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

Wooden Furniture designed with Japandi aesthetics to incorporate zen-like minimalism into your home!

I truly feel a well-crafted piece of wooden furniture can add a magical touch to even the simplest of living spaces! Minimal, clean, and almost always soothing, beautifully designed wooden furniture helps a space radiate an aura of warmth and calmness. They instantly make you feel at home. And, today a lot of designers are adopting ‘Japandi’ aesthetics when designing wooden furniture. So, what is Japandi? It is an amalgamation of the words Japanese and Scandinavian and marries Japanese and Scandinavian aesthetics. It is the artful blending of both Japanese and Scandinavian design. Add wood as the material of choice to this mix, and you have furniture designs that are not only aesthetically but functionally pleasing as well! Incorporate this collection of Japandi-inspired wooden furniture designs into your home, to create a living space that will truly feel like a safe haven.

Bjarke Ballisager’s Together and Apart Table uses a sawtooth cutout pattern to turn the unassuming wooden block into a table that can adjust its height on the fly! “The primary unit consists of two wedges that interlock at a saw-toothed surface, allowing them to fit together at any of many different levels”, says Ballisager, a New York-based designer and architect. The two wedges, made out of solid white oak, can be interlocked in a variety of ways, allowing the product to function as a stool, laptop stand, or even a bedside table, thanks to its ability to match the height you need.

The Flip chair and its inspiration were taken from the feel of sitting on the wind-strewn grass. An intriguing concept and an even more intriguing result! As Chen explains, “Translating the concept into a design vocabulary, we decided to use “flip” as the main axis. Through the flip, the bentwood is made to flow through gradual changes and generate vitality. Finally, the 3D model was drawn by GH to simulate various gradient states and output the detailed design.” The process of steam bending wood is a difficult process already, and the thickness of this piece of wood makes it even more trying. Given multiple trials and repeats, each piece of wood is bent in a unique way and the result is a chair that is also handmade and unique.

This timeless-looking piece is crafted from solid wood finished off with rounded corners that give it an organic form. “We got the three elements from deconstructing traditional wooden cabinets and immovable system furniture,” says award-winning furniture designer Chuang. MOON allows the user to have a flexible lifestyle as this one cabinet serves many different purposes thanks to its modular build. You can combine, assemble, and deconstruct it to fit your space or transform it from storage to seating. Just like the phases of the moon, the shape of this cabinet changes to fit different needs – in fact, it has a little circular cutout detail to symbolize that.

Sideboards are not thought of as dynamic or interactive but this furniture piece adds movement to the otherwise traditionally mundane design. It showcases a technical/mechanical approach to designing a sideboard and uses a combination of bearings + linkages for the sliding mechanism. The fun detail is that these are exposed and add more character to the piece. The front panel swivels over and the linkages push the drawer out. It’s crafted from maple and walnut wood with a glass top which gives it an evergreen aesthetic. The combination of woodwork and mechanics makes it an elegant vintage vibe.

Inspired by the shape of the ampersand, & Chair flows into a natural shape, handmade from a collection of sustainable materials like felt and ash wood. & Chair can be positioned in different placements to change its use‒from upright to horizontal, the & Chair changes function as it changes position. When placed upright, the & Chair morphs into a standing coat rack with ample drawer storage, where smaller items like magazines and umbrellas can be stored. Then, users can bring the & Chair down, allowing it to work as a coffee table with storage space made available through a slot-and-rack system, where magazines and coffee table books can be kept.

The Cat Chair from Myzoo was designed for the modern home so that your cat can enjoy their own play and rest areas without compromising the interior design of your living room or den. The Cat Chair is a hexagonal piece of furniture where your cat can rest and also explore. Made from pinewood and a high-density sponge, the Cat Chair features a small lower compartment with cubby holes on each side of the stool for cats to slink in and out of as they choose. The lower compartment allows room for the cat to hide away and relax in isolation, while the stool’s sponge cushion provides an open space for the cat to lounge or even sunbathe.

Bringing new life to the room divider, the designers at Molo, a design and production studio led by Stephanie Forsythe and Todd MacAllen, created their own rendition, calling it a paper softwall or folding partition, one that folds and bends, with the flexibility to be shaped in any curved or linear formation, and expands and contracts, like breathing. When expanded, the paper softwall is like a monolithic accordion paper organizer that is surprisingly lightweight and can easily change direction to define private spaces or supply dramatic backdrops for performances.

Soft Baroque designed the 005 Coffee Table for Vaarnii. The humbleness and sturdiness of pine are reflected through this delicate coffee table. The joints used to built traditional Finnish log houses were added for a decorative effect to this furniture piece. The minimal and clean Japanese aesthetics and Scandinavian functionality combine to create a simple yet beautiful table that is wholeheartedly Japandi.

With a name that perfectly describes the chair’s visual style, the Lattice Chair is an interesting single-arm chair made from interwoven strips of wood. Designed for comfort as well as for that interesting aesthetic, the chair comes with a single armrest, allowing you to sit with complete postural flexibility. Its cushion is made from high-quality Taiwanese bamboo strips, known for their excellent toughness. The result is a chair that weighs a mere 4 kilos but can take up to 120 kilos of weight.

Inspired by traditional Japanese Shinto Kumiki puzzles, this pair of nesting stools feature the Yosegi technique, which is the art of creating exquisite patterns using inlaid wood. TAMEN even utilized the Tsugite technique, which includes bringing together geometric wooden joints, resulting in 12 diamond-shaped columns that effortlessly merge together. Due to these wooden joints and unique columns, both the stools can be combined together to create one space-saving stool! This space-saver can be easily put away for storage. When separated in two, they also function as companion seats or footrests.

Furniture Designs to add a touch of Japandi minimalism + aesthetics to your home!

I absolutely love minimal furniture designs! A subtle and simple piece of furniture can truly complete a room. It can be the final piece that makes a space come full circle, building a comfortable and cohesive haven, rather than a random area. Furniture pieces make or break a home, they add on to the essence or soul of a home, hence one needs to be extremely picky while choosing a furniture design. The design should be a reflection of you, and what you want your home to be. When you place a piece of furniture in a room, it should instantly integrate with the space, creating a wholesome and organic environment. And I believe minimal furniture designs do exactly that! Hence, we’ve curated a collection of furniture designs that truly embody minimalism and its quaint simplicity and zen-ness. Add these pieces to your home to create a living space that truly feels like yours! Enjoy!

The Piano desk gives that traditional piano design a nod by incorporating it into your familiar wooden desk with some additional inspiration from the Standard chair by Jean Prouvé that elevates the minimal piece. The Piano desk created so the designer could experiment with a hybrid material selection and play with interesting visual contrasts. On the one hand, we have metal which is a cold material that is beautifully balanced by the warmer wood. On the other hand, the same metal which allows for a slimmer silhouette is given the sturdiness with the addition of wood. The key factor in the briefing was to design a product with a democratic approach. That is how the minimal desk without any complex production processes was born while still featuring a small design element that other minimal desks didn’t have – the dipped shelf!

The Ark desk was designed for a client who wanted to increase the functionalities of his traditional table/desk – a need we have all realized during this pandemic. Ark is minimal in its design yet maximizes its surface area. The interesting thing about Ark’s design is that it can switch identities between the writing desk and the dressing table. The mirror is an optional feature for the desk, you can move its position based on what you are using it for. One of its sides is a downwards flanging cabinet included to increase storage. It provides a space for keeping cosmetics during dressing, books, or work-related files which ensures that the desktop space is clutter-free. The cabinet also keeps the items stored hidden from the front view which makes the overall visual of Ark a very clean and pleasing one!

Paperclip Chair by Andrew Edge

Paperclip Chair by Andrew Edge

Stationery and Furniture really don’t have that much influence over one another. Just given their sheer size difference, the way a piece of stationery interacts with its surroundings is vastly different from how a piece of furniture does, considering its scale. However, Boston-based designer Andrew Edge is hoping to switch things up with the Paperclip Chair, a rather minimalist piece of furniture with oddly pleasing paperclip-shaped legs. The legs come with curved, angled forms made from metal piping, upon which rests the seat, yet another minimally designed detail.

Sideboards are not thought of as dynamic or interactive but this furniture piece adds movement to the otherwise traditionally mundane design. It showcases a technical/mechanical approach to designing a sideboard and uses a combination of bearings + linkages for the sliding mechanism. The fun detail is that these are exposed and add more character to the piece. The front panel swivels over and the linkages push the drawer out. It’s crafted from maple and walnut wood with a glass top which gives it an evergreen aesthetic. The combination of woodwork and mechanics makes it an elegant vintage vibe. Sideboard has a universal appeal and the mechanism makes it more accessible for storing daily-use items as opposed to a junk closet.

The minimal furniture collection uses clean lines focused around an elevated seat, bringing to mind the stunning visuals of the Gargantua black hole portrayed in Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar. The story goes like this – Eugénie von Tunzelmann, a CG supervisor at Double Negative, generated a flat, multicolored ring – a stand-in for the accretion disk – and positioned it around their spinning black hole. Something very, very weird happened. ‘We found that warping space around the black hole also warps the accretion disk, so rather than looking like Saturn’s rings around a black sphere, the light creates this extraordinary halo.’ This warping halo brings to mind the lines showcased in this design. The furniture itself boasts of low tables that work as a coffee table as well as a bench, given the changing width of the design.

This chair is an amazing display of nostalgia and minimalism through furniture design. The designer wanted to incorporate our inherent ways of interacting with nature into a chair. Stubby chair was inspired by these environmental settings that combined the love for interiors with an element from the exterior world. Nature is the best designer (for the most part!) so observing nature gives the designer a lot of clues and points of directions where they should pay attention so it fits seamlessly into our lives. “Over time, you settle down with some household items, borrowed from nature. At the same time, you understand that the world is changing and you are changing with it,” she says describing the simplistic design which can age with time.

Winner of the Golden Pin Design Award, the Bien Bien Cat Tree by Cheng-Liang Wu and Chia-Wen Lin is a cat tree that also masterfully doubles up as a piece of furniture. It’s a beautiful product that caters to the needs of both your cat (s) and you, functioning as a space that can be utilized and shared by humans and felines alike. You can build the modular cat tree all by yourself, its modularity allows it to be assembled in various ways, according to personal requirements, space restrictions, and of course, the moods of your cat. There are several shelving options for you to store your precious belongings in, as well as little nooks and crannies for your pet to sleep and play around in. Multiple accessories can be attached as means of recreation for your cat, and my favorite one, hands down, is the tiny hammock!

Nail four legs together put a seat on top, you have yourself a stool. That’s what the most simplistic and basic form of a stool is – four wooden legs capped with a circular or square seat. Award-winning designer João Teixeira, however, is challenging the notion of what that basic archetype of a wooden stool should look like. His design, the Knot Stool, makes use of wood in an unusual way, lending it an appearance that resembles the styles of metal and plastic furniture. The Knot uses a lathe-spun seat beneath which sit three steam-bent wooden legs, giving the stool a fun, funky facelift.

Designed by Annabella Hevesi, there is something about the ODU Desk that instantly puts me at ease. It’s just so well-designed! Clean, minimal, and soft, it’s a desk that almost gives me Japandi feels. (Japandi is a growing design trend that merges Japanese and Scandinavian aesthetics.) It’s a warm wooden desk with a protective screen around it that ensures you have your privacy while working! It shuts off the outside world and helps you focus completely on your work. Not to mention, the wooden desk top has been integrated with little storage containers! These containers are perfect for storing your office stationery, souvenirs, and other knick-knacks you may want to place on your desk. An interesting feature is that you can actually remove and separate the containers from the desk. This is perfect for when you want to clean the nooks and crannies of the desk.

The Bandage Sofa is quite self-explanatory in its approach. The sofa uses a bandage in either the same color or a contrasting hue to hold your cushions in place – whether you choose to arrange for comfort or style! When members of the Bogdanova Bureau team started to design this sofa, they first thought about comfort. The first thing you imagine when you think about the couch is a dozen uncomfortable pillows, moving from side to side and making your rest miserable. With Bandage Sofa, your cushions stay just the way you want them to! The clean lines muted yet modern tones, and sleek design makes it a perfect match for every interior setting.