Tag Archives: Furniture

This VR System Gets Bigger So It Doesn’t Have to Touch Your Face

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Virtual reality often asks you to strap a screen to your face before you can go anywhere. That can get uncomfortable when a short demonstration turns into a long session. Researchers at Kyushu University tried moving the display off your head and onto a chair instead, surrounding the seated user with an optical pod that offers a three-dimensional view without a headset.

The prototype looks more like a piece of oversized furniture than goggles and controllers. A high-backed seat supports your body, while a large white enclosure projects forward around your field of view. Its bulk might seem surprising for a system intended to reduce discomfort, but that weight belongs to the structure, not your forehead, cheeks, or neck during a session.

Designer: Shogo Fukushima (Kyushu University)

Inside, a micromirror array directs slightly different images to each eye, creating depth without placing lenses against your face. Aerial imaging makes the scene appear to float beyond the chair rather than sit on a screen inches away. That gives you something closer to looking into a space than staring at a monitor, even though the machinery stays right where you’re seated.

The chair itself becomes part of the controls. A gyroscope follows its rotation, so turning your body changes what you see in the virtual scene. You don’t have to wear a tracker on your head or adjust a headset each time someone else takes a turn. Sit down, face the optics, and the system can respond to a swivel as you look around.

Imagine a museum where visitors take turns exploring a reconstruction without sharing something that rests against their faces. A seat could offer a brief journey, then welcome the next person without the ritual of fitting and removing goggles. The same approach might suit a stationary operator examining a remote workspace, although neither setting has been demonstrated as a finished installation.

Putting the optics in furniture also changes what designers can do with their size. Bigger components don’t have to balance on someone’s nose, leaving room to experiment with a broader view or different moving mechanisms. The researchers suggest that this freedom might eventually help address VR sickness, but it hasn’t been shown to prevent nausea. Less head pressure and less motion sickness are two different promises.

There are obvious trade-offs. You can’t walk around while using a chair-bound system, and the current prototype occupies far more room than a headset you can put in a drawer. It’s designed around seated rotation, not every little turn of your head, so it shouldn’t be mistaken for an equivalent replacement for mobile VR.

Still, the chair asks a question about who should carry the weight of immersion. Instead of shrinking everything until it fits on your face, it lets the room hold the hardware and leaves your head alone. For someone spending an afternoon inside a simulated environment, that shift could matter more than another reduction in headset weight, provided the chair itself proves comfortable.

The post This VR System Gets Bigger So It Doesn’t Have to Touch Your Face first appeared on Yanko Design.

This Stool’s Best Feature Is the Part That’s Actually Missing From It

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A stool usually has one job: hold you up for a while, then get out of the way. Ceil starts there, but leaves a circular opening in its seat for the moments when you need something else. Add a plate and it can hold a book beside you, Insert a light or a vase and it takes on an entirely different role.

The shape doesn’t try to hide its oddness. A broad, gently uneven metal seat rests on slim legs and a much thicker, mirror-polished stainless steel tube. The tube rises to meet the opening, making that apparently missing piece of the seat the center of the whole idea. Welds tucked underneath keep the top clean, so its unusual silhouette isn’t lost in fussy detailing.

Designer: Eunsu Lee

That opening measures about 4 inches across, enough to accommodate different inserts rather than remain an awkward gap. An optional level plate sits roughly 2 inches below the surface, creating a place to support a small vase or lighting element. Without anything added, Ceil is still meant to function as a stool, though the opening makes you think twice before choosing where to sit.

A cover plate takes the transformation in a quieter direction. Close the opening and the top becomes an uninterrupted place for a cup or a stack of magazines. It won’t suddenly replace a generous coffee table, of course, but in an apartment where furniture has to earn its floor space, having a spare seat that can also handle a drink is a useful compromise.

Then there’s the possibility of making it glow. The concept pairs the recessed plate with a light, while a cover can change how illumination appears at the opening. That doesn’t make the stool an electrical appliance. It’s a way to let lighting share the same structure as furniture, so the piece can mark a corner long after someone gets up.

Ceil also has a social trick. Bring two stools together, and an optional join plate bridges their openings, making a shared surface between two seats. You could set down coffee during a conversation without dragging a separate table into the room. It’s a tidy extension of the original idea: the same aperture that holds a vase can also connect one piece of furniture to another.

There are questions a polished prototype can’t settle. A metal seat might feel cold, and neither a weight rating nor details of the light’s power supply are provided. The project is described as a personal, AI-assisted design, with photographs showing physical development, not a product with a price or release date.

Ceil’s appeal lies in what happens between those roles. Someone sits down, leaves a book on the covered end, then makes room for flowers or a light when the day slows down. The wide seat and gleaming tube give it a distinctive presence, but the small opening does the interesting work. Its next job depends on what you place inside that circle.

The post This Stool’s Best Feature Is the Part That’s Actually Missing From It first appeared on Yanko Design.

Bloom Built a Cat Tower Around the Cat You Haven’t Got Yet

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A kitten might be happy with a hideaway, but give it a few months and that same nook starts looking cramped. Add another cat, and a single perch becomes contested territory. Bloom takes that problem literally, building a cat tower from separate cylindrical modules that can be arranged as its occupants grow. It starts small instead of demanding space for a feline family.

Most cat towers arrive as a collection of platforms, posts, and houses, whether your cat needs all of them or not. Their bulk can make a living room feel as if it has been furnished around the pet. Bloom swaps that predetermined silhouette for a cluster of open tubes, each one a place to curl up, climb through, or watch the room.

Designers: Joonseo Choi, Taewoon Kang

Those cylinders come in several diameters, so arranging them feels closer to stacking play objects than assembling pet furniture. A smaller cat can settle into a tighter opening, while a larger one has room to stretch out in a wider tube. The circles also give Bloom its character: soft, repeating forms that can take different shapes instead of committing your room to one tower.

Of course, loose tubes wouldn’t make much of a cat tower once the occupants started leaping about. Bloom uses orange straps to hold the modules together, with hook-and-loop fastening that makes them easier to attach and detach. The straps add a punch of color to the pale cylinders, but their important job is letting you change the arrangement without committing to a rebuild.

You might begin with two tubes near the sofa, then add another when your kitten starts climbing above everybody’s heads. If a second cat joins the household, a wider cluster could give each animal somewhere to pause without fighting over the same opening. The exact layout can follow the cats, rather than asking them to adapt to whatever configuration came in a box.

The holes along the sides serve another purpose beyond giving the straps somewhere to attach. Slide a toy toward one, and a cat tucked inside has something to investigate, while you get a way to join the game without reaching into the tube. It’s a detail, but it turns the enclosed space into somewhere for interaction rather than just another hiding place.

There are still questions a concept can’t answer. A tall arrangement would need to stay steady under a cat’s weight, especially if one launches itself at an upper opening. Bloom doesn’t specify load limits or explain how every possible configuration would be supported, so that flexibility shouldn’t be mistaken for unlimited stacking. For now, its flexibility remains an intriguing, unproven design proposition.

Still, Bloom understands something about cats that a fixed tower often misses: the creature you bring home won’t always be small, and it might not always be alone. Its tubes can be rearranged as that story changes, while its openings leave room for curiosity. The furniture doesn’t need to grow overnight; it can take shape alongside the animals that claim it.

The post Bloom Built a Cat Tower Around the Cat You Haven’t Got Yet first appeared on Yanko Design.

5 Concrete Letters That Are Actually a Skatepark You Can Ride

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Public art often comes with an invisible instruction: look, but don’t touch. Skateparks invite the opposite response, yet their familiar ramps and rails can feel disconnected from the places around them. XPOME’s Skateable addresses both problems with a clever idea: make the sculpture the skatepark. In Gabrovo, Bulgaria, five concrete and steel letters spell out the graffiti artist’s name, and every letter offers a way to skate or a place to rest.

Created for an exhibition on the history of skateboarding in Bulgaria, Skateable stands outside the Christo and Jeanne-Claude Center. XPOME had been invited to make a sculpture, but the result refuses to sit quietly beside the subject of the show. It gives that subject a physical form, one that can be approached on wheels rather than understood only through a display. That feels like a more generous way to introduce people to skate culture.

Designer: XPOME

The letters are not identical obstacles dressed up as typography. The X forms a double quarter pipe. The P wraps a rail around a concrete island. The O becomes a volcano, while the M works as a bench for sliding and grinding. The E is a small triple jumping platform. Seen together, they read as a name; encountered individually, they offer a series of different movements.

I like how directly the idea comes across. You don’t need to skate to understand why the curved X might be fun, or why someone would want to test a line across the M. At the same time, a skater sees more than an oversized signature. They can read the shapes for what they might allow a board to do. Skateable gives both audiences a reason to pay attention without asking either to pretend they came for the same thing.

There is a real risk in turning an artist’s name into a large public object. It could easily feel like branding at everybody else’s expense. Here, the name earns its footprint by being useful. That does not make the work less personal to XPOME. If anything, it makes the signature more interesting. Rather than asking people to remember five letters, the artist lets them develop their own memories around the shapes those letters create.

The project also makes me think about how often design is judged from a single photograph. Skateable certainly has a strong image: chunky letterforms arranged in front of an older building. But a photo can only show the starting point. The work changes when someone rolls toward it, chooses a route, misses, tries again, or sits on the edge to watch a friend. Its appeal depends on what happens after the first glance.

That is part of why the exhibition setting matters. A show about skateboarding’s history could leave visitors looking backward, even when the stories it tells are still relevant to people who skate today. Putting a skateable structure outside creates a connection between the exhibition and an activity happening in the present. You can learn about a culture indoors, then step out and see someone participate in it. That contrast gives the work more energy than an object made only to illustrate a theme.

Skateable is a mini skatepark, not a replacement for the space and range of a full-sized one. Its scale is part of its appeal, though. Each letter gives someone a specific feature to consider, while the complete arrangement leaves room to imagine different approaches. Even people who never pick up a board can understand the design as an invitation to linger. Watching can be a way into a place, too.

I’d like to see more public art judged by that kind of invitation. Not every sculpture needs to be climbed, and not every plaza needs a ramp. But Skateable shows how much can happen when an artist considers what people might do with a work, rather than only what they might think of it. Five letters are enough to make a name recognizable. Giving those letters a life beyond the signature is the better trick.

The post 5 Concrete Letters That Are Actually a Skatepark You Can Ride first appeared on Yanko Design.

The Outlet Nobody Wanted to Look at Is Now the Design Feature

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The outlet behind my sofa is exactly where I don’t need it. Reaching it means shifting a cushion, feeling along the wall, and hoping I’ve grabbed the right plug. A power strip makes access easier, but then I’m left finding a place to hide the strip. It’s a small domestic annoyance, yet it says a lot about how we furnish rooms: we plan for the objects we want to see, then work around the electricity that makes them useful.

Volt Face offers a more appealing starting point. Designed by Studio 5.5 using Schneider Electric’s Odace sockets and switches, the collection turns those everyday electrical fittings into visible parts of lighting and furniture. It includes a table, a bedside table, a wall light, a pendant light, and other lamps. The sockets and switches still serve their original purpose. They’re simply no longer treated as details to conceal.

Designer: Studio 5.5

I like the modesty of that idea. Plenty of tech-forward furniture promises a seamless home, but “seamless” can mean a drawer full of mystery cables and a charger you can’t replace without buying a new lamp. Volt Face takes the opposite approach: let people see the controls and connections they use. A switch doesn’t need to disappear to make a room feel considered. Put it where someone can reach it, give it a clear role, and it begins to feel like part of the design.

The project was developed by Vincent Baranger and Anthony Lebossé, whose approach here is to repurpose familiar objects while keeping their functions intact. That distinction matters. Volt Face isn’t asking us to admire an outlet because a designer has declared it art. It asks whether a useful object could become more enjoyable when someone pays attention to its placement and presence. The answer feels less like a grand statement about the future of the home and more like a sensible correction to the way we’ve been arranging one.

A bedside table makes an especially good case for it. That’s where a lamp, a phone, a book, and a glass of water all compete for space. The outlet is usually just far enough away to make charging your phone awkward. Bringing electrical access into the furniture wouldn’t eliminate the need for a cord, but it could make the nightly routine less fussy. I’d welcome a table that acknowledged what actually ends up on a nightstand instead of pretending it holds only a carefully chosen vase.

The lighting pieces are interesting for a slightly different reason. A lamp already makes electricity visible through what it does, so letting its switch take a more prominent role feels natural. I’d rather have a control I can find without patting around the base in the dark. Studio 5.5’s collection includes both wall and pendant lighting, along with other lamps, giving the idea room to work beyond a single piece of furniture.

None of this means I’d buy an electrical product on looks alone. Placement, cord management, safety, and compatibility would matter more once a piece entered my home. Volt Face is worth discussing without assuming it’s available for every household or electrical setup. Its strongest contribution right now is a design question: why do so many rooms make access to power feel like an afterthought, especially when we use that access every day?

The appeal is also aesthetic, though not in the usual sense of making technology look invisible. Outlets and switches have recognizable shapes. We know what they’re for, and we notice when they’re inconvenient. Volt Face works with that familiarity. Rather than adding another layer of decoration over a practical problem, it gives the practical part some attention. That feels refreshing at a time when a lot of home products seem determined to disguise their own workings.

I don’t need every socket in my home turned into a conversation piece. Some can stay quietly on the wall. But the next time I’m reaching behind the sofa for a plug, I’ll think about Volt Face’s simple proposition: furniture could meet us where we actually use power. If that makes a room easier to live in and nicer to look at, the outlet has earned its place in plain sight.

The post The Outlet Nobody Wanted to Look at Is Now the Design Feature first appeared on Yanko Design.

Bent Wood Is Stronger Than Straight Wood – These 5 Designs Prove It

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Bent wood is one of the most fascinating materials in design history, where engineering meets artistry. By using steam, heat, or pressure, straight wood is transformed into smooth curves without cutting its fibers. This process preserves the natural strength of the material while unlocking fluid, organic forms that feel almost sculptural.

Let’s understand why bent wood is valued not just for its beauty but for its ability to remain strong, flexible, and sustainable across generations of design innovation.

1. Structural Integrity Through Continuous Fibers

Bent wood retains its strength because the wood fibers remain continuous during the bending process. Unlike carved or joined components, there are no weak points created by cuts or adhesives. This allows the material to distribute stress evenly across its curved form. As a result, bent wood can support significant loads while maintaining a lightweight structure.

Designers appreciate this because it combines efficiency with durability. The uninterrupted grain also reduces the risk of cracking, making it ideal for furniture that must withstand daily use while maintaining its refined appearance over time.

The Moccle is a wooden bicycle designed by Masateru Yasuda that redefines cycling through the natural flexibility of bent plywood. Inspired by traditional Japanese architecture, where wood is used for its vibration-absorbing and earthquake-resistant properties, the design explores how the same material behavior can improve ride comfort. Yasuda’s idea was simple: if wood can support buildings and furniture, it can also support a human-powered vehicle. The result is a bicycle built around a curved wooden frame that naturally flexes under pressure, creating a smooth and responsive riding experience.

The Moccle is intentionally minimal, focusing on ease and enjoyment instead of technical complexity. It has no gears, no dashboard, and no shock absorbers, relying instead on the bent plywood frame to absorb impact from uneven surfaces. The structure is secured with metal fixtures, allowing controlled flexibility without losing strength. Reinforced with layered materials for durability, the frame is designed to resist cracking while maintaining its organic movement. First developed in 1999 and refined through later models, the Moccle stands as a recreational bicycle meant for relaxed riding, casual clothing, and an uncomplicated connection between rider and material.

2. The Aesthetic Power of Organic Curves

One of the defining qualities of bent wood is its soft, flowing geometry. These natural curves bring a sense of movement and warmth that straight lines often lack. The visual language of bent wood feels human-centered, almost ergonomic in its expression. It allows designers to create furniture that appears sculpted rather than assembled.

This aesthetic softness does not compromise strength; instead, it enhances emotional appeal. Whether used in chairs, lighting, or interior elements, bent wood introduces a sense of calm, sophistication, and organic rhythm into any space.

The Sori Chair by Teixeira Design Studio is a refined exploration of bent wood craftsmanship and contemporary furniture design. Defined by its sculptural silhouette, the chair features a continuous loop of bent plywood that rises from the seat to form an open, double-layered backrest. This flowing gesture gives the piece a sense of movement while maintaining a strong visual identity. The curved upper section contrasts beautifully with the chair’s geometric base, creating a balanced composition that feels both elegant and architectural.

What makes the Sori Chair compelling is its honest expression of material and construction. The exposed plywood layers highlight the natural beauty of the wood, while the precisely crafted joinery shows exceptional attention to detail. Instead of hiding the manufacturing process, the design celebrates it, allowing every curve and edge to showcase the material’s character.

3. Efficiency in Material and Production

Bent wood is also efficient in how it uses raw material. Since it relies on shaping rather than carving, it minimizes waste and preserves more of the original timber. This makes it economically and environmentally advantageous. The process also allows mass production once molds are created, making elegant designs more accessible.

Historically, this innovation revolutionized furniture manufacturing by reducing complexity while maintaining high design value. Today, it continues to support sustainable design practices by optimizing material use without sacrificing structural or aesthetic quality.

The Dopio lounge chair embraces a refined approach to furniture design, proving that simplicity can be just as impactful as bold expression. Crafted from only three plywood panels and two cushions, the chair reduces its form to the essentials while maintaining a warm and inviting presence. Its clean lines, soft curves, and balanced proportions create a timeless aesthetic that feels effortless and understated. Rather than dominating a room, Dopio integrates naturally into its surroundings, making it a versatile seating solution for a wide range of interiors.

Beyond its minimalist appearance, the Dopio lounge chair is designed with comfort and functionality in mind. The combination of molded plywood and plush cushions provides a relaxed seating experience, while its lightweight visual profile keeps spaces feeling open and uncluttered. A distinctive open cavity beneath the seat adds character to the design and doubles as a cozy retreat for pets.

4. Ergonomics and Human Comfort

The curved nature of bent wood naturally aligns with the human body. Chairs and seating designed with bent wood often provide better posture support because they follow organic body contours. This ergonomic advantage makes it ideal for long-term comfort without additional padding or reinforcement. Designers use this quality to create pieces that feel intuitive and supportive.

The smooth transitions in shape reduce pressure points and enhance usability. As a result, bent wood is not just visually appealing but also deeply functional in everyday human interaction.

The KURVE furniture collection redefines everyday furniture by combining seating, surfaces, and storage into sculptural forms crafted from curved plywood. Defined by clean lines and flowing silhouettes, each piece uses bent layers of wood to create hollow spaces that double as integrated storage compartments.

The standout KURVE Chair features a continuous sheet of layered plywood that forms the seat, backrest, and armrests, while its curved lower structure creates a spacious storage nook beneath. The KURVE Couch expands on the same concept with seating for two, incorporating a central console and concealed storage areas for everyday essentials. Complementing these pieces are the KURVE Table and Night Stand, both designed with open compartments that maximize utility without adding visual clutter. By transforming unused furniture volume into practical storage, the KURVE collection offers a smart and elegant solution for modern living spaces where functionality and simplicity are equally important.

5. Timeless Versatility in Design

Bent wood has remained relevant across centuries because of its adaptability. It fits seamlessly into traditional craftsmanship and contemporary minimalism. The material can be stained, polished, or left natural, allowing designers to tailor its expression to different styles. This versatility ensures it never feels outdated.

Instead, it evolves with design trends while maintaining its core identity of strength and elegance, making it a permanent fixture in the language of furniture design.

The Void Lounge Chair by João Teixeira of Teixeira Design Studio is a striking example of how a single sheet of plywood can be transformed into a functional and sculptural piece of furniture. Crafted from one continuous piece of bent plywood, the chair seamlessly forms its seat, legs, and backrest without the need for complex assemblies. Its flowing silhouette highlights the versatility of bent wood construction, creating a lightweight yet visually impactful design that balances simplicity with craftsmanship.

What sets the Void Lounge Chair apart is its integrated storage feature. The bending process creates two hollow compartments within the chair’s structure, which serve as convenient holders for books, magazines, newspapers, or vinyl records. Upholstered cushioning extends across the seat and backrest, adding comfort while maintaining the chair’s clean and uninterrupted form. The result is a lounge chair that elegantly combines seating and storage, offering both practicality and aesthetic appeal.

Bent wood represents a rare union of structural intelligence and visual grace. Its ability to remain strong while forming fluid, elegant shapes makes it a cornerstone of timeless design. As design continues to evolve toward more organic and human-centered approaches, bent wood stands out as a material that naturally bridges engineering and artistry.

The post Bent Wood Is Stronger Than Straight Wood – These 5 Designs Prove It first appeared on Yanko Design.

Flat-Pack Furniture That Actually Survives Your Next Move

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Flat-pack furniture is easy to appreciate on the day it arrives. It fits through the door, and you can usually put it together without much help. The harder test comes later: can it survive a move, come apart cleanly, or be repaired when something goes wrong? FLAT/FORM, a collection by designer Satoshi Itasaka of h220430, is built around those questions. Its pieces use bolts and nuts so they can be assembled, disassembled, repaired, and transported again.

That might sound like a modest ambition, but it changes how I look at the furniture. A dining chair is rarely a one-time purchase for a single room. It may follow you through different apartments, sit beside several tables, and get carried up more stairs than you care to count. FLAT/FORM treats that ongoing life as part of the design brief, rather than leaving it to chance after the first assembly.

Designer: h220430

The material gives the project its character. FLAT/FORM uses 15-millimeter-thick veneer panels made from Japanese cedar trees more than 100 years old, with timber supplied by Miyazaki-based forestry company GROWTHRING. A dining chair and a low table are among the pieces in the collection. Both start from flat panels, a straightforward idea that lets the wood grain do some of the visual work while the construction remains easy to understand.

I like that balance. The collection does not try to disguise how it is made. Its flat planes and visible connections make assembly feel like a considered feature, not an awkward step between opening a box and enjoying the result. That distinction matters because a piece can be visually quiet without feeling anonymous. Here, the simple construction gives the furniture a recognizable point of view, while leaving room for the cedar to be the thing you notice first.

The choice of older cedar also invites a little care in how we talk about the project. Wood with a compelling history does not automatically make a product sustainable, and a furniture collection cannot solve every problem associated with consumption. What FLAT/FORM can offer is a more specific proposition: furniture intended to come apart, travel, and be repaired instead of being treated as finished when its first arrangement stops working. That seems more useful to me than a sweeping environmental promise.

There is a practical kindness to that approach. Moving is already expensive and tiring; furniture should not add a puzzle you are afraid to solve twice. Bolts and nuts are familiar hardware, and the collection’s assembly system is intended to make disassembly possible. None of that guarantees that every move will be effortless. It does mean the designer has acknowledged that people relocate and rearrange their lives, and that a chair ought to have some chance of keeping up.

I would still want to sit in the dining chair before making any grand claims about it. Photographs can tell you plenty about proportion and material, but not how a seat feels through a long dinner. Nor does an elegant assembly concept tell you what the collection costs or how its surfaces will age in a busy home. Those are fair questions for any furniture meant to last, particularly furniture whose appeal rests partly on the idea of keeping it around.

Even with those questions open, FLAT/FORM feels refreshing because it gives flat-pack design a different priority. Convenience at delivery is helpful, but convenience at every stage afterward may be the better measure. A table that can leave one home and settle into another without becoming a burden has a value that is easy to overlook when shopping by appearance alone. Itasaka’s collection makes that overlooked part of ownership visible.

Perhaps that is the quietest, strongest idea here: furniture should be allowed to have a future. FLAT/FORM does not need to look complicated to make that point. It uses flat cedar panels and ordinary fasteners to ask a sensible question of a familiar category: what if getting a piece into your home were only the beginning of a good design? That is a question worth asking before the next box arrives at the door.

The post Flat-Pack Furniture That Actually Survives Your Next Move first appeared on Yanko Design.

A 1908 New York building’s discarded fragments got turned into furniture instead of being demolished

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A renovation across the street from Rafael Prieto’s studio offered an unusually good view of his next project. As decorative pieces came off the facade of a Tribeca building, he arranged to save sixteen that were headed for disposal. Most of us would have watched the scaffolding go up and returned to our emails. Prieto, a Mexico-born designer and creative director based in Tribeca, had other ideas. The result is a furniture exhibition that keeps the building’s ornament alive in some very unexpected forms.

Prieto spent time with the fragments before turning them into the starting point for tables, chairs, and sculptural objects. Weathered ornament sits against painted birch, sometimes tucked inside a crisp new frame. The resulting furniture keeps its New York address close, even when its shape heads somewhere unexpected. Some pieces carry the actual stone; others borrow only its curves, grooves, and proportions. It is a show that rewards looking twice.

Designer: Rafael Prieto

The building across the street is 366 Broadway, now known as Collect Pond House, a twelve-story Beaux-Arts structure designed by Frederick C. Browne in 1908. It was once home to the Royal Typewriter Company, then became a residential co-op in 1979. The facade is densely ornamented: copper cornices, Greek key detailing, marble columns, and keystones carved into bearded faces that have been watching Tribeca change for over a century. A recent multi-year restoration replaced and conserved 65 terra cotta units. A handful of the pieces removed during that process did not make it back onto the building.

Before cutting anything, Prieto lived with the fragments in his studio for roughly a year and a half. He photographed and scanned each contour and ornament, then layered those images to pull out shapes and combinations that could inform new work. That process produced a design vocabulary rather than any direct copy of the originals. The stepped, ribbed profiles that climb the legs of the red lacquered chair came directly from this translation, somewhere between column fluting and abstracted skyline. It is a method closer to archaeology than furniture-making.

One of the standout pieces has a large carved stone cornice block sitting below a flat black painted tabletop, doing actual structural work. The stone is pale, dense, and loaded with repeating scroll forms, carrying roughly a century of New York weather on its surface. Another piece cages a smaller fragment between vertical black bars inside a cube-shaped form, the stone visible through the gaps like something on display. The medium listing for several works at the gallery confirms “Architectural Fragment” as a named material alongside painted birch. Not every piece carries original stone; some borrow only its shapes.

The all-red lacquered chair is the most confident piece in the show, its legs built from stacked, stepped planes that scanning and layering pulled from 366 Broadway’s fluted piers and molded profiles. Its natural birch counterpart deploys the same vocabulary in warm wood, swapping lacquer for grain and adding red geometric arm brackets at the joints. A console table makes the argument most literally: one end sits on a fabricated red plinth, the other rests on an actual salvaged Ionic stone volute, intact and weather-stained. The two supports are not supposed to match. The gallery describes this contrast as the central thread: the hard and the soft, the historic and the contemporary, running through every piece.

Several of the original keystones sit on the gallery floor unaltered, including one carved bearded face in a plumed helmet still stained with moss and a century of city air. Prieto’s analog photography wraps the walls in large-scale architectural murals, produced in collaboration with Wallpaper Projects. The room ends up feeling closer to a photographed ruin than a white-cube gallery, which is entirely the point. He told Family Style that “New York is its architecture,” and that most people talk about the skyline but “don’t look up.” The show does the looking for you.

‘The Future of the Past’ is Prieto’s second solo show with Emma Scully Gallery and runs through December 12 at the Upper East Side location, open Wednesday through Saturday. Pricing and availability are through the gallery directly. The question the collection keeps circling is whether furniture shaped by a building’s discarded ornament carries any of that building’s memory with it. Prieto does not seem interested in settling that question cleanly. The bearded face on the gallery floor looks like he has made his peace with the whole situation.

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Sheet Metal Furniture That Actually Survives Your Next Move

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Anyone who has hauled a flat-pack bookshelf up three flights of stairs knows the routine. You unbox forty identical-looking parts, squint at a wordless instruction sheet, and by hour two you’re gripping an Allen key like it personally wronged you. A year later, the particleboard swells near a window, a screw strips out, and the whole thing wobbles until it ends up on a curb with a “free” sign taped to it. That has quietly been the trade-off behind affordable, shippable furniture for decades: cheap to move, disposable by design.

Turkish industrial designer Gokce Nafak seems to have grown impatient with that compromise, and her two newest pieces, Platea and Vault, treat sheet metal the way most brands treat particleboard, except the metal actually holds up. Both pack flat, both go together without a booklet the size of a novel, and neither one pretends that easy shipping has to mean a short lifespan.

Designer: Gokce Nafak

Platea started life as a stool and side table built from four sheet metal components, cut with CNC lasers and shaped on a press brake, then flat-packed for shipping and assembled by hand. No adhesive, no particleboard dust, no hardware bag with three mystery screws left over. The pieces slot together with the kind of tolerances that only come from someone who has spent real time thinking about how metal bends and where it wants to meet itself. It reads as a stool first, but the same frame doubles as a side table, which matters more than it sounds like it should when you’re trying to furnish a small apartment without buying five single-purpose objects.

Vault pushes the same idea into seating. It’s built from three primary metal components and leans further into an industrial look, exposed edges, visible seams, a silhouette that doesn’t try to soften what it’s made of. Where a lot of furniture hides its construction under upholstery and veneer, Vault puts it on display. I like that choice. It treats the manufacturing process as part of the design language instead of something to disguise, which feels closer to what flat-pack furniture was supposed to be in the first place, before it became shorthand for flimsy.

The bigger problem both designs are quietly answering is one that anyone who’s moved apartments in the last few years understands instinctively. Furniture shipping is expensive, bulky, and wasteful, and most of what’s marketed as a solution just swaps cardboard for landfill a couple of years later. Metal doesn’t swell in humidity, doesn’t sag under weight the way particleboard does, and it can actually be recycled instead of shrugged off as trash. A flat-pack chair that’s built to survive more than one move is not a small thing when you consider how much of the furniture industry still runs on the assumption that people will replace what they buy.

There’s also a design argument here that goes beyond function. Minimalist industrial pieces like these work in a rental unit, a studio, or a full house without looking like they were chosen for any one of those settings specifically. They don’t ask a room to organize itself around them. That kind of flexibility used to belong almost exclusively to expensive, custom furniture, and seeing it show up in something built to ship flat and assemble by hand feels like a genuine shift rather than a gimmick.

None of this means Platea and Vault will replace the big-box flat-pack aisle overnight. But they make a decent case that shippable furniture doesn’t have to be throwaway furniture, and that a designer working with sheet metal and a laser cutter can say more about honesty in manufacturing than most brands manage with an entire marketing campaign. That’s worth paying attention to, especially for anyone who’s tired of furniture that only looks good until the first move.

The post Sheet Metal Furniture That Actually Survives Your Next Move first appeared on Yanko Design.

LiberNovo Prime Sale: Your Keyboard Got Upgraded, Your Chair is Next

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You’ve probably spent more time picking a keyboard than you have on your chair. It’s an easy blind spot. Monitors get upgraded, desks get motors, lighting gets tuned, and the chair just sits there doing the same fixed job it always has. LiberNovo starts from a different assumption. Its dynamic ergonomic chairs don’t hold one position and wait for you to fix it when you shift. They move first.

That single idea splits into two directions. The Maxis series was built from scratch for bigger frames instead of stretched to fit them. The Omni line carries the same core technology across three tiers, from a manual entry model to a fully loaded electric one. Both share a spine that moves with you, and LiberNovo’s Fall Prime Day sale makes it a good time to find out which one fits.

Click Here to Buy Now: Up to 37% Off. Hurry, deal ends in 48-hours!

Built to Move With You

Whichever one catches your eye, both lines share the same backbone, literally. The Bionic FlexFit backrest uses eight flexible panels, 14 dual-link points, and 16 ball joints to track spinal movement in real time. Lean forward into a tricky spreadsheet or sink back to think through a layout, and the backrest reshapes itself accordingly, its 60 precision joints reacting in milliseconds, before you’d ever think to adjust anything yourself.

Electric and Airflow models add a motorized lumbar system, powered by what LiberNovo calls the ErgoPulse motor, which shapes the backrest into a supportive S-curve as you move. The more interesting feature is OmniStretch, a five-minute motorized decompression cycle that gently pulls the backrest through a slow stretch sequence. It sounds like a gimmick until hour four of a deadline, when a built-in reset stops sounding optional.

Recline runs across five fixed positions, from 105 degrees for heads-down focus to a full 160 degrees for stretching out between calls. Fabric options are certified to RoHS, REACH, CA Prop 65, and TVOC standards, and the higher-tier upholstery is Danish Gabriel Atlantic fabric, rated past 100,000 rub cycles. Specs like that rarely show up in a chair you’ll replace in three years, and that’s kind of the point.

When Standard Sizes Don’t Fit

LiberNovo Maxis

Most chairs marketed to bigger users are standard frames stretched wider, with a higher weight rating stapled on. The headrest still doesn’t reach, the armrests still crowd the ribs, and the recline still drops without warning under more weight. LiberNovo’s argument, backed by how the Maxis is built, is that fitting a larger frame means rethinking the geometry, not just scaling it up.

The seat runs 20.5 inches deep, built for users between 5-foot-10 and 6-foot-7 and rated up to 399 pounds. The backrest spans 17 inches across the shoulders and widens to just over 20 inches at the waist, wide enough that broader frames notice. The headrest travels 5.5 inches vertically and 4.7 inches horizontally, curved to cradle the neck through every recline angle, and the arc-shaped armrests avoid crowding the midsection.

Maxis comes in three trims. Manual covers the core build with manual lumbar adjustment and the structural benefits above. Electric adds motorized lumbar support and OmniStretch, suited to anyone who rarely steps away from the desk. Airflow goes further with active seat ventilation and a 4,000-RPM fan that keeps things cool through long days. Prices during the flash sale start at $849 for Manual and $1,299 for Airflow.

Three Ways Into Dynamic Seating

LiberNovo Omni

The Omni line runs on the same backbone, the same synchronized support system, and a multi-position recline, just in a more universal shape. Seat depth runs 17.7 or 18.9 inches, covering a wider height range than Maxis, and the proportions feel just as at home in a compact home office as they do behind a triple-monitor gaming rig. Where Maxis solves one specific problem, Omni solves several at once.

Omni SE is the entry point, a manual-lumbar model with five recline positions and the full dynamic support system, built on a glass-fiber-reinforced nylon base in Obsidian. It’s a reasonable first step into adaptive seating for someone leaving a generic task chair behind, and flash sale pricing starts at $609. Omni GEN adds electric lumbar adjustment and OmniStretch, better suited to longer hours without the jump to the Pro configuration.

LiberNovo Omni SE

LiberNovo Omni Pro

Omni Pro closes the gap with Maxis on feature depth. It adds AirFlow seat ventilation on top of the electric lumbar and OmniStretch on the Gen, wraps it in Danish Gabriel Atlantic fabric, and sets it on an aluminum alloy base in Graphite or Glacier. It suits a designer running back-to-back sessions, or a streamer who’s on camera as often as they’re off it. Flash sale pricing starts at $919.

LiberNovo’s Fall Prime Day sale runs through October 14 in the US, with the deepest cuts landing during the two-day flash sale on limited products from October 6 to 7, when discounts reach up to 37% off. Eligible purchases carry 30-day price protection, so buying early costs nothing if prices drop later. Orders over $800 add a small gift. You upgraded the keyboard, the monitor, and the desk. The chair’s turn is finally worth taking seriously, and this sale is as good a reason as any to make the swap.

Click Here to Buy Now: Up to 37% Off. Hurry, deal ends in 48-hours!

The post LiberNovo Prime Sale: Your Keyboard Got Upgraded, Your Chair is Next first appeared on Yanko Design.