This furniture collection also doubles up as pot planters with an ultimate Japandi vibe!

After spending 99% of my time at home in the last two years, I have naturally developed a keen eye for good furniture designs. My preferred style is Japandi or Scandanavian design because I love their minimal aesthetic, functionality, and evergreen pieces – all of which I see in Lur! It is a furniture collection that includes pot planters which also double up as seating in the most organic manner. It was designed for Alki, a brand that is always seeking to collaborate with local businesses which makes it even more special because it unites distinct know-how and materials.

To create the Lur collection, designer Iratzoki Lizaso went to Goicoechea Pottery and work with the local team. The pottery workshop is based in Ortzaize in Lower Navarre, just a few kilometers from Alki. The Goicoechea family has been working with terracotta for three generations. The materials used, the solid oak, and the clay from the Goicoechea family quarry are here entirely natural.

The collection consists of planters and a bistro table. They all have smooth curves and organic shapes featuring a warm aesthetic thanks to the choice of materials and CMF details. It is minimal, timeless, and can work equally well for homes, offices, and public spaces. The idea of ​​being able to vegetate our interiors with pots that are also low tables or seating participates in the creation of living and changing arrangements. These terracotta containers with an eccentric hole on the upper part, house flower pots that allow many unique and artistic compositions that can change the look and feel of a space!

Alki, the pottery team, and Iratzoki Lizaso enjoyed bringing together different craft skills to create Lur. The collection is centered around the idea of plant pots that can work double duty as shelves and coffee tables that add an extra dose of greenery to our spaces. Everything is bio-sourced and made with the intention to work universally as well as for a long time. The clay is transformed into a beautiful rose terracotta with a distinct texture with an off-center opening ready to hold flower pots and plants. The Lur range shows beauty in simplicity while doubling the functionality with minimal design!

Desinger: Iratzoki Lizaso

This sustainable furniture collection is made from burnt cork!

Have you ever made a bulletin board from wine bottle corks? I thought that was the most creative use of corks instead of throwing them away but obviously I am no  Noé Duchaufour-Lawrance! The French designer created a whole furniture set using burnt cork as the material and therefore the range is aptly called Burnt Cork. He uses discarded cork for the range, choosing different gradients and cork grain patterns to create a play between textures.

Sustainable designs often draw inspiration from nature and this furniture series is no exception. It is produced through the designer’s own Portugal-based studio Made in Situ and it celebrates the beauty of Portuguese landscapes which are abundant with cork forests. Cork is one of the most resilient natural materials. While the designer was driving through the Pedrógão Grande mountain region during the forest fires of 2017, he was thinking of the destruction, and during that he had the “Aha!” moment of using burnt cork as a material. A year later, he visited a traditional cork manufacturing company where he discovered various cork processing techniques which included the waste material from the fires – literal burnt cork!

Noé Duchaufour-Lawrance spent two years on research and development before giving second life to the waste cork. The furniture set is an homage to the resilience and beauty of this sustainable material. Burnt Cork is crafted using a blend of traditional and modern techniques resulting in organic forms with curved lines that give it a unique sculptural aesthetic. Every design highlights the dichotomy of the rough and fine cork textures.

The limited-edition set includes a dining table, two low tables, a lounge chair, a dining chair, a chaise longue, and a stool. Each piece has a base with a bark-like texture that then transforms into a fine grain surface at the top. The chairs showcase ergonomic silhouettes that promise comfort while the tables feature architectural elements. Cork is an underrated sustainable material that finally got a chance to shine through design in the Burnt Cork furniture set.

This modular furniture series reuses same construction pieces to adapt to your tiny living space!

Modular furniture is a tiny home’s most coveted design secret. As cities across the globe grow in population, living spaces are shrinking. Those who live in cities mostly live in tiny apartments or shared homes that require a lot of space budgeting. Meeting the spatial demands of tiny living spaces, furniture designers Lee PinYi and Su Ching Yao developed a modular, versatile furniture system called Better.

Better includes a collection of furniture pieces, ranging from office desks and bed frames to task chairs and coat racks, that hinge on a modular design to adapt to changing needs over time and provide extra storage space in small living spaces. Packaged just like a piece of furniture from IKEA, Better comes complete with simple, yet comprehensive assembly instructions and interchangeable parts that can give each piece of furniture a whole new look and function. Just like IKEA, Better boasts a simple and clean design scheme. Each piece of furniture shares assembly components, allowing users to swap different parts out for new ones, creating a totally new piece of furniture.

For example, a desk from Better might require the same parts used to build a coat rack, allowing users to recycle building materials and create their own piece of furniture from the start. Interchangeable parts also allow users to build on fully assembled pieces of furniture, adding storage compartments or leg rests when necessary. The height, finish, and integrated shelving for each component can be adjusted at any time by the user to build a piece of furniture totally unique to their own needs and living space.

Designer: Lee PinYi & Su Ching Yao

The same legs used to build the task chair can also be used to build the office desk and coat rack.

With an elemental look, Better’s collection of furniture evokes Scandinavian design.

Interchangeable assembly design and hardware lend to a simple construction process and modular deisgn.

The same construction pieces used to build the chair can be used to build a coat rack.

Users can also add on storage units like shelves and racks to make more use of each piece of furniture.

Following an easy-to-understand assembly process, Better’s furniture comes together quickly.

Integrated shelving units can be incorporated into every piece of furniture to ensure optimal storage.

Additional shelves can be latched onto the side of desks or even underneath for a neat footrest.

The chair follows the same, simple assembly scheme, allowing for a seamless building process.

The foot rest on the task chair can be adjusted to any desired height.

The workbench can also be adjusted according to your height and space available.

Users can build a chair or a stool following Better’s assembly instructions.

The coat rack can carry as many racks as needed, allowing users to add or take away when necessary.

By getting creative, users can turn average workbenches into sleek entryway shoe benches.

The workbench can also double as a cot.

Better’s line of furniture is inspired by the simplicity of Scandinavian design to fit into any living space.

Packaged like IKEA furniture, Better leans on a simple and clean design scheme.

This furniture let you move apartments with ease by fitting inside a carton!

Urbanization and the exodus of human resources to metropolitan cities have resulted in an exponential rise in real estate prices. This has further ensured that space comes at a premium in these bigger cities where work and life take us. As a result, apartment and tiny home living have become a norm in such metros, and people rely on space-efficient furniture that they can use in their small space and transport easily when moving out. Living up to the demand, a South Korean designer has come up with the 120 Series furniture. While we wish this one piece of furniture could be used in 120 ways, the name is a clever play on the size of the moving boxes (120cm³).

Each design in this series can fit into a shipping carton (120cm³) without disassembling and then the tedious reassembly at the new place. Relocating is a tedious task; if you have moved from one locality to another or between cities, you’d know what I mean. Many urban dwellers sell off their furniture at throwaway prices because transporting bulky furniture is next to impossible. One of the solutions by the furniture industry is the introduction of transforming and space-saving designs. Though the 120 Series furniture isn’t foldable, it is designed in a manner that the stool can function as a basket horizontally or a side table – with wheels – it can double as a trolley. Each furniture unit in the collection, which primarily features seating, has nylon handles to amp up the portability. We have a trolley with detachable wheels, a stepping stool that doubles as a seat, and a basket stool to name a few. The basket stool comes with a yellow handle so we can carry its contents on moving day!

The 120 series can be packed and moved in cardboard cartons with other luggage; it’s that simple. The thoughtfulness of that design element is what makes this design so unique. The furniture is almost like LEGO blocks for your home – you can use them together or separately, but best of all, it does not force you to sell out. In fact, each of these designs can become your little piece of the known in an unknown home!

Designer: WooSeok Lee

A flatpack, modular, flexible furniture system that grows with your needs without taking up space!

You know what is the most annoying thing about moving? Packing up your furniture which actually doesn’t really “pack” so you basically have to play Jenga with your pieces in the U-Haul truck. How cool would it be if we could roll up our furniture just like we roll up our clothes to save space right? Well, designer Richard Price kind of make it happen by creating Plus+ – a flat-packed furniture system that maximizes living space and minimizes storage space!

Plus+ fits your needs and comes with multiple configurations. The flexible furniture system increases its likelihood to adapt by using a snap-together frame with a joint system across the whole range. The modular design can be easily be assembled and upgraded with new features or additional accessories which enables it to grow with your needs or new spaces. Flexible furniture is the future as people shift to more flexible lifestyles that blend work and living in the same space.

The CMF has been chosen to be minimal, lightweight, and universal so it can work for homes, offices, schools, or any other setting. Using the felt-based material makes the “walls” more usable while also taking away the usual risk of scratches on furniture. It lets you easily attach accessories and doesn’t require any of that wall-nail-hammer trouble. The aluminum frames are durable and light – you can use them to create seating, walls, wardrobe, or cubicles! Plus+ is furniture designed to make your life easier with IKEA-like easy assembly, versatile functionality, and a design that enables you to use your furniture for a long time no matter where you go!

Designer: Richard Price

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These foldable, modular furniture designs are the space-saving solution every home needs!

I have ordered the white plastic chairs off of IKEA and Amazon and while they look great in the patio, it’s only going to last a couple of months because it can’t withstand weather changes, kids, or dogs. And you can’t keep those indoors – they just look ODD. We finally have an alternative to it – wooden foldable chairs with an upgraded minimal aesthetic and a longer life! Even though they might look visually similar to the IKEA ones at first glance, these wooden chairs actually work with indoor settings too unlike the usual patio seating. They are classier and can be used in any room/interior setting.

The first wooden chair has strings that form the seat and the backrest, it may make you doubtful of comfort but the strings act like fabric and contour around your body for maximum comfort. The string tension also makes sure that you are well supported. The second chair is like a classic window transformed into a chair with one swivel motion. Because it is a smooth, singular vertical plank when closed, it is easier to stack/store. Another favorite from this furniture range is the fold-out table with storage, it is ideal for small urban apartments or for a kid-friendly room to keep things tidy and packed away. Speaking of kids’ rooms, there is another piece which is a shelf with a chalkboard panel that transforms into a small bed – this is a wonderful way to encourage children to own and take care of their space in a playful manner. Now when it comes to adults, we all know there is never enough storage so instead of shoving plastic or cardboard boxes under our beds, there is a simple box frame that has multiple drawers and when closed it seamlessly turns into a base for your mattress. It keeps things neat and reduces the storage bins you have to buy.

I have always had a personal library, but having lived in crowded cities like Manhattan, you have to choose between a bookshelf and a table to eat your food. I wish I had this ladder-shelf table piece at the time, it saves space and ‘serves’ food as well as food for thought! Given our population growth and the crowding up of cities, millennials will need these furniture designs to add fun and functional element to their home. Afterall, wooden furniture is timeless and one can never go wrong with these minimal multifunctional pieces.

Designer: Jon 117 SP

This detailed furniture’s modular design is the perfect canvas to display any exhibit!

Furniture designs are dedicated to being indoors or outdoors, but rarely is it that one versatile piece of furniture can be taken from home to outdoors to even your workspace! Designer Tim Denton brings together his love of furniture and high-quality craftsmanship with the Display A – a collection of flexible furniture. Modular, perfect for everything from a small pop-up store, a cafe to even a DIY space, the Display A is the best way to display your love of labor and your skill while its design inspires you to attain the same level of details in your work!

The Display A, on the first glance, comes across as a mix of an easel, a foosball table, and a pinhole wall – totally different elements that don’t usually go together until they do. This unique storage design is modular while retaining the essential functions of being a storage piece. Let’s divide and have a deeper look at the elements, shall we? The basic frame that holds the structure is an A-shaped easel with the handmade furniture’s details showcasing the love of labor put in by the designer. The top of the frame comes with rounded pegs to hang any exhibit in the frame. Next, comes the planks with two options – the pinhole based board that allows you to arrange and create your shelving space as per your requirement. The second board has shallow shelves to hold up smaller display exhibits like cards, flyers, or even posters. Lastly, the drawers come with handles to affix onto the table base creating an open display or cover it up with clear acrylic sheets and its dust-proof too! The collection, altogether, includes everything you need to set up an exhibit, showcase your work, or just set it up in your office space to showcase your valuables. A major plus, the entire set co-ordinates beautifully to create a uniquely minimal aesthetic that is sure to uplift any space while not distracting from the exhibit displayed in all its glory! Showcase your plants, show off your artwork, display that poster you created or lay down your crafts – the Display A is ready for you.

All items in the collection are constructed from Birch plywood, Valchromat, and Ash timber. Everything in the system is customizable and made to order in their Manchester workshop. The studio is also open to making bespoke additions to the design as per our particular needs.
The beauty of this design lies in its modularity, minimalism, and its beauty in highlighting the showcased design without stealing the attention. Honestly, I wouldn’t mind having this in my home to display all the memorabilia I keep collecting in an organized fashion!

Designer: Tim Denton

IKEA-worthy product designs that are a must-have for any Scandanavian Design lovers!

IKEA! As a design lover, I always have appreciated the values IKEA brings to the table – minimal, Scandanavian design, modularity and the ability to customize and easily upgrade our furniture to match our homes. In their own words :“Our mission is the almost impossible idea of combining formal beauty with a great functionality and lasting quality. All of this produced in a sustainable value chain and affordable for the client.” After spending considerable hours browsing the IKEA inventory and combining my exposure of great product designs we come across at Yanko, this curated collection of designs features product designs that are truly IKEA-worthy and are sure to be a hit in their collection!

OO Stool

It’s worth noticing how the OO Stool by S Mate Olah (of 56 Hours) does such a great job of combining sustainability along with technology and a pinch of heritage. Made from a single board of bamboo plywood, the stool is CNC machine-cut in a way that integrates every single aspect of the stool into its design. Everything you need to build the OO Stool sits within that flat-packed jigsaw-puzzle of bamboo pieces, minimizing waste by using as much negative space as possible. The legs form the outside, while the dual-layered seat of the stool sits on the inside, with the negative space being filled by tiny rectangular pieces that help lock the stool in place, and even a bamboo hammer to help assemble the stool!

Keith Melbourne Studios envisioned how design intervention can create a new sort of stylish-yet-safe workplace with the Avion. Currently on the shortlist for an Inde Award, the Avion is a modular workspace setup that comes with a contemporary design with soft curves, chic furniture, and a modern color palette to help make the workspace look friendly and appealing. Designed to create visual comfort, with modularity that makes the design easily scalable so you’re more focused and relaxed at work, the cubicle systems isolate you and provide enough space to work out of, while still giving you enough of a window to step out and socialize from time to time… from a distance of course!

With summer comes an increase in usage of air conditioners and we know they are not exceptionally healthy for the planet. To help maintain the electricity usage, designers Aileen Ooi and E Ian Siew created KYL, an attachment to the common standing fan everyone has stashed away at their homes to make the room cooler. The attachment, named KYL is a humidity filter that funnels airflow output to cool a closed room. KYL would be able to lower temperatures by 1.5degrees Celsius and also make the room arider (a boon in humid places like Singapore, India, and more). Utilizing Bernoulli’s principle to create a cooling effect, KYL comes with a removable filter made up of tiny pieces of silica gel which absorbs moisture from the air. This lowers the humidity in the room and we can reuse the silica gel by washing it then leaving it out in the sun to dry, minimizing the usage of electricity. And removing this filter is easy as it comes affixed with velcro.

Now this is a fridge worthy of IKEA! Designed to be a sustainable appliance, the Addition by Heewoong Chai is a multi-type refrigerator system that up-sizes on demand. Based on the assumption that your first fridge comes home when you move out as a singleton, and your requirements increase when you marry and then expand your family with kids in tow, this fridge makes clever use of being modular by allowing you to add components like water purifier, oven etc. making it a holistic solution in the kitchen. A typically good-quality make fridge lasts you for several years without a hiccup, so adding more modules as per requirements is quite sensible. What I love about the design is the clever use of technology via an app, to help control key features like temperature vs content and status on the food item stored – example: expiry date, freshness etc. In essence, each module can be temperature controlled individually, thus creating various customized zones for the food within.

The Circle Zero from PLUTO is a smart litter box that takes care of your cat’s business. Designed to be fully automated, fully enclosed, and exceptionally silent, the litter box comes with a completely enclosed design to provide a private experience. Sensors on the box detect the presence of the cat, and wait for a full 7 minutes after they’re done to automatically (and silently) scoop the waste from the litter and store it separately while completely containing and eliminating any odor too. Once the waste compartment is full, you can use any bag or liner to collect it and throw it away. Designed to appear classy (and practically something you’d find in an IKEA catalog), the Circle Zero truly looks like the kind of device you’d want to keep in your living room.

Kurio

The base of the shape-shifting, infinitely customizable shelf KUR!O by designer Markus Hofko of Von Morgen is its underlying grid, made from sandwiched wood-fiber boards. The cuts in the grid go as much as 20mm deep, allowing you press-fit powder-coated steel panels into it. The steel panels come in a variety of colors, giving the KUR!O its uniquely vibrant appeal, and feature carefully-placed cuts that let individual panels interlock into each other. The 2mm thick panels are heavy-duty enough to take on large loads, making the KUR!O robust, despite the fact that there isn’t any screwing or gluing of parts. Each KUR!O even comes with a set of 8mm thick steel sticks or dowels that peg into the circular holes at the intersection of the cutouts. Plug a stick in and you instantly have yourself a series of hooks right beside your shelf-spaces so you can both hang as well as place items on your KUR!O.

Un-Lim is an ageless collection that can be molded and changed over time – think of it as redesigning your own furniture using the same pieces to create a whole new form and function! It comes with 8 different parts that you can combine to match your space and needs. Turn it from a bed to a table to a chair seamlessly. “Unlimited imagination and unimaginable needs of people could be contradictory to the limitations of our planet and our capacities as human beings. The consumption patterns we have adapted have led to global warming, polluted air, soil, and water while putting pressure on people, both in working conditions and a psychological obsession to gain more without answering the real needs,” says designer Ariyan Davoodian on what inspired him to create modular furniture for every space.

Studio RYTE’s Catssup includes a Dot Step, a Sleeping Pill, a Space Ball, a Cloud Lounge and a Climbing Tower – I would just like to say that I strongly believe human furniture should also have fun labels like this and maybe we would be more invested in it. The Dot Step is a circular attachment that lets your pet explore vertical places with the Cloud Lounge and Sleeping Pill are resting attachments. The Space Ball and Climbing tower are play pieces to keep your cat entertained, especially during virtual meetings. All you have to do is screw and clamp for rearranging the pieces suited to different functions. The C-clamp is adjustable so it will fit horizontal boards/surfaces easily.

Danish architects Sine Lindholm and Mads-Ulrick Husum have created ‘GrowMore’ in an attempt to encourage such a society. GrowMore is an urban gardening modular design that expands as your plants grow. The modular, open-source system is made entirely out of CNC-milled plywood. The versatile planter can be bolted and unbolted in a variety of configurations, allowing you to maintain mini or larger-than-mini farms and gardens. GrowMore consists of a collection of six individual parts including plywood, shelving and planting units, which are held together by a ‘circular pivotal joint’, that uses M8 bolts in order to create varied designs from the very same parts. “It’s like a Lego system,” said Lindholm “The parts can be rotated vertically and horizontally, so it’s totally flexible. You can really freestyle, and build anything you want.”

Designed by a former Lexus Engineer who found himself shifting cities a lot, Aalo2.0 by Sejun Park is designed to be stronger, made from finer materials, and work anywhere, including outdoors. Going a step further to make the range more durable, and therefor last for possibly a decade longer, Aalo 2.0 fine tunes a few things while sticking to its original philosophy. The products come flat-packed, much like IKEA’s furniture would, but unlike the Swedish home-decor giant, Aalo 2.0 is also designed for ‘disassembly’. This ensures that when you travel between cities, shifting jobs, your entire lifestyle travels WITH you. Aalo 2.0 comes apart as conveniently as it’s put together… with connecting panels and joineries that tighten with a single tool, the Aalo 2.0 can be assembled, disassembled, or even repurposed into newer items of furniture. Its Lego-like simplicity gives you the opportunity to be creative with your furniture, building exactly what you want, and its sheer genius is that designer Sejun Park devised a clever Nordic-style minimalist design language that shines through no matter what piece of furniture you make. Whether you use Aalo 2.0 to make a footstool, wardrobe, planter-stand, table, or even modular shelf, every product looks like a part of Aalo’s visual family.

For the love of all beautifully designed furniture, check out more curated and inspiring furniture designs here!

Manufacturing waste repurposed into a furniture collection your home needs!

Looking to make a switch to a sustainable lifestyle in 2020? Meet the Dot Collection – these modern pieces are made from the waste produced during manufacturing furniture. This group will keep with the aesthetic of your space while also allowing you to continue reusing, reducing and recycling.

The Dot collection includes a set of chairs, bench, and side table that all come in subtle earthy colors with a combination of cool and warm. The inspiration for this modern sustainable set was a factory visit where the Studio Pesi team noticed a lot of leftover material. After a linoleum board is cut, the pieces are usually wasted and the goal behind the Dot collection was to make something functional and minimal enough for it to fit with any interior style.

The chairs, bench, and side tables are made with off-the-shelf solid wood cylinders and the linoleum board leftovers so sustainability is truly in the bare bones of their structures. The linoleum board leftovers provide for a soft and warm surface on the top of the furniture. The joints between the two materials give the Dot collection its unique image and name.

If I were to name each piece of the collection individually, I would call them Reuse, Reduce and Recycle.

Designer: Studio Pesi