Los Angeles Design Week/end 2026, Behind Open Doors

Los Angeles Design Week/end returned with its most ambitious edition yet, expanding from three days to five between September 30 and October 4 and drawing more than 130 designers, studios, galleries, and brands across roughly 15 neighborhoods. As ever, its appeal lies in access. In a single afternoon, visitors could slip behind the curtain at the studios of the Haas Brothers, who hosted the opening celebration, or Peter Shire, then wander a few neighborhoods over into a group show organized by an emerging curator. “LA Design Week/end is built around seeing design in context,” says founder Holland Denvir. “People move through the city, enter spaces they might not otherwise see and meet the designers behind the work.”

That range defined this year’s standouts. The Future Perfect unveiled Ian Collings’ moonlit body of work at its Goldwyn House, Lumens and Alora Lighting previewed Jason Koharik’s FLORET collection, and Surcle opened its studio to debut a family of hand-turned lamps. Meanwhile, the festival’s open-call program, which welcomes curators and artists of every size, produced some of the week’s most memorable moments: After the Tide’s meditation on material and nature, Our Joy Is Resistance’s insistence on wonder, and Blue, an ode to a single hue that had guests dressing the part. With its public program free and open to all, the festival is best experienced the way it was designed: one doorway at a time.

Jason Koharik for Alora Lighting x Lumens

At the preview Lumens hosted with Alora Lighting, Los Angeles artist and designer Jason Koharik offered a first look at FLORET, his newest collection for the brand and the latest chapter in a partnership that includes his Furrow, Versus, and Mineral lines. “Above all other things I do, I am a writer and a storyteller,” says Koharik, and FLORET begins with a story of its own: the calla lily, his grandmother’s favorite flower. The sconces and chandeliers translate that fleeting bloom into sculptural solid brass, with slender stems and petal-like details unfurling across each form. Offered in polished nickel or unlacquered patina brass that darkens and deepens with age, the pieces move easily between vintage-leaning and contemporary rooms. Lumens’ Dana Gers describes his approach as bringing “an artist’s hand to lighting in a way that feels both deeply personal and entirely new.”

After the Tide

A year after “Frozen Han,” her show of ten Korean artists at House of Migaam, Rose Zhang returned to LA Design Week/end with “After the Tide.” She co-curated it with Nadia Khagani around the idea that the receding tide reveals what we’ve been searching for, gathering 19 artists and designers exploring the relationship between nature and sculptural form. “Our curatorial process felt like following the path of the tide,” say Zhang and Khagani. “Once we found one piece, it led us to another, and soon it formed a trail of glimmers in the sand.” NJH’s Red Sparrow, a black ceramic lamp of layered, petal-like scales, threw a crimson starburst across the floor. Studio NRG’s Lilium Chair curled its back like an opening lily, and James Naish Studio’s Exsilio Candlesticks rose like roots from the sand. Tying it all together was a sonic installation created with EDGE Sound Research, where audio frequencies sent ripples across a shallow pond, their movement cast in light across the gallery.

Our Joy Is Resistance

At Enzo Gallery, curator Sarah Al-Qatou staged “Our Joy Is Resistance,” gathering more than 30 artists and designers around what she calls “an insistence on wonder.” At its heart was Ludo, a rug from AGNYA’s debut collection, Doorbeen, Hindi for “binoculars,” which designer Nayanika Sharma uses as a metaphor for bringing the India she knows “closer into view.” Named for the board game found in homes across India, Ludo layers its familiar grid with Banjara textile motifs, hand-knotted in wool by artisans in Uttar Pradesh. Beside it sat Kaitlyn Quitiquit’s Paloma Stool, its legs clad in handmade ceramic tile and its ruffled cushion upholstered in woven tapestry. Casa Ysasi’s glowing amate paper lightbox, Hermandad, completed the scene. “’Our Joy Is Resistance’ aims to provoke, tease, and challenge its viewer’s expectations of how to define joy, and where and who is afforded it,” Al-Qatou says. Here, joy was not an escape but a stance.

Surcle

At her open studio, Surcle founder Julie Jackson debuted the Rock Collection, a family of eight lamps grown from a single design. The original River Rock Lamp came to her in 2020, while she was living in the woods beside a river, observing stones stacked by the current. The new pieces carry that idea further. Each is hand-turned on the lathe from walnut, ash, or camphor, and some are charred inside with the Japanese technique of shou sugi ban or crowned with shades of woven elephant grass. “I have sought to recreate and pay homage to the processes that shape our natural landscapes through my craft,” Jackson says, “carving and shaping wood just as wind and water shape earth. I want this collection to feel nestled in, like camping next to rocks.”

The Future Perfect

At the Goldwyn House, The Future Perfect’s stately Los Angeles residence, Ojai-based sculptor Ian Collings considers what a maker might learn in the dark. “Dark Forest, Silver Moon,” his fourth solo show with the gallery, marks a return to wood. Carved root burls and hollowed tree cavities swell into chairs, stools, and tables, while discs of cast tin glow from the walls like small moons. A former co-founder of Fort Standard who later spent three years living in the rainforests of Central America, Collings lets the material lead. “He keeps redrawing the line between sculpture and furniture, and that’s exactly the kind of work The Future Perfect was built to champion,” says gallery founder David Alhadeff. Set against arched windows and a crackling fireplace, the sculptural forms bring the mystery of the forest indoors.

Blue

At Winston’s on North Broadway, curators Melissa Anderson of Studio Serpentine and Sam Aldrich devoted an entire open-call show to a single hue. “Blue” gathered 15 Los Angeles artists and designers whose only shared rule was color, a premise the curators frame as both ubiquitous and rarefied: “Blue is simultaneously a clear sky, clean water, precious jewels, and deadly poison.” Ben Medansky’s Bluets folded cobalt ceramic into a sculptural grid, Jonathan Entler’s twin-globe table lamp arrived in a matte Klein blue, and Tyler Barry’s glass Plumb Bob caught the light in pale aqua, while Leslie Dinkin’s backgammon set and Rachel Burnstein’s glasswork brought a sense of play. “Come on in, the water’s warm,” the curators wrote in their invitation, encouraging guests to wear blue. Many did, turning the afternoon into a show of its own.