#furniture-design

#furniture-design

The Boca table by designer Deniz Aktay is not interested in that conversation at all. At first glance, it reads as a straightforward piece: a circular metal top, slim tubular legs bent into a smooth C-shaped base, a warm terracotta finish.

Marking seasoned talent Chris Eitel's recent appointment as Holly Hunt Design Director, the freshly imagined 9-piece offering nods to the sculptural audacity of Vladimir Kagan Design Group, for which he complementarily serves as Executive Creative Director. Eitel spent years training with the sister brand's late namesake-an ever-provactive giant of American design-but also developed his own vocabulary.

At first, you register dark, richly grained wood. Beautiful, but expected. Then your eyes drift downward to the legs, and something shifts. They're not straight. They're not tapered. They're curved, splayed, mid-stride, like a large foot caught in the quiet moment between lifting and landing. It's subtle enough to feel elegant. It's strange enough to feel unforgettable.

As any lover of physical media knows: without organization, your beloved magazine collection quickly begins to look more like accumulated trash than treasure. The best magazine racks, our editors have discovered, corral and curate their many, many copies of Architectural Digest (obviously), furthering their ever-fitful attempts to force their living rooms into shape. While a bookshelf does the similar work of getting things off the floor and into their dignified place, many simply aren't deep enough or tall enough to properly house your oeuvre.

Negative space is a formidable tool in design, underlining the philosophical power of absence. Many of our most powerful designs are celebrated for what they have, and also what they do not. Increasingly, a "more is more" approach is tied with maximalist design, with little attention paid to the nuances of creation. This does not necessarily have to be the case - we can ask of more from our interiors without sacrificing refinement and style.

If you've ever been handed something made by a child a lopsided drawing, a collage of construction paper and glue you know how precious it is. What might look imperfect is, to them, a record of focus, joyful creativity, and sheer imagination, untouched by rules or expectations. Designed by Sergei Lvov of Levantin Studio and produced by Uneven Objects, Tottolo carries that same spirit: a table shaped not by logic, but by intuition, play, and the freedom to create without constraint.

Coffee tables quietly witness mornings, late-night emails, and weekend calls with people in other cities. Time passes on screens and clocks on walls, but the table itself usually pretends it has nothing to do with any of it. It just holds mugs and magazines while the hours slip by unnoticed. There's something interesting about furniture that builds time into its structure instead of ignoring it completely.

Enter The Bugle by Design by Joffey, a coat and umbrella stand that rethinks the entire concept by borrowing its form from an unlikely source: a brass musical instrument. This isn't just clever design for the sake of being clever. It's a genuinely smart solution to a problem that plagues anyone living in tight quarters. Designer: Design by Joffey The beauty of this piece is in its vertical footprint.

Held in late January, Toronto's design week practically dares design-lovers to prove their devotion. At this past edition, they braved not only the below-zero temperatures but also a historic snowstorm; part of the weather pattern that saw the U.S. draped in the white stuff, Toronto was hit with 22 inches of snow. They were rewarded with an inspiring array of furniture, lighting and experimental works both at the Interior Design Show and throughout the city-wide DesignTO festival.

Workout gear is almost always clunky and unsightly; gray equipment haphazardly crammed into a basement room that only just checks the box when it comes to an apartment building's list of promoted amenities. Mirrored walls jarringly cut across cheesy cityscape or jungle scene murals and rubber mat flooring. Bad EDM music pulsates at full volume. With function superseding form, aesthetics always seem to be an afterthought.

The concept is brilliantly simple yet visually striking. The chair features layers upon layers of cushioned upholstery stacked together, creating this incredible rainbow effect along the edges. Each layer represents a different color or texture, much like flipping through pages in a designer's sample book. It's the kind of thing that makes you do a double take. From one angle, you see a sophisticated seating piece with a clean, minimalist frame. From another, you catch those vibrant cascading layers that give it personality and depth.

From a single material, a Hyderabad-based design studio creates a wide range of site-specific installations, furnishings, and decor. It's all in the name of the firm, The Wicker Story, which was founded in 2019 by architect Priyanka Narula. Capable of being formed into everything from abstract constructions to functional objects, the natural material lends itself a huge variety of pieces that vary in size and complexity.

Brutalism once suggested stark, monumental forms, with raw concrete presented in uncompromising honesty. Today, that legacy is evolving into a softer interior design language: Soft Brutalism. Rather than a contradiction, it becomes a thoughtful fusion where concrete is shaped into gentler, more human-centered forms. This shift responds to a culture saturated with disposable design and offers a return to authenticity, weight, and permanence.

Belgian furniture designer Marina Bautier is known for her succinctness. Her pieces, all made of waxed oak, have no flourishes: they are a pure distillation of pleasing form and function. But in her own compound, she is voluble on how her work can be put to use: her studio, in a Brussels residential area aptly named Forest, is right next to her shop and cafe.

Most chairs are clearly assembled objects, with legs, a seat, and a backrest, all stacked and joined together. Sculptural lounge pieces sometimes flip that script and feel more like a single volume that has been carved or sliced. Chunk is a concept that leans into that second approach, imagining seating as a doughnut with a bite taken out rather than a frame with cushions bolted on, treating furniture as something you edit rather than assemble.

It's not surprising that there's little separation between work and life for the artisan, who finds inspiration everywhere, and revels in exploration. "A lot of times my work peeps into my personal life, and I kind of just have to let it be," says Maya. "It's happened that I am in bed about to rest, and in between moments of lucidity, all of a sudden I have a design solution that I have been trying to figure out."

There's something quietly rebellious about seeing delicate leather straps wrapped around cold, hard steel. It's unexpected, a bit contradictory, and exactly what makes Nara Lee's Pul collection so captivating. The Paris-based architect just unveiled this sculptural furniture series at The Sun Room exhibition in Seoul, and it's turning heads for all the right reasons. What strikes you first about these pieces isn't just their minimalist beauty, but the story they tell about urban nature.

ECHO by KOD.objects reinterprets the material culture and architecture of 11th-17th century as a sculptural furniture collection. Each object is crafted from and pulp, finished with a protective coating that adds durability and a tactile surface. The project draws from ancient household objects, carved wooden forms, early stone structures, and the structural silhouettes characteristic of old Russian craftsmanship. These historical sources are translated into contemporary sculptural furniture.

Arrakis 3.0 is the latest iteration of Mark Rehorst's sand table experiments, this time designed from the start as a practical coffee table. Under a standard 24-by-48-inch glass top, a steel ball slowly traces patterns in a bed of white sand, guided by a hidden mechanism. From above, all you see is a glowing sandbox under glass, constantly redrawing itself while your coffee sits on top.

Laptops have escaped the desk and now show up on sofas, lounge chairs, and every in-between space, often with terrible posture as a side effect. Balancing a laptop on your knees or hunching over a coffee table is fine for checking email but not for real work. The Cosi laptop table is a small, adjustable surface designed to follow those habits and make them more ergonomic.

Another facet of the style provided a shimmering counterpoint to all that saturated lacquer and patterned upholstery: Iridescent and reflective surfaces - from gold leaf to patinated bronze, textured steel, tinted glass, and even resin - cropped up in everything from chandeliers to chairs. All that shine seemed to hint at a sense of optimism, or at least a desire to counter the moodiness of the dominant palette with a lighter touch.

From tabletop objects to more grand home furnishings, the things that fill our home have a cumulative effect on how we feel as well as the perception of our personal space. With intention at their core, the Ahmedabad-based, interdisciplinary design studio Design ni Dukkan blends human intuition with distinct materiality and finish to create such pieces with the power of presence.

Bookmarker addresses this by treating reading as an activity worth designing for specifically. The table's form creates a clear place for books in progress, making them visible rather than buried. Japanese cypress construction gives it a warm, tactile presence that reads as furniture first, while its cutouts and slots serve the practical needs of someone settling in with a novel and a drink.

For companies, this means we now have case-studies of design firms that understand commercial dynamics: manufacturing, material sourcing, brand story, global distribution. When an enterprise aligns with designers like Barber and Osgerby, it's not about making something pretty, it's about making something profitable, repeatable, and meaningful. In today's economy, that's a powerful proposition. And their approach demonstrates how design thinking can move seamlessly between art, manufacturing, and management: exactly the kind of hybrid intelligence that defines modern creative business.