Objects of Affection

Ahead of the release of Family Style No. 2, the Summer 2024 design issue, Objects of Affection, the magazine premiered a day-long ephemeral exhibition at the 62nd edition of Salone del Mobile by the same name.

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At the furniture and design fair's Eurocucine pavilion, whose 2024 theme was Technology For the Kitchen, the day began with an interactive food performance by Family Style's food editor Sophia Roe. The James Beard Award-winning chef and Emmy Award-nominated host referenced her own personal challenges growing up food insecure to create intensive work about scarcity and abundance through the lens of artisan bread-making, an ancient food form whose Italian history has filled many libraries. Parallel to participatory crowd tastings of her breads—squiggly, crusty creations dyed with natural powders and roots found throughout Milan—Roe erected a live still life that filled the form of the curved custom kitchen designed by Lombardini22.

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"While a still-life food installation exists as a thing of beauty, I cherished the idea of people walking up to these wild and very labor intensive pieces of breads to admire them, and then devour them," says Roe. "I really wanted people to see that I was feeding them, in fact my labor was very much part of the design. With more than 100 solo hours of active baking time in the stretch of a week, that labor exists as a device used to showcase the human and ecological labor it takes to feed people. The nontraditional style and unconventional look of my finished product is not just an expression of my imagination, but also a design tool to illustrate how even through the most challenging of biological family circumstances, with the presence of community support or social network, a thing of intrigue is only gained, and can often be experienced as transcendent."

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Concurrent to Roe's food installation, Family Style also presented a one-day art viewing of new work by DRIFT. Helmed by Ralph Nauta and Lonneke Gordijn, the Amsterdam-based art studio creates choreographed sculptures and kinetic installations that address our humanity. For Family Style's new issue, Nauta and Gordijn were commissioned to make a new work as part of their "Materialism" series, which is gracing one of the magazine's four upcoming covers.

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In the afternoon, Louise Snouck from DRIFT's studio joined Roe and Family Style's Founder & Editor-in-Chief Joshua Glass for a casual conversation about the dual presentation at Salone, their unexpected parallels, and the many surprising but very strong connections between food and design.

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Family Style No. 2 will be available online and at retailers starting May 15, 2024