Tag Archives: Concept Designs

Hyundai Boulder off-road SUV has Bronco and Wrangler in its crosshair

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Hyundai has clearly shown its keen interest in off-road SUVs with the Crater concept, and now, to celebrate four decades of success in the United States, it has another capable machine. At the 2026 New York auto show, the Korean automaker took the wraps off the Boulder concept, which is based on the body-on-frame-constructed platform.

With this move, their ambitions to target the Ford Bronco and Jeep Wrangler are clear. They aim to debut a mid-sized pickup truck by 2030 based on this construction. According to Hyundai, they want the Boulder to be a fusion of sleek lines and boxiness. For this, they’ve gone with a body frame design philosophy called “Art of Steel.” At first glace you can tell the shapes resemble the Bronco with the addition of design elements adapted from bigger off-roaders. The latter can be associated with the roof-mounted safari windows of the Land Rover Defender.

Designer: Hyundai

According to Hyundai at the reveal event, the future body-on-frame vehicles are going to be designed, developed, and built in America, using Hyundai’s US Steel. The SUV’s bold design took shape at Hyundai Design North America, led by a Southern California-based team. The focus here is on targeting the off-road fanatics and newbies who are venturing on their maiden journeys on virgin terrains. At the event, Hyundai Motor Company president and CEO, José Muñoz, said, “The Boulder Concept demonstrates how Hyundai is seeking to give American customers more of what they want.” Jose believes that body-on-frame vehicles are the backbone of American culture, and they want to bring capable midsize pickup vehicles to the region with all their might.

Adventure is at the core of the Boulder with rear-hinged coach doors for loading and unloading gear. The dual-hinged rear tailgate can also be opened from either side to accommodate bigger adventure gear. For an airy feeling, the rear windows can be rolled down. The off-road SUV rides on 37-inch mud-terrain tires, and the ground clearance, as well as the approach and departure angles, look aggressive. Although there are no official numbers on that from Hyundai, they still look impressive. According to SangYup Lee, Head of Hyundai and Genesis Global Design Center, Boulder is a “four-wheeled love letter to the dynamic, off-road way of life.”

Just like the IONIQ 3, based on the advanced steel technology, the Boulder’s Art of Steel design base is poised to attract off-roading enthusiasts who want a reliable 4×4 off-roader. Adding features like a tow hook and low-profile roof rack is a given since this vehicle is built for tough adventures. The rear window, which drops down to fit long objects like a canoe or to facilitate ventilation, signals the brand’s interest in building an elaborate ecosystem. The platform should accommodate combustion, electric, and hybrid options, which holds well for the brand’s future in the West.

On the inside, the SUV’s cabin carries a retro-futuristic vibe. There’s a full-width heads-up display showing the vital vehicle metrics, and the dashboard has small square displays with physical input for a more tactile feel. Other details about the concept are shrouded in mystery for now, and it’ll be interesting to see the developments as they unfold.

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The Desk Organizer That Looks Like a Rice Field

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Most desk organizers are an afterthought. You buy one because your pens are rolling off the edge or your sticky notes have formed some kind of autonomous colony, and you just need something, anything, to contain the chaos. The result is usually a sad plastic tray that technically does the job but adds nothing to the room. That’s what makes Mirko Romanelli’s KOMBO concept genuinely worth paying attention to. It’s a desk organizer that actually looks like it was designed.

KOMBO is a concept by Florence-based product and industrial designer Mirko Romanelli, and the first thing that strikes you when you see it is the shape language. Every single piece in the system uses the same deeply rounded rectangle form. Not slightly rounded corners, but corners so soft and generous that the pieces read almost like smooth stones. The silhouette has that superellipse quality that makes you want to pick it up just to feel the edge in your hand. Sharp angles are entirely absent, and the effect is immediately calming in a way that most workspace products never manage.

Designer: Mirko Romanelli

The system is made up of modular trays that stack into a tiered structure, labeled K1 through K4. Each layer is a different depth, creating a step-like formation when assembled that unmistakably echoes the terraced rice fields of China’s Yuanyang and Yunhe regions that inspired the concept. Romanelli wasn’t being abstract with that reference. You can see it plainly: the way the pieces descend in size from a wide, flat base mat up to the smallest top compartment mimics exactly how those agricultural terraces look when viewed from above. The poetry of that connection is that it works even if you’ve never heard the backstory.

The base layer is notably generous, a large flat mat with that same softly rounded edge running all the way around. It grounds the whole composition and gives the stacked pieces above it a stage to sit on. The trays above vary in height, allowing different categories of items to nest within different depths. A slim tray for paper and documents. A deeper one for pens and clips. The hierarchy makes sense without needing instructions.

The standout detail in the system is the K1 module: a small compartment topped with a clear, transparent lid. It’s a subtle material contrast that breaks the otherwise monochromatic look in the most restrained way possible. The transparency lets you see what’s inside without opening it, and it also catches light differently from the matte surfaces below it. Small decisions like that are where considered design separates itself from generic product design.

And those matte surfaces deserve their own mention. The finish across all pieces is smooth and consistent, almost velvety in the renders, with no visual noise or texture competing for attention. The whole thing operates in a single color per colorway, which is a bold choice that pays off. Romanelli presents KOMBO in a set of tonal palettes: a dusty slate blue, a warm terracotta, a deep mauve, and a soft sage green. Each one feels considered rather than arbitrary. The blue reads as cool and focused. The terracotta feels warm and lived-in. The sage is the obvious crowd-pleaser, and you can see why. Every version reads as the kind of object that belongs on a desk you’re proud of, not just a desk you tolerate.

The material is recycled plastic throughout, and it’s worth saying that you wouldn’t know from looking at it. The construction doesn’t announce its sustainability credentials in any visual way. It’s just a well-made thing that happens to be made responsibly.

KOMBO is still a concept, which is one of the more frustrating things about covering design at this level. You see something that clearly has a market, clearly has the craft, and clearly has the visual coherence to succeed on shelves, and it simply isn’t there yet. Romanelli has built something that understands a simple truth: the objects you put on your desk shape how you feel about the hours you spend there. That’s not a small thing to get right.

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When Your Sideboard Swallows Your Books (On Purpose)

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Most furniture does exactly what it promises. A shelf holds things. A table provides surface. A sideboard stores what you don’t want to look at. Deniz Aktay, a Stuttgart-based designer, seems to find that level of literalism a little boring.

His latest piece, the “Slot” Sideboard, is a sleek metal sideboard that does something I haven’t seen before: it swallows your books whole. Or nearly whole. The top surface features book-shaped cutouts, slots sized just right to accept a few volumes that then slide partway through, hovering suspended between the top of the sideboard and the interior shelf below. Spines tilted at an angle, partially disappearing into the furniture itself, the books aren’t hidden. They’re put on stage.

Designer: Deniz Aktay

The visual effect is genuinely arresting. From straight on, it looks like the books are simply leaning through the sideboard, defying the expected logic of furniture. The steel body, finished in a dusty blue-grey, stays completely clean and minimal, which only makes the books pop harder. They become the focal point. The design knows this and leans into it.

Aktay trained as an architect at the University of Stuttgart before founding his own design studio, DEZIN, in 2020. You can feel the architectural thinking in the Slot Sideboard. The slots aren’t decoration. They are a structural decision that reorganizes how the object functions. By cutting through the plane of the top surface, Aktay collapses the boundary between storage and display. The books don’t live behind a door or on top of the piece as an afterthought. They are literally built into its architecture.

This matters more than it might seem. One of the persistent design problems with books is exactly this tension: do you store them, or do you show them? Traditional bookshelves say store, with display as a side effect. Coffee table styling says display, with access sacrificed. The Slot Sideboard says both, simultaneously, and solves the problem by making books a structural element rather than an accessory.

I appreciate that the piece doesn’t shout about this. It’s not a novelty object with an obvious gimmick printed on the side. At rest, without books, the sideboard is clean and almost brutally minimal, the stepped slot openings looking like an architectural section drawing. Add a few books, and the whole thing shifts register. It becomes warmer, more personal, more lived-in. That kind of dual identity in a single object is hard to pull off.

Aktay’s philosophy centers on finding the right balance between proportion, material, and functionality. The Slot Sideboard is a good example of that balance working. The proportions are long and low, giving the piece the kind of horizontal calm that makes a room feel settled. The metal construction is precise without feeling cold. And the function is genuinely expanded by the design, not just dressed up.

The one thing I keep thinking about is the practical question of how many books actually fit, and at what angle. The promotional images show a small cluster, maybe three or four volumes, tilted together in the slot. It reads beautifully. Whether it reads the same with a thicker, heavier hardback, or with books of wildly different heights, is a detail that a real-world test would answer. That’s not a criticism so much as natural curiosity. Good design always makes you want to live with it.

The broader trend here is worth noting. Furniture design has been slowly, quietly moving away from pure storage and toward what you might call narrative objects, pieces that make a room tell a story. The Slot Sideboard fits into that movement while having its own specific logic. It isn’t just pretty. It has a point of view about what books are for and where they belong. They belong where people can see them. Where they’re part of the room. Not filed away. Whether or not Aktay set out to make a statement about books and visibility, the piece makes one. And it makes it beautifully.

The post When Your Sideboard Swallows Your Books (On Purpose) first appeared on Yanko Design.

This Trifold Concept Charges iPhone, AirPods, and Apple Watch at Once

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Most people deep in the Apple ecosystem carry at least three devices that need charging every day. An iPhone, an Apple Watch, and AirPods don’t share cables, and even the cleanest wireless charging setup tends to involve multiple pads spread across several surfaces. It’s a situation that gets worse when you’re away from home and traveling without a bag full of dedicated charging accessories.

Alain Trifold is a concept that tries to answer that problem with a single foldable solution. As the name suggests, it’s a three-panel wireless charger that folds flat when not in use and opens up to power an iPhone, an Apple Watch, and AirPods all at once, entirely without cables. The whole idea is consolidating what would otherwise take three separate pads into one compact device.

Designer: Anirudh Thakur

The trifold format is central to what makes this concept interesting. Foldable chargers do exist in the market, but most compromise on size, stability, or the number of devices they can handle simultaneously. This design, in contrast, gives each of the three panels a dedicated charging surface, so there’s no awkward repositioning needed when you set your devices down. Everything has a place from the moment you unfold it.

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That kind of simplicity matters most when you’re away from your usual setup. Tossing a single flat charger into a bag rather than packing separate cables and pads for each device is a meaningful reduction in the friction of traveling light. You don’t have to think about which surface charges which device, or worry about leaving one of three charging pucks behind when you’re packing in a rush.

The minimal aesthetic of the Alain Trifold concept fits neatly within Apple’s own design language, which makes it feel like a natural companion rather than an afterthought accessory. A charger that looks good on a bedside table or a hotel desk doesn’t sound like a high bar, but it’s a small and genuinely meaningful advantage over the tangle of wires and mismatched pucks that most multi-device setups default to.

There’s also something to be said for the way a foldable form factor handles portability with something this useful. The Alain concept collapses into a compact profile that slips easily into a travel pouch or a bag pocket, and setting it up takes barely a second. It’s the kind of object that removes a decision rather than adding one, which is exactly what good accessory design tends to do.

As a concept, the Alain Trifold sits in a space where demand is clear but elegant solutions are few. The market for 3-in-1 Apple chargers is growing fast, but most options lean toward function over form, or portability over stability. This concept makes a case for a design that doesn’t have to choose, and it’s the kind of idea that stays with you long after you’ve seen it.

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BREMEN Turns a Broom Into a Guitar and a Desk Into a Piano

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Learning to play a musical instrument is one of the most commonly abandoned pursuits in modern life. The gap between wanting to play and being able to usually involves years of lessons, expensive gear, and a dedicated practice space. That’s a lot of friction for something that’s supposed to be joyful, and it keeps most people as spectators for their entire lives.

The designers at YUPD started from a different observation. Most people are already making music, just not in any formal sense. Tapping out a beat on a desk, drumming with pens, humming a melody while doing chores, these are all musical impulses that rarely have anywhere to land. BREMEN is a modular performance system designed to change that by letting everyday objects become actual instruments.

Designers: Yejun Jo, Minsu Kang, Gayeon Kim, Yumin Seo

Two of BREMEN’s four modules handle the percussive and string side of things. The Guitar Module and Drum Module are compact cylinders that slide over any stick-shaped object, whether that’s a pen, a ruler, or an actual broom handle. Once attached, they translate the way you swing or strike into guitar or drum sounds, sent wirelessly to the system’s central speaker.

The Piano Module takes a different approach. Two slim, bar-shaped units placed at opposite ends of a desk detect the distance between them and create an invisible keyboard in the space between. The sensors track finger movement above the surface and trigger the matching notes, so you’re essentially playing piano in thin air. No keys, no bench, no sheet music required.

All three modules feed into BREMEN_HEN, the system’s speaker. It receives the separate performances from the guitar, drum, and piano modules and blends them into a single ensemble output. The speaker itself has a distinctive triangular cross-section with a fabric mesh face, making it compact enough to carry by hand and functional enough to fill a room with actual band-level sound.

That last part matters. The whole point of BREMEN is that the stage can be wherever you happen to be, a classroom, a courtyard, a park. Three people with sticks and a pair of piano bars are suddenly a band. Nobody had to haul gear across town or book a rehearsal room. It’s the kind of spontaneity that music rarely allows for anymore.

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YUPD’s concept goes beyond accessibility, though that’s clearly central to it. More fundamentally, it’s a rethinking of what counts as a musical instrument, one that argues the answer could be almost anything. A broom becomes a guitar, a desk becomes a piano, and a group of people with no formal training becomes something resembling a band. That’s a surprisingly generous idea for something that fits in a backpack.

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The Sideboard That Started as Lines That Never Finished

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Most great furniture doesn’t start with a grand vision. It starts with a sketch, usually a messy one, the kind you draw absentmindedly while thinking about something else entirely. Designer Deniz Aktay knows this. His latest piece, the Shift Sideboard, is proof that an unfinished line can sometimes carry more intention than a polished one.

The concept is deceptively simple. Aktay began with a sketch of shifted, incomplete lines, the kind of drawing that would normally get torn out and tossed. But he saw something worth keeping in that incompleteness: a structural idea where two horizontal planes don’t fully align, each one sliding past the other, leaving gaps and openings that feel both accidental and entirely deliberate. That tension between intentional and incidental is what makes the Shift so visually compelling.

Designer: Deniz Aktay

Looking at it from the front, the sideboard reads almost like a typographic letterform. The upper shelf sits shorter, pulled to one side, while the lower platform stretches past it in the opposite direction. The result is a silhouette that feels like it’s mid-motion, caught between two states. It doesn’t try to be symmetrical, and that’s exactly why it works. Symmetry in furniture is safe. This is not that.

From a practical standpoint, those offset gaps aren’t just aesthetic choices. They translate into genuinely useful storage zones. Books stand upright in the open left compartment without needing bookends. A phone charges through a slot in the side wall, with the cable routed out cleanly through the offset gap at the edge, no cable box, no ugly workaround, no strip of tape pretending the cord isn’t there. For anyone who has ever stared at a tangled mess of cables on a media console and felt low-level irritation about it, this is the kind of thoughtful detail that earns real appreciation.

The material choice reinforces the whole mood of the piece. The warm, pale oak tones photograph beautifully against neutral backgrounds, and I imagine they read even better in a real room. There’s a quietness to it. The grain runs consistently across every surface, and the joinery is clean without being precious. It doesn’t have the cold austerity that some minimalist furniture falls into, the kind where you’re afraid to actually put anything on it. The Shift looks like it wants to be used, which is actually a harder thing to achieve than it sounds.

Aktay has been building a following for this kind of work for a while now, and he’s clearly found an audience that’s hungry for furniture that sits somewhere between concept and craft, pieces that look like they belong in a gallery but function like they belong in a home. His earlier work already hinted at this ability to make structure feel expressive without becoming theatrical. The Shift continues in that direction, but with more restraint. It feels more resolved.

My personal read on it: furniture that earns attention through subtlety is almost always more interesting than furniture that shouts. The Shift doesn’t need to be dramatic. The offset lines do the work quietly, and you keep noticing new things about it the longer you look. The way the shadow falls differently on each side. The way the open compartment frames whatever you put inside it. The way the cable route makes a modern inconvenience feel like it was part of the design from the beginning, because it was.

That last part matters more than it gets credit for. Cable management is often an afterthought, tacked on at the end of a design process with a grommeted hole and a prayer. Building it into the structure itself, as a consequence of the form rather than a patch over it, is the kind of decision that separates a design exercise from something you’d actually want to live with. The Shift Sideboard started as an unfinished sketch. Right now, at least conceptually, it feels very finished indeed.

The post The Sideboard That Started as Lines That Never Finished first appeared on Yanko Design.

These 4 Solar Pavilions Prove That Public Cooling Can Be Free

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Heat is one of the most underestimated side effects of climate change, particularly in cities where built-up surfaces trap warmth long after the sun has gone down. Air conditioning has become a near-necessity in many parts of the world, yet millions of people can’t access it, either because they can’t afford it or because they simply have no home to cool. For them, that absence can be genuinely dangerous.

Cool Retreats is a direct response to that reality. Rather than a single structure, it’s a collection of four different solar-powered public pavilions, each built to provide free cooling, shade, and a place to rest to anyone who needs it. The project is specifically aimed at public parks and open areas, particularly in cities where those who need relief the most often have the fewest options.

Designer: Michael Jantzen

The Solar Ceiling Fan Pavilion is the most straightforward of the four, an open-frame structure with tilted solar panels across its roof and a row of ceiling fans hanging beneath. The logic is elegantly direct: sunlight hits the panels, the panels power the fans, and the space below stays cool. On cooler days, when the fans aren’t running, the surplus electricity feeds back into the local power grid.

The Solar Breeze Oasis Pavilion scales things up with a prefabricated, modular, octagonal steel structure that can be installed as a single unit or linked with others to form larger configurations. Inside, five solar-powered ceiling fans circulate air above seating areas and worktables, and solar-powered outlets let people charge their devices. The rooftop solar array also collects rainwater, which can be stored and used within the park.

Cool Spots are the most self-contained of the group. Each cylindrical module sits on a circular concrete base, with four large benches arranged around a central table and a solar-powered ceiling fan overhead. Built-in night lights and power ports extend their usefulness well into the evening, and the modules can run off batteries charged by their own solar arrays or pull power from the local grid as needed.

The Cooling Cone is the most visually striking of the four, a stacked, louvered structure that tapers into a cone at the top, where a solar panel powers a ceiling fan mounted just below it. The partially enclosed perimeter, made up of curved, slotted panels, provides both shade and ventilation. It’s the kind of structure that draws you in from the outside and keeps you comfortable once you’re there.

What ties all four together is their shared philosophy: cooling public space shouldn’t require a power bill, complex infrastructure, or permanent construction. Each structure is prefabricated, recyclable, and solar-powered, designed to go where it’s needed most and run without ongoing costs. It’s a reminder that public design can be both socially conscious and sustainable at the same time, without one ever having to come at the expense of the other.

The post These 4 Solar Pavilions Prove That Public Cooling Can Be Free first appeared on Yanko Design.

The Mouse Carved From Walnut That Doesn’t Exist Yet

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The concept is simple enough to say out loud: a computer mouse wrapped in walnut veneer. But when you actually see what designer Eslam Mohammed has put together with the Arche One, the simplicity of that sentence falls apart quickly. This is not a novelty item with a wood sticker slapped on top. It is a full rethinking of what a peripheral can be, and it is entirely a concept, which somehow makes it more compelling, not less.

Mohammed built the Arche One as an exploration, not a product pitch. He wanted to strip out the plastic aggression that defines most tech hardware and replace it with something that feels genuinely crafted. The result is a mouse with a long arching tail, a low organic body, and walnut veneer wrapped around every curve without shortcuts. It sits somewhere between a sculptural object and a piece of furniture, and I keep going back to look at it because it makes me realize how low the bar has been set for peripheral design for decades.

Designer: Eslam Mohammed

The gaming mouse world in particular has turned aggressive posturing into an aesthetic. Angular bodies, RGB lighting, the visual vocabulary of speed and dominance. Even the more restrained productivity mice from major brands feel like they were designed to be forgotten, not noticed. What Mohammed is proposing, even if only on a screen, is a different brief entirely: make it feel like an object worth keeping.

Form came first in his process. The silhouette reads almost like a comma, or an outstretched hand resting on fine wood. The scroll wheel is machined metal, knurled and precise, sitting flush against warm grain. The underside carries a 26,000 DPI optical sensor, Bluetooth 5.3, USB-C connectivity, and a lithium-polymer battery rated at six months. The specs are serious. The material is not a gimmick dressed up as design. It is the design, or at least inseparable from it.

The production approach is worth pausing on because it says something about how contemporary 3D design is evolving. Mohammed used three separate software programs simultaneously rather than forcing a single tool to carry everything. Houdini handled the cutting simulation. Cinema 4D managed the flow of the veneer layers. Blender took care of modeling and animation, and everything went through Octane for rendering. Each tool doing exactly what it was built for, nothing more, nothing less. The result is cleaner, and the renders have a photographic weight that makes you forget you are looking at a concept. The grain catches light the way real wood does. The curves feel like they have mass.

The Arche One is imagined as a limited run of 300 units, each individually finished in hand-applied satin oil, with the note that grain pattern will vary from piece to piece. That last detail is the one that gets me. In a peripheral market built on identical units rolling off assembly lines, the idea of a mouse where no two pieces look exactly the same is almost radical. It borrows the language of craft objects and heirlooms, the kind of things people keep, pass on, and genuinely care about. That is a different conversation than the one tech hardware usually wants to have.

I think about my own desk, and I think most people have at some point looked down at their mouse and felt nothing. It is a tool, purely functional, there to be used and eventually discarded. The Arche One is a question about whether that has to be true. Whether the relationship between a person and the objects they touch every day for hours at a time could carry some weight, some intention, some warmth. That is not a trivial thing to ask.

Maybe this mouse never gets made. That is fine. Concepts do not need to ship to matter. What Mohammed has done here is demonstrate, convincingly and beautifully, that someone asked the right question. The answer is still being worked out. But the asking is more than enough.

The post The Mouse Carved From Walnut That Doesn’t Exist Yet first appeared on Yanko Design.

The Side Table That Folds a Bookshelf Into Its Own Top

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Most side tables ask very little of you. You set things on them, they hold those things, and that’s the end of the conversation. The Boca table by designer Deniz Aktay is not interested in that conversation at all.

At first glance, it reads as a straightforward piece: a circular metal top, slim tubular legs bent into a smooth C-shaped base, a warm terracotta finish. Tidy, minimal, easy to place. But look at it straight on and something shifts. The tabletop isn’t flat. Its center section dips downward into a rectangular cavity, creating a hidden pocket between two metal layers. That pocket is sized to hold a book flat inside the body of the table itself. Slide one in from the side and just the spine shows, sitting flush at the edge of the circle like a small geometric tab. No separate shelf. No added structure. The storage is built into the form of the top.

Designer: Deniz Aktay

The engineering behind this is worth slowing down for. Aktay took a single metal surface and pressed a rectangular section downward, folding it into a tray-like recess while keeping the surrounding disc level and usable. The result is a top that functions on two planes simultaneously: the recessed channel holds the book, and the flat surface above holds everything else. A glass of water, a phone, a small candle, all of it sits on the upper layer without interference. The table doesn’t ask you to choose between storage and surface. It quietly offers both at the same time.

From above, the geometry becomes almost graphic. A flat orange circle with a pressed rectangle at its center, two sharp diagonal ridges fanning outward toward the rim of the disc. It has the kind of topography you’d expect from a relief map or an architectural model, a surface that communicates depth and intention before you even understand the function. Even without a book inside, the form holds your attention. The cavity doesn’t disappear when it’s empty; it becomes a compositional detail, a shadow box pressed into the metal.

The color is doing real work here too. That terracotta-to-coral finish isn’t neutral, but it isn’t loud either. It reads as considered, the kind of color that commands a corner of a room without competing with everything around it. Set against the cool silver of the tubular legs, the contrast is clean and deliberate. The legs themselves are worth noting: bent from a single continuous tube into a profile that tapers from wide at the base to narrower at the top, they give the table a visual lightness that balances the solid weight of the metal disc above. The whole piece feels grounded but not heavy.

What makes the Boca table particularly interesting from a design standpoint is how the form and function are genuinely the same thing. The slot isn’t an addition or an afterthought. It’s the result of shaping the top itself differently. The cavity exists because the metal was bent that way, not because a compartment was attached afterward. That distinction matters more than it might seem. Furniture that achieves storage through added components tends to look like it’s carrying its own extra features. Furniture that achieves storage through form tends to look inevitable, like there was never any other option. Boca belongs to the second category.

There are practical limits worth acknowledging. The fixed-width opening suits standard paperbacks and average hardcovers comfortably, but larger format books won’t fit, and anyone with a habit of keeping thick volumes on their nightstand might find it constraining. That’s a real trade-off. But the specificity of the design is also part of its character. It was made for a particular kind of use, and it doesn’t pretend otherwise.

Stuttgart-based furniture designer Deniz Aktay has been exploring this kind of structural problem-solving across his body of work for years, but the Boca table feels like one of his most resolved ideas yet. The fold does everything. The rest just gets out of the way.

The post The Side Table That Folds a Bookshelf Into Its Own Top first appeared on Yanko Design.

The Lounge Chair That Makes Geometry Feel Like a Hug

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Most furniture gets described in one of two ways: you either call it comfortable or you call it beautiful. Rarely do you call it both, and almost never do you say a chair made you stop mid-scroll to figure out if it was real. The Bublyk lounge chair by Ukrainian designer Andrii Kovalskyi managed all three in a single glance.

The name is a clue. Bublyk is the Ukrainian word for a ring-shaped bread, essentially a bagel’s Eastern European cousin, and once you know that, you can’t unsee it. The torus geometry at the heart of the design, that classic ring form, is suddenly the most obvious and delightful thing in the room. But Kovalskyi doesn’t stop at one shape. He stacks cylindrical volumes alongside the torus, letting them collide and nestle against each other until the whole thing reads less like furniture and more like a soft, living sculpture that decided to sit down.

Designer: Andrii Kovalskyi

What makes this concept genuinely interesting is how Kovalskyi managed to make hard geometric forms feel warm. Torus and cylinder are architectural, mathematical shapes. They belong in textbooks and CAD files. But wrapped in a granular, speckled upholstery that carries the warmth of hand-woven textile, these volumes lose their rigidity entirely. The result is a monolithic form that still feels inviting, like a piece of abstract art you are actually allowed to sit in.

The upholstery deserves its own moment. Versions of the chair use fabrics from Kvadrat Febrik’s Sprinkles collection, and the effect is layered and compelling. Up close, each chair reads like a field of tiny woven dots and shifting patterns, the kind of surface your hands would instinctively want to reach out and touch. From a distance, the texture gives each piece an almost painterly depth, one that shifts in tone with the light. It’s the kind of material decision that elevates a strong silhouette into something that genuinely rewards sustained attention.

The collection spans a range of configurations and colorways. One version wraps the torus body in a cylindrical bolster backrest, giving it a composed, upright posture. Another presents just the torus form, low and reclining, balanced on two short cylinder legs. Viewed side by side, the variations feel like family, different personalities sharing the same underlying design logic. The colorways lean into the boldness: deep crimson reds, powdery blues, warm ochre yellows, earthy burnt oranges. None of these chairs are trying to disappear into a wall.

That feels intentional. Much of contemporary furniture design has been running hard toward quiet luxury: restrained silhouettes, neutral tones, pieces that function as background. Bublyk pushes in the opposite direction. It wants to be the first thing you notice when you walk into a room, and the piece people ask about when they visit. Whether that boldness translates into commercial production remains to be seen, since this is still a concept, but the appetite for character-driven furniture has been building for a while.

One of Kovalskyi’s renders shows the modular components stacked into abstract, totem-like arrangements, hinting at a broader system potential. If these volumes can be reconfigured or mixed across pieces, Bublyk stops being a single statement chair and becomes something closer to a design language. That is a genuinely compelling idea, the kind of thinking that separates a good concept from a lasting one.

Kovalskyi has been designing original furniture and interior objects since 2016, working out of Lviv, Ukraine. His practice spans furniture, lighting, and 3D visualization, and his work consistently shows a willingness to treat form as something to play with, rigorously but also with a sense of humor. The Bublyk chair captures that balance well. The name alone, borrowed from a humble ring-shaped bread, keeps the whole project grounded even as the visual ambition reaches upward.

Comfort is built into the promise. The ergonomics, shaped by the geometry and supported by the granular upholstery, suggest this isn’t purely a sculptural exercise. A person is supposed to sit in it and feel held. If Kovalskyi delivers that in production, Bublyk won’t just be a chair people admire from across the room. It’ll be the one nobody wants to get up from.

The post The Lounge Chair That Makes Geometry Feel Like a Hug first appeared on Yanko Design.