the themes covered in the journal’s first four issues—Dignity, Pedagogy, Equity, and Place—to explore how design can create systems that foster large-scale social impact. Presented both in-person at MCA and online, the event—entitled Designing for Dignity: A Convening of Possibilities—brings together distinguished contributors from the journal, alongside outstanding Chicago-based practitioners. Participants include Amanda Williams, Toni L. Griffin, Ramon Tejada, Germane Barnes, Maya Bird-Murphy, and more. Digital tickets available here.

Caro Alessandro at Galerie kreo

Next week, Paris’s Galerie kreo launches Caro Allesandro, an exhibition honoring the legacy of the great Italian designer, Alessandro Mendini, and his 20-year collaboration and friendship with Galerie kreo. The show features approximately twenty pieces, including iconic works like the Kandissi sofa (1978) and Cleome Elegans (1993), as well as original works created for the gallery. Pierre Charpin, a long-time friend and collaborator of Mendini, has penned an intimate text honoring the spirit of the Italian maestro, and also contributed to the exhibition’s scenography. The show is complemented by a new film featuring a performance by choreographer-dancer Braneon “Miel” Masele, in which Masele offers a fresh perspective on Mendini's Poltrona white gold, dancing around the chair with virtuosity and elegance. March 8-May 6

Terumasa Ikeda: Iridescent Lacquer

Ippodo Gallery in New York presents a solo exhibition spotlighting Japanese lacquer artist Terumasa Ikeda. Ikeda fabricates shimmering mother-of-pearl designs ingrained into the surface of wood with an innovative laser-incised raden technique, a method the artist spent eight years developing. Ikeda’s iridescent objects—ceremonial tea utensils, treasure boxes, and precious containers—are adorned with mesmerizing numerical patterns that glimmer like digital screens, refashioning the traditional visual language of raden to include the electronic realm of data that now dominates our globalized world. His futuristic expressions are framed as a search for handmade beauty in an increasingly industrialized world. March 16-April 16 

Architecture Now at MoMA

The Museum of Modern Art’s current show, Architecture Now: New York, New Publics, is the inaugural installment of a new exhibition series intended to highlight emerging talent and foreground groundbreaking projects in contemporary architecture. The first iteration explores the ways in which NYC–based practices have been actively expanding the relationship of metropolitan architecture to different publics through 12 recently completed projects. Featured studios include Adjaye Associates, CO Adaptive, Olalekan Jeyifous, Kinfolk Foundation, SO – IL, and nArchitects, among others. Ranging from metropolitan parks to virtual monuments for underrepresented publics, the showcased works reimagine the use of civic space and the potential of new technologies to create space for inclusive, political engagement.  On view through July 29

“How can innovative architecture attempt to redress structural inequities and foster social transformation? …Our goal is…to highlight projects and practices that go above and beyond their original briefs to prioritize inclusion and participation in the daily life of the city.”—Martino Stierli, The Philip Johnson Chief Curator, MoMA

Andrée Putman at Fondation CAB

This month, Fondation CAB in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, in collaboration with Villa Noailles, presents a tribute to late French interior and furniture designer Andrée Putman. Curated by Eléa Le Gangneux and featuring scenography by the designer’s daughter, Olivia Putman—who since 2013 has taken over the studio and continued her mother’s work—the exhibition celebrates the grand dame of late-20th-century luxury. Putman was known for her glamorous yet pared down spaces and objects for a vast range of stylish global clients (including Morgan’s Hotel in New York, the world’s first boutique hotel) as well as her efforts, through her agency, Ecart International, to reissue and popularize forgotten 1920s and ’30s-era furniture—such as pieces by Eileen Gray, Jean-Michel Frank, Pierre Chareau, and others—for new audiences around the globe. The show will feature familiar and previously unpublished works and archives to honor her legacy. From March 24-October 29​

“To not dare is to have already lost. We should seek out ambitious, even unrealistic projects, because things only happen when we dream.”—Andrée Putman

Andrea Branzi at Friedman Benda

Now showing at Friedman Benda in New York: Contemporary DNA, a solo show spotlighting new pieces by seminal Italian designer and architect Andrea Branzi, a leading voice in Italy’s cutting-edge creative scene for sixty years. The exhibition introduces three new bodies of work—Roots, Germinal Seats, and Buildings—which delve deep into our relationship to objects and our environment. It also presents a continuation of Branzi’s signature paper lamps, some now accented with bamboo and maple leaves.  On view ’til April 22.

A New Home for Maniera

Brussels gallery Maniera is moving into the Hôtel Danckaert, also known as Villa Dewin. The Art Deco house was designed in 1922 by Belgian architect Jean-Baptiste Dewin for Jean Danckaert, a Brussels industrial engineer. In its new home, Maniera will continue to commission architects and artists to develop furniture and objects, offering them the opportunity to take an excursion beyond their usual practices. Belgian artist Koenraad Dedobbeleer and architect Richard Venlet will also add some permanent interventions at the new location.

Prior to opening its doors to the public this month with a group presentation, Maniera has carefully renovated the building under the supervision of Belgian architect Barbara Van der Wee. The move fits Maniera’s tradition of presenting shows in historically significant architectural settings. The inaugural show will include Jonathan Muecke, Studio Mumbai, Sophie Nys, Lukas Gschwandnter, and Rooms Studio, among others. March 4-May 6

Martin Szekely at Pierre Marie Giraud

Next week, Brussels-based gallery Pierre Marie Giraud presents an exhibition of French designer Martin Szekely’s newest collection, Matière Lente. Describing the process behind his new work, which is crafted out of stoneware using a 3D printer, Szekely says, “In a constant back-and-forth of slow, regular movements, the 3D printer releases a thin strand of moist, stoneware clay until the material covers all of a given surface. Through the repetition of this gesture and the gradual sedimentation of layers, a mass takes shape—a substantial artifact of indeterminate appearance.” He goes on: “[They] could resemble a botanical organism, a mineral concretion, or a secreted animal construction.” March 8-April 8, 2023

Barbara Stauffacher Solomon at Volume Gallery

Today, Chicago’s Volume Gallery launches Barbara Stauffacher Solomon: I DO, an exhibition devoted to the American multidisciplinary artist. Best known for her bold, 1960s wall-painted Supergraphics and widely recognized for her influence on the trajectory of graphic design, this is Solomon’s first solo show with the gallery. Now in her nineties, Solomon has begun focusing on paper, including drawing, collage, and publishing artist books. I DO comprises eighty-five 8.5 x 11 works on paper crafted with Solomon’s quintessential use of wordplay and graphic invention, exploring letter forms, language, feminism, interpersonal relationships, and autobiography. Until April 22

Funk You Too! At MAD

Later this month, NYC’s Museum of Arts and Design will launch Funk You Too! Humor and Irreverence in Ceramic Sculpture. Curated by Angelik Vizcarrondo-Laboy, this major museum survey brings together over 50 pieces from the 1960s to present day in which clay is used as a tool for critique and satire. Simultaneously, the exhibition considers the ongoing influence of the Funk art movement on modern and contemporary makers. March 18—August 27

Between Realities at Carpenters Workshop Gallery

Last but certainly not least: Carpenters Workshop Gallery in New York presents Between Realities, an exhibition of new and recent works by Japanese-French design duo Aki + Arnaud Cooren in conversation with works by German sculptor and photographer Thomas Demand. The artists all point to the impact that French philosopher Jean Baudrillard has had on their practices—in particular, his thesis Simulacra and Simulation, which touches on the relationship between reality and symbols, and the construction of an understanding of shared experience. In this spirit, Between Realities develops the themes underpinning Aki + Arnaud Cooren’s minimalist Tiss-Tiss collection—a series that at a distance appears to be made of soft fabric, but, upon closer inspection reveals itself to be rigid aluminum. The work captures the texture of linen, alchemized in cast aluminum, celebrating a visual dissonance between appearance and reality. Similarly, Demand’s photographs appear at first objective and innocuous, but are in fact the result of carefully crafted handmade sculptural environments. On view ’til April 28