UP CLOSE

DESIGNERS YOU SHOULD KNOW BY REBECCA JOHNSON

Dye House, Providence, Rhode Island. In this DesignPhiladelphia issue, UP CLOSE highlights three extremely

talented women designers here in Philly. There are so many women who deserve to fill up these pages and many other “lists” of Philly women designers — but I chose these three women because their work inspires me and challenges me to learn more. Shannon Maldonado’s work challenges me to question how spaces can inherently make people feel more included. Her projects (and her YOWIE shop) always have something I didn’t expect or haven’t seen before – it’s super intriguing. Valentina Miller’s work taught me how interactive designers can really DESIGN experiences for people…she doesn’t just use fancy technology to bring other’s work to digital life — it’s deeply rooted in the design process and discipline. Julia Michalski’s work is simply striking. Like most great modern design, her work is deceptively simple, yet alluring. Her work immediately prompted me to google her and learn more about what she has done. Julia has been recognized and honored for her work — but I am glad to include her in this feature because her work is exceptional and she is a local furniture designer that folks should know about.

Shannon Maldonado

YOWIE Shannon Maldonado is the founder and owner of YOWIE, a home and lifestyle brand and shop which focuses on curating small collections from friends, independent artists and designers. Shannon is a designer, with experience working in New York for Tommy Hilfiger and Ralph Lauren, to name a few, before she moved back to her hometown and set up shop at 716 S. 4th Street in Queen Village. In recent years, she has successfully completed several interior design projects in Philadelphia, New York City, and Providence. As her YOWIE brand expands into different Ethel’s Club, Brooklyn, NY. products and services, she continues to deliver her exquisite taste in every project she touches. Her two most recent projects demonstrate her design acumen and her curatorial eye. An interior design project shown here, Ethel’s Club in Brooklyn, NY, is a social and wellness club for people of color. The YOWIE website describes the project design process, “Throughout the design process, she wanted to call upon the idea of building on the legacy of past people of color generations, making the space both inclusive and aspirational.” The Dye House in Providence, Rhode Island, is another project featuring Shannon’s interior design and creative direction. A boutique hotel and event space, this project is reminiscent of her work at The Deacon in South Philadelphia, yet her unique take on “New England Prep” and the incorporation of lots of local Providence artists and makers makes the project another stunner.

Valentina Miller NIGHT KITCHEN

INTERACTIVE Valentina Miller is an Interactive Designer at Night Kitchen Interactive with expertise in project management, animation, visual effects, and interactive design. Valentina is enthusiastic about enriching real spaces with playful and meaningful digital interactions.

Valentina’s experience and research in VR and AR production allows her to make these experiences accessible to a broad audience through her design work at Night Kitchen. What does that mean? In these images, you can see how Valentina is taking measurements for an augmented reality project in the Rare Books department at the Free Library of Philadelphia (August 2019).

Another project featured here was a virtual reality video shoot aboard Maryland Dove, an interpretive sailing vessel in the Chesapeake Bay. (May 2019). As you can see Valentina is in full costume in the image, this is because the little 360-degree camera sees everything, and she was on a very small boat! Therefore, she had to blend into the background and pose as a sailor while shooting this video.

Valentina also worked with Naper Settlement in 2020 to create an immersive video shoot for virtual field trips of the Settlement. Naper Settlement is a family-friendly outdoor history museum featuring 13 acres of learning and interactive opportunities for all ages.

I had the opportunity to work with Valentina during the 2020 DesignPhiladelphia festival and she created interactive elements to our Establishing a New Centennial Exhibition. I was so impressed with the way Valentina and her teammate (shout out Fatma!) took us through the design process to make sure the technology was enhancing our message and the designers’ intentions about their work.

Block Light

Moosch Stool Aboard the Maryland Dove for a virtual reality video shoot.

Creating the virtual field trip for the Naper Settlement.

Julia Michalski

MOOSCH DESIGN Julia Michalski is an architectural designer and furniture maker. She spent much of her youth constantly experimenting with drawing and sculpture, but also developed a strong love of nature. These early passions led her decision to pursue a B.Arch professional degree and spend her summers interning at architectural firms. In 2015, she went on to receive her M.Arch II from Harvard Graduate School of Design, in order to broaden her design experience to include larger scale environments.

Much of her work involves a deeper investigation into the physical properties of materials (wood, ceramics) to define a set of variables that shape detailed geometries in the overall design, based on varying internal/external conditions. In 2016, Julia founded Moosch Design with her brother Alex while renovating a house for their parents on a wooded lot in Bucks county. Working with a low budget they managed to source materials either locally or by salvaging wood from fallen trees on site.

They continued to explore sustainable building practices while setting up a prototyping workshop with the goal of producing little to no waste. Alex used his engineering expertise to embed LEDs into several lighting designs, including the “block lights” which highlight the beautiful features in the wood. In the following years Julia’s furniture designs won several awards, including: the Emerging Artist Competition Philadelphia Furniture Show in 2017, Philadelphia Museum of Art Craft emerging artist in 2017, and The Wharton Esherick Museum Woodworking Competition and Exhibition, “The Art of the Stool” in 2018.

As these selections of her work demonstrate, her designs are crisp with confident geometric and organic shapes, while the materiality of the wood is prominently featured. The images shown here include the Moosch Stool and the Block Lights. The stool is made of solid hardwood and can be fabricated with an embedded LED light. This stool was the award winner in the Esherick Museum’s competition. The Block Lights are remnants of an old chestnut tree which has fallen during Hurricane Sandy in 2012. They are carefully selected and arranged to reflect light off each other and highlight the interesting natural features of the wood. n