What’s the next best thing to being there? A 3D virtual tour courtesy of Matterport Technology, and we’re starting ours at booth G09, with an avant-garde display by David Alhadeff’s The Future Perfect, a gallery with locations in NY, LA, and San Fran, known for a synthesis of one-of-a-kind pieces and studio-created work.

Virtual Image of the Future Perfect booth

30 Stunning Original Pieces From the Future Perfect

This being Design Miami, the booth tends towards the former, with 30 original pieces debuting during this sunny week in December. Aiming to evince a “curatorial sensibility and emphasis on nuanced material investigations that beckon discovery through intimacy and tactility,” the pieces walk the fine line betweeen “art” and “design,” however useful (or not) those distinctions may be.

The booth’s highlights include Piet Hein Eek’s Old Oak Tile Dresser.

Listed at $80,135, the furnishing beautifully exemplifies the craftsman’s art. Eek is known for incorporating repurposed materials, and this piece does not disappoint in that regard, with an aesthetic that’s both rustic and streamlined—a beautiful showcase for the innate qualities of wood.

Dresser detail. Shown with decorative glass by John Hogan.

Sharing the spotlight alongside Hein Eek, we find Cody Hoyt’s Wall Console (no price listed b/c it already sold).

Seeing it next to Hein Eek’s dresser, one might reasonably mistake it for colored, glued wood, but in fact it’s ceramic, made via an exacting process of fashioning clay into colored slabs, then assembling them into this geometric and colorful form.

Trained as a painter and printmaker, Hoyt incorporates a graphical sensibility into his work, “priding himself on his non-traditional process and taking inspiration from a wide range of mediums—from ancient Japanese pottery to contemporary typography.”

Floris Wubben Studio’s Throne chair also offers a curious assemblage.

This time, it’s extruded ceramic tubes, cut and combined to create a chair in a wingback-style that evokes such disparate entities as cerulean organ pipes and gape-mouthed sea worms.

Nor am I surprised that the studio is based in Amsterdam. Designer Wubben says that they spent lots of time during their youth poking around WWII bunkers in Zeeland. The aesthetic shows here with the chair’s resemblance to the solid geometricity of defense architecture, built to withstand invasion.

Other artists/designers featured by The Future Perfect include Chris Wolston, Claudy Jongstra, and Bradley Bowers. Visit them all at Design Miami, 11/30 – 12/4. And check out the innovative offerings from last year at 3rings.