Author Archives: Tanvi Joshi

The Amica Collection Finds Poetry in Paper, Clay, and Glow

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The Amica lighting collection brings together organic form, traditional craft, and sculptural illumination in a way that feels quiet, warm, and carefully considered. Made up of pendant, table, and wall-mounted lights, the collection treats lighting as more than a practical object. Each piece has a sculptural presence, shaping the mood of a room through material, texture, shadow, and glow.

Much of Amica’s character comes from the contrast between its materials. Earth-toned ceramic bases give the pieces weight and grounding, while the paper forms bring softness, translucency, and movement. The ceramic surfaces are ridged, irregular, and slightly imperfect, giving them a handmade quality. Set against them, the paper elements feel light and delicate, glowing gently when illuminated and revealing the craft behind every fold, wrap, and curve.

Designer: Christopher Merchant and Kawabi

The collection takes inspiration from natural and familiar forms rather than strict geometry. Pods, fans, lanterns, vessels, and ceremonial objects seem to echo through the work. These references make the lights feel approachable, almost recognizable, but still unusual enough to hold attention. They sit somewhere between functional objects and quiet domestic sculptures.

A few pieces from the larger collection show this language especially clearly. The Standing Legume Lamp is one of the more playful examples. Inspired by the curves of leguminous pods, it stacks two illuminated modules vertically above an offering tray. The form feels like a small gesture toward food, harvest, and ritual. It has a simple presence, but the reference gives it warmth and personality. Rather than reading as a conventional lamp, it feels closer to a small domestic monument.

The Relic I Lamp moves in a more poetic direction. It reimagines the folding fan as a light sculpture, with pleated paper opening out in sweeping arcs. Held upright by a totem-like wood base and anchored by a cast concrete block, the piece captures the feeling of motion paused mid-gesture. There is a sense of air, shadow, and light moving through it, even while the object remains completely still.

The Legume Pendant Horizontal, Double continues the collection’s organic vocabulary. Inspired by strung beans, it turns pod-like curves into a suspended paper illumination system. Its modular structure gives the form flexibility, while the handmade details keep it grounded in craft. Regionally sourced Japanese kozo paper, Shaker-style bentwood caps, and hand-hammered nails bring a sense of material honesty to the piece.

The Souvenir Sconce offers a quieter but equally expressive moment. Mounted to the wall, it shows the undulating paper form from one of its most graceful angles. The construction is minimal, but the silhouette is soft and full of movement. It celebrates pleated lantern craftsmanship with restraint, making a bold statement in a gentle voice.

These works are only a portion of the broader Amica collection. Across its many forms, the collection continues to explore the same relationships between ceramic weight, paper softness, organic silhouettes, and careful detailing. The pieces feel connected, but not repetitive. Each one has its own proportion, gesture, and mood.

What makes Amica compelling is the way it balances opposites: heavy and light, earthy and translucent, structured and organic. The pieces do more than brighten a space. They change how the space feels. Even when unlit, they hold their own as objects with texture, rhythm, and presence.

Amica feels contemporary without losing its connection to older craft traditions. Paper, ceramic, wood, and concrete are used in a way that feels both familiar and fresh. The collection invites slower looking, asking the viewer to notice the ridges, folds, shadows, and small handmade details that give each piece its character.

At its core, Amica is a collection about softness with structure. It turns natural references and crafted processes into luminous objects that feel intimate, expressive, and quietly theatrical.

The post The Amica Collection Finds Poetry in Paper, Clay, and Glow first appeared on Yanko Design.

How A Simple Angle Makes Outdoor Seating Feel More Social

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Public furniture has a quiet way of shaping how people move through the day. A bench can make someone pause. A table can turn an empty courtyard into a lunch spot. A slight angle in a seat can change whether people feel separate, side by side, or gently invited into conversation. Take-Out Wedge, part of Landscape Forms’ Take-Out collection designed by Rodrigo Torres, works within that subtle space between object and behavior.

The Take-Out collection expands Landscape Forms’ connected seating and dining table category through a system that feels clean, adaptable, and easy to reconfigure. The family includes singles, doubles, triples, wheelchair-accessible triples, tall versions, wedge units, and mini pieces for younger users. Each piece can stand on its own or come together with others, allowing outdoor spaces to shift throughout the day as people gather, separate, work, eat, wait, or simply linger.

Designer: Rodrigo Torres

The Wedge is especially compelling because its form is doing more than creating a distinctive silhouette. Its angle changes the relationship between people. Traditional seating often places us in familiar social positions. Side by side feels relaxed and effortless, with both people sharing the same outward view. Face to face feels more direct, suited to conversation, focus, or collaboration. The Wedge creates something softer between the two: a posture where people can look outward together while still feeling naturally turned toward one another.

That middle ground is what gives the design its social intelligence. It does not push people into interaction, but it makes interaction easier. It allows connection to happen casually, without the intensity of a formal setup. In a campus courtyard, public plaza, hotel terrace, office garden, retail district, or civic space, that kind of nuance matters. People often need places that support informal moments: a quick chat, a shared break, a quiet lunch, a spontaneous meeting, or a pause between destinations.

The beauty of Take-Out Wedge lies in how much spatial variety comes from such a simple geometric move. The wedge form allows designers and users to create soft arcs, faceted curves, radial clusters, and enclosed hexagonal hubs. A few units can support a small conversation. More pieces can shape a larger social zone. Arranged differently, the same system can feel open, intimate, directional, playful, or communal.

This is where Take-Out begins to feel less like standalone furniture and more like a framework for outdoor life. It does not need walls to define space. It can frame a pause point, activate an overlooked corner, shape a gathering area, or bring rhythm to an open setting. Placed side by side, the pieces can create long runs of seating for meals, meetings, or collaborative work. In a grid, they can give an outdoor area the energy of a café. Face to face, they become an expandable communal table.

The system also understands that flexibility has to work in real life. Color-matched connector brackets can secure adjoining units when a more permanent arrangement is needed. One-sided tables help make better use of edges, walls, or tighter spaces. An umbrella-hole tabletop option brings shade into the setup, with semi-circular cutouts that align when two units are placed across from each other. These details make the collection feel practical without taking away from its visual simplicity.

Comfort is handled with the same restraint. The form is minimal, but not cold. Gently curved edges soften the points where elbows and knees meet the furniture. Users can enter from either side or from behind, avoiding the awkwardness that often comes with shared outdoor tables. Sheet metal tops, extruded aluminum verticals, powdercoated finishes, and durable nylon glides support the realities of public use, where furniture has to withstand weather, movement, cleaning, and constant rearrangement.

Take-Out also feels relevant because public and commercial spaces are being asked to do more. A campus lawn may need to support outdoor study in the morning, lunch in the afternoon, and casual hangouts by evening. A workplace terrace might shift between focused solitude and team conversation. A commercial plaza may need to feel active without becoming crowded. Take-Out responds to these changing needs by keeping the space open-ended.

The mini version brings the same thinking into children’s environments, from schoolyards and outdoor classrooms to family-friendly public spaces. It recognizes that younger users also need furniture that encourages gathering, movement, play, and shared experience. Good public furniture should work across ages, settings, and rhythms of use.

What makes the Wedge memorable is that it treats connection as something spatial. The way people sit in relation to one another carries emotional meaning. A small angle can make a space feel more open, more welcoming, or more alive. Public furniture has always had this potential, especially in urban commons where small moments of social life happen between larger routines. A good seating system can make people stay a little longer, notice each other more, and feel more at ease in shared space.

The same value carries into commercial environments. Offices, mixed-use developments, hospitality spaces, and retail campuses often bring people into proximity without really helping them connect. A system like Take-Out Wedge softens that distance. It creates casual opportunities for people to gather without making the moment feel staged. It helps shared spaces feel warmer, more active, and less siloed.

Take-Out Wedge is versatile because it understands that connection does not happen in one fixed format. Sometimes people want to sit beside each other and look out at the world. Sometimes they want to face each other and talk. Sometimes they need something in between. The Wedge gives form to that in-between moment, turning a simple angle into an invitation to share space more naturally.

The post How A Simple Angle Makes Outdoor Seating Feel More Social first appeared on Yanko Design.

A Stool, a Bookstand, and a Small Monument to Stillness

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Guided by geometry, symmetry, and a quiet reverence for material, the Bookchair by Cass Saldanha sits somewhere between furniture, object, and architectural study. At first glance, it appears to be a stool. Look again, and it becomes something more deliberate: a sculptural support for an open book, a small monument to stillness, and an invitation to slow down in a world that rarely does.

The form is immediately striking. The Bookchair is not designed around softness or visual excess. Instead, it relies on precision. Every angle feels measured, every junction intentional, every line part of a larger geometric rhythm. Its silhouette carries the clarity of modernist thinking, but without feeling cold or overly industrial. There is warmth in the way the structure opens itself up, almost like a small piece of architecture scaled down to the size of a domestic object.

Designer: Cass Saldanha

The design takes inspiration from Lina Bo Bardi, the Italian-Brazilian architect and designer whose work often balanced modernist rigor with Brazilian vernacular traditions, craft, and cultural honesty. That influence can be felt in the Bookchair’s refusal to separate structure from expression. Like Bo Bardi’s furniture, it does not treat utility and beauty as opposing forces. Instead, it allows function to become the source of sculptural character.

The Bookchair can be used as a normal stool, with its 18-inch height giving it a clear seating function. But its more poetic role is as a book display. Designed to cradle an open book, it transforms reading into a visual and spatial experience. A book placed on it does not simply rest there; it becomes part of the composition. The chair almost frames the written word, turning a casual object into a moment of attention. In this sense, the Bookchair is less about storage and more about pause. It asks the user to notice the book, the object, and the act of reading itself.

Materiality plays a major role in grounding the design. Crafted from solid white oak and European walnut, the piece balances tonal warmth with structural depth. The contrast between the woods gives the form a quiet richness without distracting from its geometry. At the center, an oak disc anchors the design, distributing force at the point where the three angled legs converge. This detail is both functional and visual, acting almost like a joint in a building or the keystone of a miniature structure.

The engineering is equally thoughtful. Four 1/3-inch brass rods are used as discreet tension relievers at key junctions, adding stability without interrupting the purity of the form. They are not decorative in the obvious sense, yet their presence adds another layer of refinement. The brass subtly acknowledges the forces moving through the object, making the structure feel honest rather than hidden.

Each surface is hand-finished with natural oils, giving the wood a matte, luminous quality. This finish preserves the tactile essence of the material, allowing the grain, tone, and texture to remain central to the experience. It is a piece that seems meant to be touched as much as seen.

What makes the Bookchair compelling is its ability to hold multiple identities at once. It is a stool, but not just a stool. It is a bookstand, but not merely a display piece. It is functional, but its function feels almost ceremonial. By combining modernist clarity, Brazilian design sensibility, careful joinery, and sculptural restraint, the Bookchair becomes an object to use and contemplate. The Bookchair offers something quieter and more enduring, demonstrating how design can create rituals through even the smallest gestures. A place to sit. A place to rest a book. A place to pause.

The post A Stool, a Bookstand, and a Small Monument to Stillness first appeared on Yanko Design.

A Toy-Inspired Lamp Collection That Makes the Candelabra Feel New

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Lighting often sits at the meeting point of function and feeling. A lamp is expected to brighten a room, but the best ones do more than that: they shift the mood, add character, and sometimes become the object people remember most when they leave. With the Woaw collection, Dubai-based lighting designer Nader Gammas takes this idea in a playful and unexpected direction. Instead of treating the candelabra as a formal, traditional object, he reimagines it through bold color, simplified geometry, and the joyful memory of childhood toys.

Introduced through his brand Mr. John’s Goods, the Woaw collection feels like a deliberate break from the seriousness often associated with designer lighting. These table and floor lamps are not quiet background pieces. They are bright, sculptural, and full of personality. Inspired by toy-like forms and vivid color combinations, each lamp brings a sense of fun into the home while still remaining refined enough to sit comfortably in a modern interior. The result is a lighting collection that feels both nostalgic and contemporary.

Designer: Nader Gammas

What makes Woaw especially interesting is the way it transforms a familiar object. The candelabra has long been associated with elegance, tradition, and ornamentation. Gammas keeps the idea of multiple light sources, but strips away the heaviness and formality. In its place, he introduces clear shapes, clean lines, and unexpected color blocking. The lamps almost feel like they have been built from oversized toy blocks, yet their proportions and material choices keep them from feeling childish. They are playful, but not silly; expressive, but not chaotic.

There is also a subtle connection to the spirit of the Memphis Group, especially in the use of bold colors and geometric expression. However, Woaw feels more restrained. Rather than relying on busy patterns or visual excess, the collection uses color as its main tool of reinvention. The forms are simple and direct, allowing the palette to carry much of the emotion. This balance gives the lamps their charm: they are instantly eye-catching, but still easy to imagine in a real living space.

That sense of visual surprise also makes Woaw a natural conversation starter. In a room filled with familiar furniture and expected design choices, these lamps interrupt the ordinary in the best way. Their toy-like silhouettes, cheerful colors, and reworked candelabra structure invite people to pause, look closer, and ask about them. They carry just enough nostalgia to feel familiar, and just enough strangeness to feel fresh. A guest might see one and think of building blocks, candy colors, retro design, or childhood objects, which is exactly where the charm lies. Woaw does not simply sit in a space; it gives people something to respond to.

The collection is also flexible in scale and arrangement. The table lamps come in single, single single, single double, double, and double tilt versions, making them suitable for desks, shelves, side tables, or smaller corners. The floor lamps are designed for larger spaces and come in single, single single, single double, triple, and double tilt versions. This variety allows the collection to move between being a small accent piece and a major focal point in a room. Whether placed beside a sofa or on a work desk, the lamps bring an immediate sense of energy.

Beyond their visual appeal, the Woaw lamps are designed with durability and usability in mind. Both the table and floor versions combine sturdy steel bodies with ceramic shades, which help soften the light and give the object a crafted quality. The use of 6W LEDs adds an energy-conscious layer to the design, while the 3-region plug makes the lamps suitable for homes across the US, UK, and EU. This practical detailing supports the larger goal of Mr. John’s Goods: making designer lighting feel more accessible without losing its sense of imagination.

The Woaw collection succeeds because it understands that functional objects do not have to be visually ordinary. A lamp can illuminate a room, but it can also spark memory, joy, and conversation. By bringing together the language of toys, the structure of the candelabra, and the clarity of modern sculpture, Nader Gammas creates lighting that feels fresh, approachable, and full of life. Woaw is not just about seeing better; it is about making a room feel more alive.

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A 1960s Lounge Chair That Still Feels Like a Future Artifact

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Some pieces of furniture explain themselves immediately. Others ask you to slow down for a second. Pierre Paulin’s F300 Lounge Chair belongs to the second category. Originally designed in the late 1960s and now reissued by GUBI, the chair still has the strange, magnetic presence of an object that refuses to behave like conventional seating.

At first glance, the F300 looks almost poured into existence. Its body is a single, continuous form, low to the ground and generous in width, with no obvious separation between seat, back, or base. There are no legs to visually interrupt the silhouette, no hard frame, no decorative detailing. Just a smooth, sculptural sweep that seems to shift depending on where you stand. From one angle, it feels futuristic. From another, it looks relaxed, almost playful. That tension is where much of its charm lives.

Designer: GUBI

Paulin designed the chair during a period when furniture was beginning to loosen up. Domestic life was changing, and so was the way people wanted to sit, gather, lounge, and move through interiors. The F300 captures that cultural shift beautifully. It does not dictate posture. It does not tell the body to sit upright, stay centered, or behave. Instead, it gives the sitter permission to settle in however they want. You can lean back, turn sideways, curl your legs beneath you, or stretch out with a book nearby. The chair works less like a fixed seat and more like a landscape for the body.

That sense of openness is what makes the F300 feel so current, even decades after its original release. Many lounge chairs are designed around comfort, but comfort often comes with bulk or visual heaviness. Paulin managed to avoid that. The F300 is roomy without feeling clumsy, expressive without being loud, and sculptural without becoming precious. It has the confidence of a design icon, but it still feels approachable enough to be used every day.

For the reissue, GUBI has preserved the original geometry while updating the chair’s material composition for contemporary use. The new shell is made from HiREK, an engineered polymer that incorporates recycled industrial plastic. This change gives the chair a stronger, more durable body while keeping the uninterrupted surface that defines its character. It also makes the piece more resistant to UV exposure and outdoor conditions, allowing the F300 to move beyond the living room and into terraces, patios, poolside settings, and open-air spaces.

That material update is important because it does not treat the chair as a museum piece. Instead of freezing Paulin’s design in the past, GUBI allows it to continue living. The reissue respects the original idea while making it more useful for how people live now: across indoor and outdoor spaces, in homes that are more fluid, informal, and less bound by traditional room categories.

The F300 has also been relaunched alongside Paulin’s matching T877 side table. Together, the two pieces create a shared visual language of curves, openness, and ease. The table feels like a natural companion rather than an accessory, echoing the chair’s soft, sculptural logic without competing with it. Placed together, they form a small island of leisure: a place for a drink, a book, a long conversation, or no agenda at all.

What makes the F300 compelling is not only its shape, but the attitude behind it. It suggests that design can be bold without being uncomfortable, experimental without being alienating, and relaxed without disappearing into the background. More than half a century after Paulin first imagined it, the chair still feels fresh because it was never simply about style. It was about freedom: freedom of posture, freedom of use, and freedom from the rigid expectations of what a lounge chair should be.

The post A 1960s Lounge Chair That Still Feels Like a Future Artifact first appeared on Yanko Design.

From Abandoned Fishing Nets to Light That Carries the Sea

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Some objects arrive in our homes with perfect surfaces and polished silence. Tides Rewoven Light does the opposite. It carries its past visibly. Its fibers remember the sea, its textures hold the marks of use, and its form tells a story of rescue rather than reinvention.

Created from abandoned fishing nets and plastic marine debris collected from Wengzi Fishing Harbor, the project transforms waste into a functional lighting object through a process of cleaning, sorting, weaving, repairing, and reshaping. But what makes the work compelling is not simply that it recycles material. It refuses to erase the material’s history.

Designer: Chih-Hsun Chang, Zi-Yi Wang, Min-Fang Xiao, Shang-You Chen, Xin-Yu Yao

Fishing nets are strangely contradictory objects. In human hands, they are flexible, useful, and finely engineered. In the ocean, once abandoned, they become ghostly hazards: trapping marine life, degrading into microplastics, and remaining painfully difficult to recover through conventional systems. Tides Rewoven Light begins exactly at this contradiction. Instead of treating discarded nets as anonymous raw matter to be crushed, melted, or chemically reprocessed, the design asks: what if the net could continue being a net, just in another life?

That question shapes the project’s entire circular design approach. The broken fishing nets are not hidden under a new skin. They are repaired and joined through weaving, allowing their fiber structure, flexibility, and aged texture to remain visible. Collected marine plastic is also brought into the process, not only as material, but as part of the making system itself. Plastic bowls, columnar objects, and other debris are used as molds, supported by a temporary metal framework for shaping and resin coating. Once the form is set, the framework is removed, leaving behind an object shaped by the very waste it seeks to address.

This is where the project moves beyond the familiar language of “upcycling.” Many recycled products depend on energy-intensive transformation, where waste must be broken down until it becomes unrecognizable. Tides Rewoven Light takes a quieter, more localized route. It works with the material’s existing properties instead of fighting them. The net’s flexibility becomes structure. Its knots become memory. Its weathered surface becomes an aesthetic value.

The result is not just a lamp made from marine debris, but a design argument: circularity does not always have to mean purification. Sometimes it can mean continuity. By preserving the traces of salt, labor, time, and damage, the product invites users to live with an object that still points back to the place it came from. It turns environmental crisis into domestic presence without softening the urgency behind it.

There is also something deeply poetic about turning discarded fishing nets into light. Nets are objects of capture; here, they become objects of release. They once pulled life from water. Now they diffuse light into living spaces. This shift gives the project emotional depth, making sustainability feel less like a technical checkbox and more like a cultural act of repair.

The team’s future vision strengthens this potential. By building partnerships with fishing ports and local communities, the project could become more than a single product. It could grow into a localized circular ecosystem for collecting, processing, and upcycling marine waste. Such a system would not only reduce environmental harm but also create social and economic value around materials that are usually seen as burdens.

The lifecycle thinking is equally important. The object is designed with future disassembly and recycling in mind, aligning with a cradle-to-cradle philosophy where use is not the final chapter. Instead of ending in disposal, the product is imagined as part of an ongoing material cycle.

Tides Rewoven Light is powerful because it does not romanticize waste, nor does it disguise it. It lets the material speak. It shows that circular design can be local, low-energy, emotionally resonant, and materially honest. In a world often obsessed with making sustainable products look untouched, this project suggests something more interesting: maybe the most responsible objects are the ones brave enough to show where they have been.

The post From Abandoned Fishing Nets to Light That Carries the Sea first appeared on Yanko Design.

Gustaf Westman Gives Cat Furniture a Playful Upgrade

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Cat trees are rarely the most beautiful objects in a home. They are often tall, scratchy, beige, awkwardly shaped, and treated as something to be tolerated rather than celebrated. Swedish designer Gustaf Westman seems to have taken that as a challenge. With his new Chunky Cat Tree, he reimagines the everyday pet accessory as a sculptural, design-forward piece of furniture that belongs as much to the living room as it does to the cat.

Known for his soft, rounded, almost cartoon-like forms, Westman has built a recognizable visual language around bold proportions and playful silhouettes. His Chunky collection already includes cups, glasses, vases, a stool, a flower pot, and even a coffee maker. Now, with the Chunky Cat Tree, that same design universe has expanded into the world of pet furniture.

Designer: Gustaf Westman

The piece is informed by Westman’s Blob Sofa, which launched in 2023. Like the sofa, the cat tree uses stacked, rounded volumes and a confident colour palette to create something that feels friendly, soft, and slightly surreal. Instead of hiding pet furniture in a corner, Westman’s version asks to be seen. It functions as a perch for cats, but also as a statement object for humans.

The design features a tripod base, with three rounded legs supporting platforms placed at different heights. These levels allow cats to climb, rest, observe, and occupy the structure from multiple angles. The three rounded feet can also serve as resting spots, making the piece usable by more than one cat at a time. It is practical, but it does not look purely practical. That is where the charm lies.

Westman’s approach feels especially relevant in a moment when homes are becoming more carefully curated, but also more emotionally expressive. People no longer want furniture that only performs a function; they want objects that reflect personality, taste, humour, and lifestyle. The Chunky Cat Tree fits into this shift beautifully. It treats cats not as an afterthought in the domestic space, but as active participants in it.

The designer has said that after seeing so many ugly cat trees, he felt it would be fun to design something within that category. His comment reveals the larger idea behind the project: everything can be designed better, even the things we usually accept as visually unpleasant. By giving equal attention to form and function, Westman creates a product that serves both cats and their owners.

Made to order in Sweden, the Chunky Cat Tree can be upholstered in wool in red, yellow, purple, blue, or cobalt blue. These colour options continue Westman’s love for punchy primary and secondary shades, while the wool finish gives the object a softer, more furniture-like presence.

Since founding his studio in 2020, Westman has become known for custom furniture, ceramics, glassware, and playful made-to-order objects. His work often uses materials such as wood, metal, ceramic, and glass, but visually ties them together through rounded shapes, glossy finishes, and a childlike sense of wonder.

The Chunky Cat Tree is more than a luxury accessory for pets. It is a reminder that design can enter unexpected categories and make them feel fresh. By turning a typically clunky household object into a sculptural centrepiece, Gustaf Westman proves that even a cat tree can have personality, humour, and a place in contemporary design.

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PEEL Turns Discarded Fruit Skins Into Living Textile

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There is something quietly radical about looking at a fruit peel and refusing to see waste. Salak and lychee skins are usually treated as the most disposable part of the fruit, peeled off, discarded, and forgotten almost instantly. PEEL begins at that exact moment of dismissal. Instead of blending the skins down, disguising them, or forcing them to behave like leather, the project lets them remain visibly themselves.

Developed by designer Anthony Guevara, PEEL transforms discarded salak and lychee skins into a durable, biodegradable textile made without adhesives, synthetic polymers, or toxic chemical treatments. The material offers a regenerative alternative to leather and petroleum-based vegan substitutes, with estimated CO₂ emissions up to 95% lower. What makes the work compelling is that it does not rely on the usual visual language of “sustainable design.” It is not trying to look clean, neutral, or overly polished. It carries the roughness, colour shifts, scale-like patterns, and irregular surfaces of the skins it comes from.

Designer: Nefeli Vitoraki

The project is deeply rooted in Indonesia, where salak and lychee are widely consumed, and their skins are discarded in large quantities every day. These fruits also have a short shelf life, which means their peels are consistently available through existing food systems. This matters because PEEL does not depend on growing a new crop or creating an additional supply chain for material production. It begins with what already exists, what is already abundant, and what is already being thrown away.

The process is careful rather than overly industrial. After the fruits are consumed, the skins are collected and dried through a controlled low-heat process. This step preserves the natural structure and pliability of each peel, which is essential for turning it into a textile. The skins are then treated with naturally derived materials to improve durability and water resistance. Once stable, they are stitched onto biodegradable backing structures such as cotton muslin or linen.

That stitching is important. Many plant-based leather alternatives are processed into uniform sheets, often requiring synthetic binders or coatings to hold everything together. In doing so, they erase the character of the original material. PEEL takes the opposite route. Each skin is treated and applied individually, so the final textile carries visible traces of the fruit’s form, colour, and texture. The result feels less like imitation leather and more like a material with its own identity.

From a design perspective, honesty is one of the strongest parts of the project. Sustainable materials often get pushed into proving themselves by looking like something familiar. Mushroom leather has to look like leather. Cactus leather has to look like leather. Grape waste, apple waste, pineapple fibre, all of them are frequently judged by how convincingly they can replace an existing material. PEEL resists that pressure. It does not apologize for the fact that it used to be fruit skin. It builds its visual and tactile language from that origin.

The development process also reveals the material’s stubbornness. PEEL began with salak alone, with no guarantee that the skins could become usable. Early experiments focused on drying methods because the peels were too brittle to stitch by machine. The first prototype, a stool, had to be hand-stitched throughout. More than fifty tests followed, adjusting combinations of naturally derived treatments until the material became flexible, durable, and workable. The second prototype, a bag, expanded the system to lychee and four other tropical fruit peels.

Home testing across abrasion, water, heat, humidity, and bend fatigue showed promising results across all six materials. Every peel demonstrated high heat and humidity resistance, and samples have remained stable for over a year. These early results suggest that the project is more than a beautiful material experiment. It has the potential to become a practical textile system, especially for applications where biodegradability, local sourcing, and distinctive surface quality are valuable.

The local production model makes the idea stronger. Since the skins can be sourced where the fruits are processed or consumed, PEEL imagines a closed regional loop: fruit is eaten, skins are collected, material is made, and products are produced within the same community. This keeps the material connected to the place. It also creates an opportunity for small local workshops in Indonesian fruit-growing regions, turning a low-value waste stream into a new economic resource.

The next step is bringing more rigour to the testing and supply chain. Guevara is working toward partnerships with Indonesian fruit processing factories where skins are currently discarded, creating a zero-cost raw material source. In parallel, collaboration with Imperial College London aims to formalise lab testing for tensile strength, abrasion resistance, and long-term durability.

PEEL is interesting because it does not frame sustainability as a finish, a label, or a moral claim attached to the end of a product. It begins with material behaviour. It asks what a peel can do before deciding what it should become. That shift feels important. The project is not just about replacing leather. It is about expanding the designer’s imagination around overlooked matter and treating waste as something with form, memory, and potential still left in it.

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How Pasta Became Interior Design’s Most Playful Muse

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There is something wonderfully unserious, and yet oddly elegant, about pasta-inspired decor. What began as an April Fools’ joke by luxury stone and tile company Artistic Tile has now become part of a broader design movement that treats pasta as form, memory, geometry, and material inspiration.

In April, Artistic Tile posted its newest “product line” on Instagram: mosaics featuring macaroni and farfalle shapes arranged like pasta in sauce. The collection, cheekily called Al Dente, immediately caught attention. Followers loved the concept, with many joking that Italian restaurants should take the idea seriously. The only problem? It was posted on April 1. The tiles were never originally meant to be real. But the joke had too much flavor to stay fictional.

Designer: Studio Yellowdot

The idea first emerged while Artistic Tile’s president and chief product officer, Zach Epstein, was reviewing another design with a boomerang-like shape. The curve suggested something more familiar and playful: macaroni. After the enthusiastic online response, Artistic Tile decided to bring the concept to life through its Tailored To program, which allows for custom designs. What started with macaroni and farfalle expanded into vodka rigatoni made from limestone and Rosa Perlino, and butter noodles made with Limone Marmi marble. Beneath the humor, the pattern works because it is recognizable, abstract, and decorative without feeling too literal.

That balance between wit and refinement is exactly why pasta has become such an appealing muse for designers. Pasta is familiar, playful, sculptural, and deeply emotional. It carries family memories, comfort, culture, and craft, while offering an endless library of shapes: ridges, curls, tubes, shells, folds, ribbons, and spirals.

Pasta-inspired design does not need to belong only in Italian restaurants or food-focused spaces. Its value lies in its ability to spark conversation anywhere. A pasta-shaped pull on a cabinet, a lasagna-inspired chair, or a macaroni mosaic creates a moment of recognition. People pause, smile, and look closer. That small moment of surprise adds emotional value to an interior. It makes a space feel more human, less predictable, and more open to storytelling.

In an age where many interiors can feel overly polished or algorithmically similar, pasta brings a charming disruption. It introduces humor without making the space feel childish. It creates nostalgia without becoming overly sentimental. Because nearly everyone has some relationship with pasta, through family dinners, grocery aisles, childhood meals, or comfort food memories, the motif carries an easy emotional resonance. It becomes a shared reference point, allowing design to feel more approachable and social.

Canadian Italian artist and industrial designer Chris Fusaro’s work shows how pasta can operate as a design language. His bronze objects appear to be built from hyperrealistic pasta pieces, transforming bowls, strainers, trivets, lamps, pendants, and chairs into playful studies of repetition and form. In this context, pasta becomes a modular system. Its many shapes allow the idea to expand across different scales and objects without feeling immediately exhausted.

At Milan Design Week, pasta moved into an even larger spatial language through Edible Reveries, an exhibition by Artisia, a Barilla-owned company specializing in 3D-printed dry pasta, and Studio Yellowdot. Alongside tastings, visitors encountered pasta-inspired furniture, including a lounge seat, rocking chair, and ottoman shaped like enlarged dry noodles. The furniture was also 3D-printed, using a wood-composite material that echoed the process of shaping pasta dough. The result was surreal yet functional: soft and noodle-like in appearance, stable and architectural as furniture.

Other designers are exploring pasta at a more intimate scale. Australian hardware brand Lo & Co Interiors released its own Al Dente collection, featuring orecchiette-inspired knobs and lasagne-like pulls. These pieces bring a subtle wink to furniture and cabinetry. Their appeal lies in the way they feel familiar and sophisticated. A pasta-inspired drawer pull can be humorous, and when treated with the right material, finish, and proportion, it becomes unexpectedly elegant.

This trend feels timely because contemporary interiors are moving away from overly disciplined, sterile perfection and toward objects with personality, tactility, and a stronger sense of handcraft. Pasta forms naturally offer irregularity and charm. They feel shaped rather than engineered. They carry presence without becoming intimidating.

San Francisco designer Caleb Ferris found inspiration in pasta while observing the range of shapes found in grocery store aisles during the pandemic. The variety of pasta forms revealed itself as a kind of mass-produced design library. His lasagna chair, made in a ruffled black satin silhouette, brought tongue-in-cheek humor into furniture and went on to win the 2023 ICFF Editors Award for Seating. In a moment when people were craving lightness, pasta offered comedy, craft, and a break from overly serious design language.

New York interior designer Tara McCauley has leaned into the theatrical side of pasta. Her lamp, made with real linguine, faux parsley, and a clam shell base, plays with the line between decorative object and edible absurdity. The piece creates a moment of surprise: at first glance, it reads as a whimsical design object, but up close, the use of real pasta turns it into something stranger and more memorable.

Pasta-inspired design works because it is funny without feeling disposable. It adds value to interior spaces by being memorable. It gives people something to notice, talk about, and connect with. Whether placed in a home, boutique hotel, retail space, gallery, or restaurant, it can soften the atmosphere and make the environment feel more personal.

Pasta has always carried the logic of design. It is engineered to hold sauce, shaped for texture, scaled for the hand and mouth, and tied to ritual. Now, designers are moving it from the kitchen table into the wider world of interiors. The result is a little ridiculous, surprisingly refined, and very hard not to love.

The post How Pasta Became Interior Design’s Most Playful Muse first appeared on Yanko Design.

Muuto’s Minimalist Chair Hides A Tiny Heart In Its Details

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There are few symbols more familiar than the heart. It appears everywhere, from children’s drawings to luxury branding, which is perhaps why designers rarely touch it. The shape carries so much cultural baggage that it can quickly slip into sentimentality.

For its twentieth anniversary, Danish furniture brand Muuto decided to take that risk! Created with Copenhagen studio Spacon, the *Close to Heart* chair debuts during 3 Days of Design as part of Muuto’s anniversary programme, *Next Chapters in Scandinavian Design*. Limited to 150 pieces and produced in Denmark from extruded aluminium, the chair transforms the heart from a graphic symbol into a structural system. Every profile used to construct the chair is shaped like a heart.

Designer: Muuto and Spacon

The project began with a clear direction from Muuto, which was to avoid nostalgia. Rather than celebrating the past, the anniversary was framed as an opportunity to explore where Scandinavian design might go next. For Spacon partners Nikoline Dyrup Carlsen, Malene Hvidt, and Svend Jacob Pedersen, that conversation led unexpectedly to the heart.

What attracted the designers was not its symbolism alone, but its geometry. A heart combines two very different formal qualities within a single shape. One side is defined by a sharp triangular point, while the other is made up of generous curves. It is a shape that feels simple at first glance, yet becomes surprisingly intricate when examined closely.

That balance between softness and precision carries through the entire chair. From a distance, the heart references are obvious. Up close, they begin to disappear into the construction, becoming part of the chair’s proportions, joints, and structure rather than decorative details.

Material selection played an equally important role. Extruded aluminium is typically associated with engineering and manufacturing efficiency, making it an unusual choice for an object built around one of culture’s most emotionally loaded symbols. Yet the designers found that the material’s characteristics aligned naturally with the concept. Its light weight and ability to accommodate smooth curves allowed the heart profile to be repeated throughout the chair without becoming visually heavy.

The anodized finish further softens the material’s appearance. Instead of presenting aluminium as hard or industrial, the treatment gives the surface a subtle depth that reacts to changing light throughout the day. Reflections become muted, colors from the surrounding environment are absorbed into the surface, and the material takes on a quieter presence.

The chair sits within a broader collaboration between Muuto and Spacon centred on the relationship between technical systems and emotional experience. Muuto’s history is rooted in innovation and manufacturing development, while Spacon’s work frequently crosses between architecture, interiors, art, and craft. Close to Heart brings those interests together in a single object.

That intersection feels particularly relevant to how Scandinavian design is evolving today. The defining values remain familiar: experimentation, material honesty, and careful craftsmanship. What is changing is the willingness to embrace stronger narratives, cultural references, and emotional expression without treating them as separate from function.

The heart, surprisingly, proved to be a useful vehicle for that discussion. What could easily have become a novelty instead became a study in proportion, material, and manufacturing. The symbolism is impossible to ignore, yet the chair succeeds because it never relies on symbolism alone.

For Muuto and Spacon, the anniversary project is less about celebrating twenty years of design history than testing where design can go next. If Close to Heart is any indication, that future may involve a little more emotion, a little more playfulness, and a willingness to find sophistication in places designers have often overlooked.

The post Muuto’s Minimalist Chair Hides A Tiny Heart In Its Details first appeared on Yanko Design.