Barred: Hanneke Lourens Transforms Security Bars Into Furniture

"Northern California-based designer Hanneke Lourens has never shied away from embedding cultural narratives in her work - like her Leftover Bench, inspired by South Africa's culture of fostering community through milk crates and stacked cinder blocks. With her new Barred Collection, she turns another unlikely source of inspiration - the stainless steel security bars bolted to windows and doors across her homeland - into sculptural furniture."

""In pretty much every type of neighborhood across the country, you'll see these striking bars added as security measures to windows and doors." While the presence of the bars signals an elevated crime rate, Lourens looks at them objectively. "They can almost be seen as the jewelry of a building. Sometimes curvy and ornate, other times linear and stark, they provide an extra layer of decoration to every facade.""

"From every angle, the Barred Collection is defined by bold contrasts. Each piece feels Brutalist in character, with thick column legs that ground the forms and reveal their timber end grain at the top. The legs are joined with traditional woodworking techniques and reinforced by stainless steel bars, whose cool sheen provides a sharp counterpoint to the warmth of the wood. Echoing the rudimentary security bars Lourens saw on her trip, the steel elements are attached with simple"

Hanneke Lourens draws on South African cultural details to create the Barred Collection, a four-piece series of handcrafted furniture made in California. The series repurposes stainless steel security bars commonly seen on South African windows and doors into sculptural elements that reinforce wooden forms. Thick timber column legs showcase end grain and are joined with traditional woodworking techniques, while steel bars are bolted in place to provide structural reinforcement and visual contrast. The aesthetic reads as Brutalist, balancing warm wood with cool metal sheen. The collection reframes utilitarian security measures as decorative, opening dialogue about vulnerability, identity, and resilience.

Read at Design Milk