Celebrating A Manifesto on Touch at NYCxDESIGN

Central to the evening was the Touch Manifesto itself; a written provocation by editor, critic, and curatorial platform FOR SCALE’s David Michon, arguing that touch is not what the handle begs, but how it performs. 

Upon entering, the front section of the space greeted guests with hand photography across the walls and excerpts from the Touch Manifesto; fragments of text about sensation, intimacy and physical experience that set the tone for everything that followed. Custom stools and tables fabricated by Caleb Engstrom were fitted with hardware from the Super Collection by Sans-Arc and The Streaks by YSG Studio, while mirrors edged with Civilian’s Hemispheres Collection bore hand-painted quotes from the manifesto, applied directly to the glass by Engstrom himself. Pieces from the Casts Collection by Edition Office were featured across the space, its considered forms adding further depth to the breadth of Bankston’s collaborative collections. An expansion of the Colbo retail space, Colbo Next Door kept the evening running with warmth. 

Guests spilled out onto the street, wine and vermouth spritz in hand, filling a room that had been transformed into a considered argument for the objects we reach for every day.

Printed across the walls and hand-painted onto mirrors, the Touch Manifesto framed the collections not as objects to admire from a distance but as things to grip, pull, and press. Guests were invited to tear strips from the poster; a rip being a kind of pull, and a pull being a kind of handle, a gesture that collapsed the distance between viewer and object entirely. In a design world increasingly mediated by screens, the manifesto made the case for the irreducible value of physical contact. 

Dense with architects, designers and creatives from across New York’s design community, the opening felt less like an exhibition and more like a conversation. 

The Touch Manifesto, FOR SCALE’s assertion that touch is a sensation, and sensation is information, found its proof in the objects themselves: hardware that, when encountered in a functioning, inhabited space, revealed exactly the kind of tactile intelligence the manifesto had been arguing for. 

The exhibition remained on view by appointment through May 17. 

Credits: 

Collaboration: FOR SCALE 

Graphic Design: Studio Lowrie 

Spatial Design: Currie Ritchie 

Furniture Fabrication & Mirror Hand-Painting: Caleb Engstrom 

Venue: Colbo