Tag Archives: Furniture

This Cork Cactus Looks Like Decor and Acts Like 3 Pieces of Furniture

Posted on by

Coat stands have always occupied an awkward position in a room. They’re functional enough to keep around but rarely considered anything beyond a place to pile things on the way out the door. Pin boards face a similar problem, useful at a desk but hard to integrate into a living space without making it feel like an office. Objects that try to do both tend to resolve that tension poorly.

Corctus starts from a different premise. The name merges “cork” and “cactus,” which is also a fair summary of the concept: a floor-standing object shaped like a saguaro cactus, made entirely from cork, and quietly capable of handling most of what people need to keep close at hand. Rather than solving the storage problem with hooks and brackets, it solves it by making the form itself the function.

Designer: Liam de la Bedoyere (boredeye)

Cork is the central material here, both practically and conceptually. The surface is textured enough to grip a pair of sunglasses on the rounded top without anything extra, and receptive to pins without reinforcement or a backing board. A sketch, a sticky note, or a reference card pins straight into the body of the object wherever it’s needed, with no designated zone for it.

The cactus arms extend outward with a slight upward curve that happens to work exactly like a hook. A backpack hangs from one, a tote bag from another, a scarf draped over without sliding off. Headphones sit naturally over an arm when not in use. None of this requires any hardware, any dedicated accessories, or any particular intention. The geometry of the form handles all of it.

The disc-shaped base adds one more surface. Magazines stack on it, a few books sit within reach, and it grounds the form without demanding much floor space. The compact proportions keep the whole object from reading as a coat stand, which is deliberate. The intention was always a sculptural companion rather than a piece of utilitarian furniture, and the scale reflects that.

That distinction matters in practice. Next to a desk, the Corctus functions as an immediate, physical task board without a screen. Move it into a living room or hallway and it shifts roles without changing character. The warm texture of the cork sits alongside the kinds of materials, and its sandy color sits comfortably against most interior palettes.

Most multifunctional objects succeed at one thing and compromise on everything else. Corctus earns its place as a sculptural form first, and the utility follows naturally from the shape rather than being imposed on it. There are no brackets, no hooks, no panels, and no assembly decisions to make. It stands where it’s put, and the room tends to organize itself around it.

The post This Cork Cactus Looks Like Decor and Acts Like 3 Pieces of Furniture first appeared on Yanko Design.

Furniture Made From Wood Scraps You’d Actually Pay For

Posted on by

Every furniture workshop generates a particular kind of guilt. There are the offcuts, the trimmings, the odd-shaped remainders of boards that got cut to size and are now too small for anything useful, or so we assume. Most of them end up as kindling, compost, or landfill. We’ve accepted that as the cost of making things, a small fine paid for the privilege of precision. Studio Booboon is not interested in paying that fine.

The Copenhagen-based studio, founded by Richard Bone and Jisu Yun, two designers who both trained under Japanese studio Nendo, released their latest collection, Fragments Becoming, and it’s exactly the kind of work that makes you wonder why no one thought to do it this way sooner. The collection is built entirely from timber offcuts, and before you picture something rustic or deliberately imperfect, let me be clear: these pieces are stunning. A cabinet, a dining table, and a lounge chair, each constructed from assembled fragments of discarded wood arranged with such precision and intention that the effect is closer to fine art than furniture-as-apology for sustainability.

Designer: Studio Booboon

The concept the studio uses is something they call “3D marquetry,” which sounds technical but is actually a fairly elegant idea once you sit with it. Traditional marquetry, the kind you’d see on antique furniture or decorative boxes, applies a pattern to a surface. It’s essentially decoration laid on top of structure. What Studio Booboon does instead is treat each fragment of wood as the structure itself. The pattern isn’t on the cabinet door; the door is the pattern. It runs through the object’s entire volume, which means the visual logic and the physical construction are the same thing. That’s not a subtle distinction. That’s a fundamentally different philosophy.

What I appreciate about this approach is that it removes the option to hide mistakes. The studio works with unstained wood, which means every fragment has to earn its place on its own terms, no pigment masking a poor match, no stain blurring the edges. Each piece has to work compositionally before it works functionally. That kind of constraint tends to produce either chaos or brilliance, and in this case, it’s clearly the latter.

Bone and Yun bring a cross-cultural sensibility to the work that shows up in the details. Their debut collection, Playful Reappropriation, released at Milan Design Week 2024, pulled from Korean craft traditions, and Fragments Becoming continues that thread. The materials include hanji (traditional Korean paper), canvas, silk, and Ottchil, a Korean lacquer technique that adds depth without dominating the natural tones of the wood. The combination of a British RCA education, Korean craft heritage, and a shared apprenticeship at Nendo, one of the most conceptually rigorous studios in contemporary design, explains a lot about why this work feels so considered without ever feeling cold.

The collection premiered at Milan Design Week 2026 and later showed at Other Circle 2026 during 3daysofdesign in Copenhagen. That double-billing matters. Milan tends to reward spectacle, while the Copenhagen circuit rewards ideas. The fact that Fragments Becoming landed well in both contexts suggests it’s doing something more than just looking good in photographs, which, for the record, it absolutely does.

Sustainability in design has become such an overused talking point that the word barely registers anymore. Every brand gestures toward it. But there’s a difference between sustainability as a value and sustainability as a method, and Studio Booboon’s work lives in the second category. They’re not telling you the collection is responsible and letting the aesthetics carry a different message. The responsible practice is the aesthetic. The offcut isn’t hidden. It’s the whole point.

That feels rare enough to be worth paying attention to. Design tends to celebrate the new, the seamless, the perfect. Fragments Becoming makes a quiet argument that the incomplete, the leftover, and the discarded might be where the most interesting work is still waiting to happen.

The post Furniture Made From Wood Scraps You’d Actually Pay For first appeared on Yanko Design.

Ex-McLaren Designers Just Built a $130,000 Carbon Fiber Chair

Posted on by

Luxury furniture has long borrowed the language of high-performance design without much of the substance behind it. Carbon fiber panels get applied as surface decoration, automotive references appear in product copy as shorthand for precision, and racing-inspired silhouettes turn up on lounge chairs. The materials may occasionally be genuine, but the engineering thinking behind them rarely makes the trip from one industry to the other.

Ennua’s Element 01 takes a different position. The people behind it didn’t simply borrow from the automotive world. They came from it directly, having spent years shaping supercars including the McLaren Speedtail, Elva, and W1. The Element 01 isn’t furniture dressed up in engineering language. It’s the result of applying actual supercar design methodology to a seating object, starting from materials and working outward.

Designers: João Dias and Patrick Carton

The first thing Element 01 does well is refuse to announce itself. Walk into a room with it, and it doesn’t immediately read as a chair, a sculpture, or a piece of furniture. That ambiguity is deliberate. The design prioritizes silhouette and proportion the way a supercar does, making the form something to encounter before it’s understood. It takes a second look before the seating function even registers.

The structure is built from carbon fiber, the same material used on high-performance cars for its exceptional strength-to-weight ratio. The carbon frame can reportedly withstand loads equivalent to around 2,000 kg, more structural assurance than any home seating has any practical need for. Layered over it are automotive-grade leathers chosen for texture and durability, and precision-machined metal components that bring a jeweler’s precision to every connection.

Several named configurations are available, each built around a specific combination of carbon finish, leather tone, and metallic accent. Options like Abyss, Aurora, and Ruler’s Solace suggest a naming sensibility closer to bespoke watchmaking than furniture retail. Each variant is treated as a distinct piece rather than a colorway, making the Element 01 more akin to a collector’s commission than an item that ships from a warehouse.

Ennua positions the Element 01 for private residences and architectural landmarks rather than conventional retail environments, which says something about its intended context. Sit in one, and it functions as a chair. Stand across the room, and it reads as something else entirely, a deliberate quality shared by the cars that influenced it. Most objects are content to be one thing, while this one insists on being at least two.

Element 01 is described as only the opening move for the brand, which already has the next five years of products planned, hinting at everything from audio equipment to fitness gear and a possible return to automotive design. The ambition is to never become known simply as a furniture brand. Every future object is expected to carry the same logic of function and sculptural presence as the chair.

The Element 01 is priced at around $130,000, placing it in the territory of bespoke timepieces and limited-edition automotive commissions rather than furniture purchases. It costs as much as a well-optioned sports car, and that comparison isn’t accidental. It’s built like one, designed with the same tools, and asks to be treated with the same regard that most people reserve for things with four wheels and not four legs.

The post Ex-McLaren Designers Just Built a $130,000 Carbon Fiber Chair first appeared on Yanko Design.

Yves Béhar’s Modular Sofa Seats 12 And Can Shapeshift Endlessly

Posted on by

Every designer had a pandemic project. Most people learned sourdough. Yves Béhar built a sofa made of foam triangles so his family would stop scattering to separate corners of the house. The result is Peaks, a sofa for Moooi that looks less like furniture and more like a soft mountain range someone dragged into your living room. Nine or so triangular wedges flip up, fold down, rotate, and reshuffle into whatever your day needs. Movie night, it becomes stadium seating. Board game with the kids, it turns into a pit you can disappear into.

Béhar grew up near the Swiss Alps, so when he needed a name for his shapeshifting foam sofa, Peaks was sitting right there waiting. Marcel Wanders at Moooi reportedly wanted to call it Toblerone instead, which honestly would have worked too, but trademark lawyers have never met a good bit they didn’t ruin. Béhar made six of these for friends before Moooi’s Marcel Wanders looked at it and said, “Let’s ship it.”

Designer: Yves Behar for Moooi

Each wedge is dual-density, which keeps the structure firm enough to hold its shape while still giving comfort where your body actually lands. Concealed zippers and fabric hinges hold the whole system together, and the modules rotate freely into backrests, armrests, or flat platforms without needing a single tool or a single loose part rattling around. That last bit matters more than it sounds. Most modular furniture eventually loses a screw or a connector piece under the couch, never to be seen again. Peaks just doesn’t have those parts to lose.

Moooi debuted a Peaks prototype at Milan back in 2024, then let it sit for two years before Peaks made its official launch at IDS Toronto in January 2026. The commercial version arrived a few months later as part of Moooi’s 25th anniversary programming at Milan Design Week, officially reinterpreting the sofa as a sculptural, reconfigurable landscape rather than a fixed object. The standard indoor Lounge Sofa runs 82 by 120 by 196 centimeters with a 41 centimeter seat height, priced at $7,208, available in charcoal, grey, sand, or white. There’s an outdoor version too, built for the same reconfiguring in weatherproof fabric, because apparently your patio deserves a mountain range as well.

None of this is happening in a vacuum. Béhar has owned a De Sede Ubald Klug Terrazza and a Luigi Colani Pool sofa for two decades, both conversation-pit classics from an era when furniture was allowed to be a little unhinged. Peaks is Béhar reimagining that same territory, the “living landscape” experiments Verner Panton and Pierre Paulin were running in the late 20th century, except built to actually survive a modern living room. It’s a good lineage to claim. Conversation pits died out because they were expensive, permanent, and impossible to reconfigure once your life changed. Peaks solves exactly that problem by being the opposite of permanent.

Béhar has also started pitching Peaks as office furniture, which sounds like a stretch until you hear his logic. He compares it to placing candy within arm’s reach on a desk versus a foot away, arguing that casual social furniture only works if it’s genuinely convenient, not something people have to book like a conference room. He’s already specifying Peaks into three of his own Canopy coworking projects, including spaces at the Presidio, the Embarcadero, and Stanford. Whether Peaks actually replaces the awkward hallway meeting remains to be seen, but it’s a more honest attempt than most “collaborative office furniture” gets.

Peaks is also angling for a bigger spaces than the living room and office. Moooi and Coalesse are already talking about it in universities, hospitals, and public spaces, on top of the coworking pitch Béhar’s been making. That’s a wide range for something that started as one guy trying to keep his kids off their phones during lockdown, but it tracks. A sofa that refuses to stay one shape is exactly the kind of object that finds new jobs nobody planned for it. Béhar built Peaks to solve a problem in his own house. Whether it ends up in a hospital waiting room or your neighbor’s living room, the pitch stays the same: stop building furniture that locks people into one position, and watch what they do with the freedom.

The post Yves Béhar’s Modular Sofa Seats 12 And Can Shapeshift Endlessly first appeared on Yanko Design.

The Sofa That Deploys Itself Uses the Same Wire as Heart Stents

Posted on by

Most of us have a complicated relationship with flat-pack furniture. The promise is always elegant: a flat box arrives at your door, you follow a few illustrated steps, and somehow a piece of furniture materializes in your living room. The reality involves a suspiciously leftover screw, a strained friendship, and a sofa that wobbles slightly to the left for the rest of its life.

Seoul-based industrial designer Jisu Yoon had a different idea. Not a better Allen key. Not a cleverer instruction manual. A sofa built from the same material used in medical stents and aerospace mechanisms, one that deploys itself with a single motion and collapses just as easily when you need to move it. No tools. No foam. No frame. The Re-flat pack sofa is genuinely unlike anything sitting in the average furniture catalogue right now.

Designer: Jisu Yoon

The material at the center of all this is nitinol, a nickel-titanium shape-memory alloy typically used in medical stents and aerospace mechanisms. It has the remarkable ability to return to a preset form after being deformed. You likely know it from the kind of glasses frames that bend wildly and spring back without snapping. Yoon’s insight was to ask whether that same superelastic behavior could replace both the structural frame and the cushioning of a conventional sofa simultaneously. The answer, after 1.7 years of prototyping and testing across materials including glass fibre, steel wire, nylon rope, polypropylene, and carbon rods, was yes.

The construction is more handcraft than factory floor. Nitinol wires are threaded inside red fabric cords and then hand-woven and laced into 3D-printed PLA joints. A central 3D-printed hub manages the tension of those wires and locks the form in place once deployed. The result is what Yoon describes as a skeleton and skin unified into a single structure, where there is no separate frame to assemble and no cushion to stuff back into place. When it opens up to its full 700mm lounge seat, it does not look like a compromise. It looks like furniture that was always supposed to work this way.

What stops this from being just a clever student project is the precision of the constraints Yoon set for herself. Flat-pack furniture has been a design conversation for decades, but most of it operates within the same logic: ship flat, assemble once, live with it. The Re-flat pack sofa challenges the “assemble once” part specifically. The goal was something that could collapse and redeploy repeatedly without degrading, which is precisely why foam was ruled out early. Foam compresses and gives, but it does not remember its shape the way nitinol does. Choosing a medical-grade material for living room furniture is not a gimmick. It is a direct engineering response to a real material limitation.

The dimensions tell a quiet story on their own. Fully expanded, the sofa sits at 700 x 700 x 600 mm. Collapsed for storage or shipping, it compresses down to 250 x 250 x 1430 mm, essentially a tall, narrow column. That contrast between those two states, one open and inhabitable, the other almost impossibly compact, is where the design earns its name. It is not just a flat-pack object. It is a re-flat-pack object, one designed to return to that state over and over again.

Yoon’s project won the SIT Furniture Design Award 2026, which feels like the right kind of recognition for a piece that started as a graduation project and kept evolving. A lot of concept furniture wins attention at the graduation show and then quietly disappears. The Re-flat pack sofa reads more like a prototype with a trajectory, a question being asked seriously about where furniture materials are headed next.

The flat-pack has long been a symbol of modern, practical living. Yoon’s version suggests it can also be smarter. Not just easier to ship, but genuinely rethought at the material level, where the wires carry the weight and the weave holds the shape, and the whole thing folds away until you need it again.

The post The Sofa That Deploys Itself Uses the Same Wire as Heart Stents first appeared on Yanko Design.

A Portable Cork Brainstorming Stool For Literal Lightbulb Moments

Posted on by

Productive brainstorming rarely stays in one room. Teams move between floors, commandeer empty meeting rooms, or pull chairs into an open corner when a whiteboard becomes available. The problem is that the tools that make those sessions work, the markers, sticky notes, and papers, rarely travel with the people. So you set up, leave to gather supplies, and whatever momentum was building quietly evaporates.

The Bulb is a portable cork stool designed for exactly that problem. It combines a seat with a built-in storage compartment that holds everything a brainstorming session needs, from markers and sticky notes to papers and notebooks. Bring the stool to the session, and the supplies arrive with it. The workspace assembles wherever the work actually needs to happen, without a second trip back to a supply drawer.

Designer: Germain Verbrackel

The name earns its meaning when you look down at the stool from above. The silhouette is that of a lightbulb: the wide, rounded seat forms the bulb itself, while the elongated storage compartment extends below to complete the base. It’s the kind of concept that rewards a moment of recognition, where the symbolism arrives quietly after the form does, without the design needing to announce it.

Cork makes a very specific kind of sense as the material here. It’s naturally lightweight, which matters when people are carrying stools between rooms or across an open office floor. The texture and warm sandy color also keep it from reading as institutional furniture. The body is meant to be CNC-milled from compressed cork blocks using a robotic arm, which gives the organic, curved form its precision without traditional joinery or assembly hardware.

The interior of the storage compartment is lined in deep blue cork, making the cavity immediately identifiable against the natural exterior. The opening holds markers, sticky notes, papers, and notebooks securely enough to carry while walking. It also functions as the carry handle: the curved indentation along the stool’s side fits a hand comfortably, so the stool and its contents travel together in a single grip.

That practicality extends to how quickly a session can actually get started. One person can carry a stool at arm’s length without effort, and someone with a reasonable reach can manage two at once. A small team can have seating and supplies in place within moments of deciding where to gather, removing one of the more underappreciated obstacles from any impromptu collaborative session.

Cork also makes a credible case beyond its weight advantage. The material is harvested by stripping bark from the tree rather than cutting it down, allowing the tree to regenerate and be harvested again roughly every nine years. The Bulb isn’t trying to replace permanent office furniture or redefine how meeting rooms work. It’s a more modest proposal: a seat that assumes the people sitting on it want to get something done, and brings along the things they’ll need to do it.

The post A Portable Cork Brainstorming Stool For Literal Lightbulb Moments first appeared on Yanko Design.

The Echo Chair Makes 3D Printing Feel Refined

Posted on by

ZHA has collaborated with Spanish design brand Nagami to create the Echo Chair, a 3D-printed seat made from recycled plastic waste. Formerly known as Zaha Hadid Architects, the studio developed the chair through parametric design and large-scale additive manufacturing. Its form is fluid and sculptural, with an arched backrest that extends towards the floor and a seat that curves upwards at the sides.

The two parts look separate at first, but they are printed as one continuous piece. Both surfaces grow from the same structural edge and share the same underlying geometry. One becomes the seat, while the other rises to form the backrest and support.

Designer: ZHA and Nagami

This continuous construction gives the chair a clear sense of logic. The shape is doing several jobs at once: supporting the body, holding the structure together, and defining the overall visual character.

The Echo Chair was developed through an iterative research process at ZHA Lab and manufactured by Nagami, a brand known for its work in large-format 3D printing. The studios used recycled PETG sourced from industrial waste, including single-use medical plastics.

As the chair is printed layer by layer, the process leaves a ribbed texture across its surface. Those lines have been kept visible rather than hidden or polished away. That decision gives the chair much of its character. The texture follows the curves closely and makes the manufacturing process easy to read. It also gives the recycled plastic a more tactile, less generic appearance.

There is something useful in that honesty. The material is not being forced to look like timber, stone or metal. It keeps the visual qualities created by the printing process and uses them as part of the design. The surface does still reference natural materials in a subtle way. Its layered finish recalls mineral formations and carved stone, which helps the chair feel less industrial when placed in an interior.

ZHA and Nagami developed four colourways for the chair: white, black, a white-to-translucent gradient and a caramel tone made using a bio-based cork composite. The colour choices help shift the mood of the design. White makes the form feel lighter and more architectural, while black gives it a stronger, more graphic presence. The translucent version draws attention to the printing layers, and the caramel finish adds warmth to what could otherwise feel like a very technical object.

The caramel version is especially successful because it softens the synthetic quality of the plastic. It feels easier to imagine in a home, hotel lobby or lounge space, rather than only in a gallery or design exhibition. According to ZHA project design director Sebastian Andia, the goal was to turn an abundant and overlooked material into something people would genuinely want to live with. That idea matters because recycled material alone is rarely enough to make a product successful. People still need to like the object, find it comfortable and see a place for it in their environment.

The Echo Chair handles this well. Its sustainable story supports the design, rather than becoming the whole design. The seat’s raised sides create a more enclosed sitting position, while the curved backrest gives the chair a supportive and almost cocooned feel. The shape is expressive, but it still looks usable. Its scale and neutral colour options also make it easier to place than the form might suggest. It has enough presence to work as a statement piece, yet it does not depend on bright colour or decoration to stand out.

The 3D-printing process allows the chair to be produced without visible joints or separate components. This gives it a seamless appearance and keeps the connection between the digital model and final object very direct.

That connection is one of the strongest parts of the project. The manufacturing process does not sit behind the design. It shapes the design. The ribs, curves and continuous structure all come from the same production method. Each part of the chair feels related because it has been developed through the same system.

The Echo Chair continues ZHA and Nagami’s existing collaboration. Nagami launched its first collection of 3D-printed chairs in 2018, which included two designs by the architecture studio. Their latest project shows how much more refined large-scale 3D printing has become. The chair feels less like a technical experiment and more like a finished product with a clear place in contemporary interiors.

The Echo Chair is currently on display as part of London Creates at The Truman Brewery. What makes the chair interesting is the way it brings together material, form and manufacturing without overcomplicating the idea. Recycled plastic is treated as a starting point for the design, rather than something that needs to be disguised.

The post The Echo Chair Makes 3D Printing Feel Refined first appeared on Yanko Design.

The Echo Chair Makes 3D Printing Feel Refined

Posted on by

ZHA has collaborated with Spanish design brand Nagami to create the Echo Chair, a 3D-printed seat made from recycled plastic waste. Formerly known as Zaha Hadid Architects, the studio developed the chair through parametric design and large-scale additive manufacturing. Its form is fluid and sculptural, with an arched backrest that extends towards the floor and a seat that curves upwards at the sides.

The two parts look separate at first, but they are printed as one continuous piece. Both surfaces grow from the same structural edge and share the same underlying geometry. One becomes the seat, while the other rises to form the backrest and support.

Designer: ZHA and Nagami

This continuous construction gives the chair a clear sense of logic. The shape is doing several jobs at once: supporting the body, holding the structure together, and defining the overall visual character.

The Echo Chair was developed through an iterative research process at ZHA Lab and manufactured by Nagami, a brand known for its work in large-format 3D printing. The studios used recycled PETG sourced from industrial waste, including single-use medical plastics.

As the chair is printed layer by layer, the process leaves a ribbed texture across its surface. Those lines have been kept visible rather than hidden or polished away. That decision gives the chair much of its character. The texture follows the curves closely and makes the manufacturing process easy to read. It also gives the recycled plastic a more tactile, less generic appearance.

There is something useful in that honesty. The material is not being forced to look like timber, stone or metal. It keeps the visual qualities created by the printing process and uses them as part of the design. The surface does still reference natural materials in a subtle way. Its layered finish recalls mineral formations and carved stone, which helps the chair feel less industrial when placed in an interior.

ZHA and Nagami developed four colourways for the chair: white, black, a white-to-translucent gradient and a caramel tone made using a bio-based cork composite. The colour choices help shift the mood of the design. White makes the form feel lighter and more architectural, while black gives it a stronger, more graphic presence. The translucent version draws attention to the printing layers, and the caramel finish adds warmth to what could otherwise feel like a very technical object.

The caramel version is especially successful because it softens the synthetic quality of the plastic. It feels easier to imagine in a home, hotel lobby or lounge space, rather than only in a gallery or design exhibition. According to ZHA project design director Sebastian Andia, the goal was to turn an abundant and overlooked material into something people would genuinely want to live with. That idea matters because recycled material alone is rarely enough to make a product successful. People still need to like the object, find it comfortable and see a place for it in their environment.

The Echo Chair handles this well. Its sustainable story supports the design, rather than becoming the whole design. The seat’s raised sides create a more enclosed sitting position, while the curved backrest gives the chair a supportive and almost cocooned feel. The shape is expressive, but it still looks usable. Its scale and neutral colour options also make it easier to place than the form might suggest. It has enough presence to work as a statement piece, yet it does not depend on bright colour or decoration to stand out.

The 3D-printing process allows the chair to be produced without visible joints or separate components. This gives it a seamless appearance and keeps the connection between the digital model and final object very direct.

That connection is one of the strongest parts of the project. The manufacturing process does not sit behind the design. It shapes the design. The ribs, curves and continuous structure all come from the same production method. Each part of the chair feels related because it has been developed through the same system.

The Echo Chair continues ZHA and Nagami’s existing collaboration. Nagami launched its first collection of 3D-printed chairs in 2018, which included two designs by the architecture studio. Their latest project shows how much more refined large-scale 3D printing has become. The chair feels less like a technical experiment and more like a finished product with a clear place in contemporary interiors.

The Echo Chair is currently on display as part of London Creates at The Truman Brewery. What makes the chair interesting is the way it brings together material, form and manufacturing without overcomplicating the idea. Recycled plastic is treated as a starting point for the design, rather than something that needs to be disguised.

The post The Echo Chair Makes 3D Printing Feel Refined first appeared on Yanko Design.

The Echo Chair Makes 3D Printing Feel Refined

Posted on by

ZHA has collaborated with Spanish design brand Nagami to create the Echo Chair, a 3D-printed seat made from recycled plastic waste. Formerly known as Zaha Hadid Architects, the studio developed the chair through parametric design and large-scale additive manufacturing. Its form is fluid and sculptural, with an arched backrest that extends towards the floor and a seat that curves upwards at the sides.

The two parts look separate at first, but they are printed as one continuous piece. Both surfaces grow from the same structural edge and share the same underlying geometry. One becomes the seat, while the other rises to form the backrest and support.

Designer: ZHA and Nagami

This continuous construction gives the chair a clear sense of logic. The shape is doing several jobs at once: supporting the body, holding the structure together, and defining the overall visual character.

The Echo Chair was developed through an iterative research process at ZHA Lab and manufactured by Nagami, a brand known for its work in large-format 3D printing. The studios used recycled PETG sourced from industrial waste, including single-use medical plastics.

As the chair is printed layer by layer, the process leaves a ribbed texture across its surface. Those lines have been kept visible rather than hidden or polished away. That decision gives the chair much of its character. The texture follows the curves closely and makes the manufacturing process easy to read. It also gives the recycled plastic a more tactile, less generic appearance.

There is something useful in that honesty. The material is not being forced to look like timber, stone or metal. It keeps the visual qualities created by the printing process and uses them as part of the design. The surface does still reference natural materials in a subtle way. Its layered finish recalls mineral formations and carved stone, which helps the chair feel less industrial when placed in an interior.

ZHA and Nagami developed four colourways for the chair: white, black, a white-to-translucent gradient and a caramel tone made using a bio-based cork composite. The colour choices help shift the mood of the design. White makes the form feel lighter and more architectural, while black gives it a stronger, more graphic presence. The translucent version draws attention to the printing layers, and the caramel finish adds warmth to what could otherwise feel like a very technical object.

The caramel version is especially successful because it softens the synthetic quality of the plastic. It feels easier to imagine in a home, hotel lobby or lounge space, rather than only in a gallery or design exhibition. According to ZHA project design director Sebastian Andia, the goal was to turn an abundant and overlooked material into something people would genuinely want to live with. That idea matters because recycled material alone is rarely enough to make a product successful. People still need to like the object, find it comfortable and see a place for it in their environment.

The Echo Chair handles this well. Its sustainable story supports the design, rather than becoming the whole design. The seat’s raised sides create a more enclosed sitting position, while the curved backrest gives the chair a supportive and almost cocooned feel. The shape is expressive, but it still looks usable. Its scale and neutral colour options also make it easier to place than the form might suggest. It has enough presence to work as a statement piece, yet it does not depend on bright colour or decoration to stand out.

The 3D-printing process allows the chair to be produced without visible joints or separate components. This gives it a seamless appearance and keeps the connection between the digital model and final object very direct.

That connection is one of the strongest parts of the project. The manufacturing process does not sit behind the design. It shapes the design. The ribs, curves and continuous structure all come from the same production method. Each part of the chair feels related because it has been developed through the same system.

The Echo Chair continues ZHA and Nagami’s existing collaboration. Nagami launched its first collection of 3D-printed chairs in 2018, which included two designs by the architecture studio. Their latest project shows how much more refined large-scale 3D printing has become. The chair feels less like a technical experiment and more like a finished product with a clear place in contemporary interiors.

The Echo Chair is currently on display as part of London Creates at The Truman Brewery. What makes the chair interesting is the way it brings together material, form and manufacturing without overcomplicating the idea. Recycled plastic is treated as a starting point for the design, rather than something that needs to be disguised.

The post The Echo Chair Makes 3D Printing Feel Refined first appeared on Yanko Design.

London’s Barbican Now Has Furniture You’re Allowed to Move

Posted on by

Most public spaces don’t trust you. They’re designed to move you through them efficiently, seat you for a limited time, or keep you from lingering too long. Benches with armrests in the middle to prevent sleeping. Spikes on flat ledges. Gaps between seats so no one gets too comfortable. Somewhere along the way, cities stopped being places you inhabit and started being places you pass through.

Päivi Raivio’s Basic Forms (of Urban Life) is a direct and cheerful argument against all of that. The Finnish artist and urban designer has taken a set of geometric plywood pieces, painted in colors borrowed from the Barbican’s own brutalist architecture, and placed them in the middle of one of London’s most famous cultural complexes. No instructions. No fixed configuration. No single correct answer. Visitors are invited to pick them up, move them around, stack them, sit on them, or arrange them into something entirely new. What looks like furniture is actually a question: what do you want this space to be?

Designer: Päivi Raivio

I’ve seen a lot of participatory design installations over the years, and most of them fail for the same reason: they participate for you. They have a predetermined “correct” arrangement that visitors slowly discover through guided cues. There’s no real agency. Raivio’s work is different because it genuinely means it. A seat can become a table. A table can become a platform. A platform can become a wall, a stage, or a privacy screen between two strangers who both needed a quiet corner at the same moment. The work shifts with whoever is using it, and that feels radical compared to what most public design offers.

The Barbican is a fitting backdrop for all of this. Designed through the 1950s and completed in 1982, it’s one of the most monumental pieces of brutalist architecture in the UK, all exposed concrete and sharp geometry. Raivio’s lightweight, colorful pieces don’t fight the setting. They echo it quietly, picking up the shapes and tones of the architecture without trying to compete with several acres of concrete. The contrast between the fixed permanence of the building and the cheerful rearrangeability of the installation is part of what makes the whole thing click.

For Raivio, play isn’t a decorative layer applied over the surface of serious design. It’s a foundational principle. Her studio, RaivioBumann, focuses on transforming public spaces into places that are genuinely livable, not just functional. The idea that disorder and disruption can be design tools, rather than problems to be solved, runs through everything about Basic Forms. Public space, in her view, is most alive when it hasn’t been entirely decided for you.

The installation is part of the Barbican’s Play Make Do festival, running 14 to 16 August 2026, and it’s free, unticketed, and open to anyone who walks through. It previously showed at Concéntrico in Logroño, Spain, where it was met with the kind of spontaneous collective enthusiasm that designers spend careers hoping for. People of all ages rearranged, combined, balanced, and rebuilt the pieces for hours. The images from that presentation are worth looking up. They show something you don’t see often enough in public space: strangers making decisions together.

That’s the detail that sticks with me. Not the form, not the color palette, not even the clever way the installation adapts to its environment. It’s the fact that two people who don’t know each other will naturally start negotiating, collaborating, and eventually laughing over how to arrange a pile of plywood. Raivio has essentially built a permission slip for connection, disguised as furniture.

Cities don’t lack benches or tables. They lack reasons to linger. They lack spaces that say, figure it out, make it yours, stay as long as you want. Basic Forms gives London exactly that, even if only for a weekend. The real question it raises is why we aren’t building this kind of thinking into cities permanently, instead of treating it as a festival-season novelty.

The post London’s Barbican Now Has Furniture You’re Allowed to Move first appeared on Yanko Design.