#furniture-design

#furniture-design

As any lover of physical media knows: without organization, your beloved magazine collection quickly begins to look more like accumulated trash than treasure. The best magazine racks, our editors have discovered, corral and curate their many, many copies of Architectural Digest (obviously), furthering their ever-fitful attempts to force their living rooms into shape. While a bookshelf does the similar work of getting things off the floor and into their dignified place, many simply aren't deep enough or tall enough to properly house your oeuvre.

Negative space is a formidable tool in design, underlining the philosophical power of absence. Many of our most powerful designs are celebrated for what they have, and also what they do not. Increasingly, a "more is more" approach is tied with maximalist design, with little attention paid to the nuances of creation. This does not necessarily have to be the case - we can ask of more from our interiors without sacrificing refinement and style.

If you've ever been handed something made by a child a lopsided drawing, a collage of construction paper and glue you know how precious it is. What might look imperfect is, to them, a record of focus, joyful creativity, and sheer imagination, untouched by rules or expectations. Designed by Sergei Lvov of Levantin Studio and produced by Uneven Objects, Tottolo carries that same spirit: a table shaped not by logic, but by intuition, play, and the freedom to create without constraint.

Coffee tables quietly witness mornings, late-night emails, and weekend calls with people in other cities. Time passes on screens and clocks on walls, but the table itself usually pretends it has nothing to do with any of it. It just holds mugs and magazines while the hours slip by unnoticed. There's something interesting about furniture that builds time into its structure instead of ignoring it completely.

Enter The Bugle by Design by Joffey, a coat and umbrella stand that rethinks the entire concept by borrowing its form from an unlikely source: a brass musical instrument. This isn't just clever design for the sake of being clever. It's a genuinely smart solution to a problem that plagues anyone living in tight quarters. Designer: Design by Joffey The beauty of this piece is in its vertical footprint.

Workout gear is almost always clunky and unsightly; gray equipment haphazardly crammed into a basement room that only just checks the box when it comes to an apartment building's list of promoted amenities. Mirrored walls jarringly cut across cheesy cityscape or jungle scene murals and rubber mat flooring. Bad EDM music pulsates at full volume. With function superseding form, aesthetics always seem to be an afterthought.

The concept is brilliantly simple yet visually striking. The chair features layers upon layers of cushioned upholstery stacked together, creating this incredible rainbow effect along the edges. Each layer represents a different color or texture, much like flipping through pages in a designer's sample book. It's the kind of thing that makes you do a double take. From one angle, you see a sophisticated seating piece with a clean, minimalist frame. From another, you catch those vibrant cascading layers that give it personality and depth.

From a single material, a Hyderabad-based design studio creates a wide range of site-specific installations, furnishings, and decor. It's all in the name of the firm, The Wicker Story, which was founded in 2019 by architect Priyanka Narula. Capable of being formed into everything from abstract constructions to functional objects, the natural material lends itself a huge variety of pieces that vary in size and complexity.

Brutalism once suggested stark, monumental forms, with raw concrete presented in uncompromising honesty. Today, that legacy is evolving into a softer interior design language: Soft Brutalism. Rather than a contradiction, it becomes a thoughtful fusion where concrete is shaped into gentler, more human-centered forms. This shift responds to a culture saturated with disposable design and offers a return to authenticity, weight, and permanence.

Belgian furniture designer Marina Bautier is known for her succinctness. Her pieces, all made of waxed oak, have no flourishes: they are a pure distillation of pleasing form and function. But in her own compound, she is voluble on how her work can be put to use: her studio, in a Brussels residential area aptly named Forest, is right next to her shop and cafe.

It's not surprising that there's little separation between work and life for the artisan, who finds inspiration everywhere, and revels in exploration. "A lot of times my work peeps into my personal life, and I kind of just have to let it be," says Maya. "It's happened that I am in bed about to rest, and in between moments of lucidity, all of a sudden I have a design solution that I have been trying to figure out."

There's something quietly rebellious about seeing delicate leather straps wrapped around cold, hard steel. It's unexpected, a bit contradictory, and exactly what makes Nara Lee's Pul collection so captivating. The Paris-based architect just unveiled this sculptural furniture series at The Sun Room exhibition in Seoul, and it's turning heads for all the right reasons. What strikes you first about these pieces isn't just their minimalist beauty, but the story they tell about urban nature.

ECHO by KOD.objects reinterprets the material culture and architecture of 11th-17th century as a sculptural furniture collection. Each object is crafted from and pulp, finished with a protective coating that adds durability and a tactile surface. The project draws from ancient household objects, carved wooden forms, early stone structures, and the structural silhouettes characteristic of old Russian craftsmanship. These historical sources are translated into contemporary sculptural furniture.

Arrakis 3.0 is the latest iteration of Mark Rehorst's sand table experiments, this time designed from the start as a practical coffee table. Under a standard 24-by-48-inch glass top, a steel ball slowly traces patterns in a bed of white sand, guided by a hidden mechanism. From above, all you see is a glowing sandbox under glass, constantly redrawing itself while your coffee sits on top.

Laptops have escaped the desk and now show up on sofas, lounge chairs, and every in-between space, often with terrible posture as a side effect. Balancing a laptop on your knees or hunching over a coffee table is fine for checking email but not for real work. The Cosi laptop table is a small, adjustable surface designed to follow those habits and make them more ergonomic.

From tabletop objects to more grand home furnishings, the things that fill our home have a cumulative effect on how we feel as well as the perception of our personal space. With intention at their core, the Ahmedabad-based, interdisciplinary design studio Design ni Dukkan blends human intuition with distinct materiality and finish to create such pieces with the power of presence.

Bookmarker addresses this by treating reading as an activity worth designing for specifically. The table's form creates a clear place for books in progress, making them visible rather than buried. Japanese cypress construction gives it a warm, tactile presence that reads as furniture first, while its cutouts and slots serve the practical needs of someone settling in with a novel and a drink.

There's something deeply satisfying about furniture that refuses to play by the rules. You know the kind I'm talking about: pieces that make you stop mid-scroll and think, "Wait, is that even real?" The Arnardo Desk by Paddy Pike Studio is exactly that kind of design unicorn, and honestly, I'm not sure whether to sit at it or frame it on a museum wall.

Restraint is not part of Diaz's visual vocabulary. His Hutton mirror features 22k gold-leaf spikes, the Sabaudia daybed has wings reminiscent of vintage car fins, and the Jujuy Trastero cabinet features horns. These whimsical improvisations also have a deliberate formality resulting in pieces that Diaz imagines should have existed historically. Designer Ryan Lawson, another admirer, says, "When you see Mike's work it has a sense that it has always been there, like you've stumbled upon some kind of historic relic."

In southern Mexico City, within a double-height house designed by OW Arquitectos, two pieces by Omar Wade, Banca Tres (Bench Three) and Silla Cuatro (Chair Four), investigate the relationship between space, materiality, and light. The , characterized by skylights and large windows, provides the setting for this dialogue, framing the interaction of furniture and architecture. Together, the two wooden pieces present an exploration of scale and construction.

The Fader Chair is instantly relatable to anyone who's ever looked at a producer's deck at a music studio or a live event. The three-seater features multiple channels with the iconic fader slider that works as the seat. You lean back on the hardware itself, which models itself almost exactly on a multi-track fader, with three channels, mute and solo buttons for activating/silencing them, and a few other buttons along with a master volume knob.

These stools from designer Dom Johnson are made simply yet thoughtfully, construction minimal yet meticulously considered. A relatively humble material, MDF, rendered in a satisfying thickness adds weight to the trio, each in varying heights and leg designs. Existing beautifully as separate pieces or together, each is finished with an unobtrusive oil that elevates and protects.

The Fray Chair is a vibrant new concept that celebrates the intersection of playful design and bold color experimentation. Designed by Liam de la Bedoyere for the Pantone Dualities Rendering Challenge 2025, this chair is not yet in production but is already capturing attention for its fresh approach to both structure and style. The challenge invited designers to reimagine products using at least three shades from Pantone's Dualities material pack. The result is a striking series of visualizations that highlight just how transformative color

Is there a piece of furniture more important to your aesthetic than one of the best sofas? We know that having (or not having) a top-tier couch can make or break your home's decor, and to help ensure you never, ever end up with a sad sofa selection-or worse, a futon-we've curated a list of best-selling silhouettes to support your search for pieces with major star quality.

The Barvinok table features a mesmerizing color gradient achieved through a unique heat treatment process that resembles the bright blues of real periwinkle blossoms.

Michael Jantzen's Interactive Transformation Table transforms traditional furniture norms by allowing users to engage and reshape its form, turning motion into an artistic experience.

Sello boldly merges the functions of a chair and a stool into a single, typologically innovative piece, redefining the act of sitting to meet contemporary design needs.

Mark Braun's NEXT unit for Mueller is designed for small apartments, providing multifunctional furniture that adapts to changing needs while occupying minimal space, thanks to its mobility.

The installation features Japanese furniture brand Ariake and Spanish lighting manufacturer Parachilna, demonstrating how objects transcend their utilitarian origins to shape experiences.