SELECTED DESIGNERS
Six designers selected by Mono Orbit for their approach to material, form and contemporary design.
SEPTEMBER - OCTOBER 2026
01. MAX LAMB
Material Comes First
Max Lamb’s objects often begin before the conventional idea of design begins - with stone, wood, plaster, metal or sand. The material is not simply selected to execute a finished drawing. Its properties become part of the process that determines the object. This makes the work unusually direct. A table can still reveal the dimensions of the tree it came from. A ceramic object can retain the marks of carving. An engineered stone can become both architectural surface and furniture.
Less decoration. More evidence. The object does not hide how it arrived.
MONO ORBIT / DESIGN / MATERIAL
02. MICHAEL ANASTASSIADES
Light as Architecture
A line. A sphere. A vertical. A horizontal. Michael Anastassiades reduces lighting to a surprisingly small vocabulary. But reduction does not make the work disappear. It makes the relationship between object and space more visible. A light can measure a room. A repeated line can establish rhythm. A suspended sphere can introduce tension into an otherwise empty volume. The object is minimal. Its effect is architectural.
Perhaps this is why the work rarely feels like decoration. Light becomes another structural element of the room.
MONO ORBIT / DESIGN / LIGHT
03. FAYE TOOGOOD
Somewhere Between Object and Sculpture
A chair does not have to look light. It does not have to disappear into a room. Faye Toogood’s furniture often does the opposite. Forms are thick, physical and sometimes deliberately awkward. Material appears to carry weight. The boundary between useful object and sculpture becomes difficult to locate. Yet function remains. That tension is what makes the work interesting: something can be primitive and contemporary, soft and brutal, useful and sculptural at the same time.
The object occupies space rather than merely furnishing it.
MONO ORBIT / DESIGN / OBJECT
04. JASPER MORRISON
Design Without Performance
Some objects demand attention. Others simply work. Jasper Morrison has spent much of his career exploring the second possibility. His work avoids the visual performance often associated with contemporary design. Familiar forms are refined rather than reinvented for effect. A chair remains a chair. But proportion, material, construction and use are considered until very little remains that feels unnecessary.
It is a quiet kind of design - one that becomes more convincing the less it tries to convince you.
MONO ORBIT / DESIGN / OBJECT
05. FORMAFANTASMA
Design Beyond the Object
Design does not begin with an object and it does not end when the object leaves the factory. Materials have origins. Production consumes resources. Systems connect landscapes, industries, labour and technology. Formafantasma expands design into this larger territory. Their work frequently treats research as part of design itself. The question is no longer simply what an object should look like, but where its material comes from, how it is transformed and what happens afterwards.
The result is design understood less as styling and more as investigation.
MONO ORBIT / DESIGN / RESEARCH
06. SABINE MARCELIS
Material as Experience
Sabine Marcelis works with light, colour and material as active elements of design. Resin, glass, stone and metal are not simply surfaces applied to an object. Their transparency, reflection and physical properties often determine its form. The result can appear remarkably simple, while the material itself carries much of the experience.
Less object. More perception.
MONO ORBIT / DESIGN / MATERIAL