Introduction
Tomorrow Lab has been at the Greenpoint Manufacturing and Design Center for a solid five months now! We have officially settled into our space and wanted to take the opportunity to open our space to our neighbors and also get to know them and what they do! Last week we organized a studio crawl between us, Studio Zollo, Oso Industries and Volvox Labs. In preparation for our visitors we arranged our gallery wall which showcases just a snapshot of our past projects. See if you can spot Danger Skates, the Sympl Brush, Keen Home, the Adafruit Clue and the never produced but ever popular USPS ornament!
The Studio Crawl Begins
Everyone met at Tomorrow Lab’s space for refreshments, a tour of our space and we got to share what it is we do all day!
Here one of Tomorrow Lab’s partners, Pepin Gelardi speaks about the process of the Sympl Brush and several past confidential projects for Giphy.
We then moseyed on over to our direct neighbors Studio Zollo, to see their space and what they are working on. Studio Zollo specializes in custom furniture and housewares design, made primarily out of various wood and other natural materials and is founded by artist & designer Anthony Zollo. During this visit, their team was working on a custom cabinet for a bedroom with beautiful inset carved handles, eliminating the need for hardware. We all enjoyed admiring the giant routers and saws – their space was remarkably cleanley for how much sawdust must take place in there!
Second, we headed down to the ground floor of GMDC to Volvox Labs, an interactive new media art studio that ‘seamlessly fuses the digital and physical to create work that moves, inspires and elevates the human experience,’ as their website explains. Their clientele ranges from concert venues, to public spaces, to concepts for brands and artist installations. Their space is impressive, with remnants of past and present projects in every area, at times even creating enchanting walkways overhead.
One of their past projects featured interchangeable and individually controlled square panels that follow the visitors movements. When we asked what this installation was used for, they said it was to debut a new car model – how beautiful that car must have looked! Certainly one of the stars of the show was their huge in house 8 axis machine robotic arm that was having fun drawing patterns for us.
Last, but certainly not least we had the honor of touring Oso Industries, led by the delightful owner Eric Weil, which specializes in design and fabrication of all things concrete. Oso has a vast array of custom offerings ranging from commercial and residential interiors, furniture, small housewares and all sizes of art pieces. For those New-Yorker’s – check out Oso’s hospitality clients and I’ll bet you have seen one of these in person and didn’t even know it!
Touring both Oso’s fabrication studio and showroom, there were intriguing things at every turn – a dedicated enclosed shower for all the pieces in progress, various material open storage, a curved doggie bowl, a wall of sunsetted work boots and a plethora of housewares and furniture we could all admire! My personal favorite was easily missed among the larger scale pieces – an incense holder in the shape of an NYC sewer cover – a NY’er must have!
Our studio crawl was a success and we cannot wait to meet more of our GMDC neighbors, along with our new friends down the hall and on the ground floor! A big thanks again to Studio Zollo, Volvox Labs & Oso Industries – click these links to follow them on Insta! And don’t forget Tomorrow Lab too!
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