Design highlights

In Disegno #39, Ama Benewaa Tawia dreams up alternative uses for abandoned spaces with Ghana’s Limbo Museum.

Communally designed, the Office Series objects by students from ECAL examines alternative, ego-less ways of working.

Industrial designer John Tree joins The Crit to talk production, the challenges of mobile phones, and the need to not obsess over your business card.

Prosthetic movement and wartime testimony form the core of A New Integrity, artist Nikita Kadan’s reflection on the costs of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Disegno is looking for contributions to our 42nd issue, released during London Design Week in September 2026, which will be themed around ideas of “Transformation” in design.

Vitra’s new lounge chair Bascule, designed by Studio Œ, presents a different type of comfort than typical lounge chairs, with slouchy upholstery that accommodates movement and acts more like a jacket than a cushion.

Special Projects’ speculative concept, Aperture, supports digital detox by allowing users to flip their phone case around to reduce their iPhone screens to a small window.

Marte Mei van Haaster’s new collection, displayed at St Vincent’s gallery, presents a method of designing furniture out of plants used to remove toxic chemicals from the land.

Joseph Yang’s bricolage timber furniture, displayed at Seoul’s INSA Gallery, play with the construction logic of a traditional nong cabinet.

A new film shot at El Salón, Disegno’s installation for Clerkenwell Design Week in conjunction with Interiors from Spain, reveals the design process of its creator, Tomás Alonso.

London-based designer Tessa Silva joins the Crit to discuss understanding the possibilities and limitations of new materials.

What role can modularity play in combatting the fetishisation of newness within interior architecture? A new podcast, featuring String’s Bo Hellberg, Ab Rogers, Tola Ojuolape and Lisl du Toit from Universal Design Studio tackles the issue.

Yoshino Takayama’s kinetic machines, exhibited at Designtide Tokyo, reframe technological control through the vagaries of natural forces.

In Disegno #39, Marianna Janowicz investigates the link between comfort and survival in design for childbirth.

In Disegno #39, Studiomama create iron castings that advantage of the brain’s tendency to ascribe human-like qualities to the world around us.

Continuity, Edward Robinson’s exhibition with Jousse entreprise, explores an industrial designer’s approach towards furniture design.

Disegno is proud to announce El Salón, a Clerkenwell Design Week installation for Interiors from Spain, designed by Tomás Alonso.

In Disegno #39, Tiiu Meiner plays Multiform, a non-hierarchical sport designed by Gabriel Fontana that encourages collaboration.

Pigment Collective’s new imprint, Argent Comics, is bringing luxury bookmaking techniques to the world of comics.

Tetsuo Mukai, cofounder of London-based studio Study O Portable, joins The Crit to talk about making objects that interrogate our relationship with design.

Isac Lindberg designs an architectural dessert bowl for Palace, a storied restaurant in central Helsinki.

In Disegno #38, Fowota Mortoo and Alfred Quartey visit ANO’s new educational space in Ghana, which is inspired by indigenous knowledge systems that combine art, education and ecology.

Simone Brewster, a London-based designer, artist and educator, joins The Crit to talk about finding the wider purpose behind her design work.

In Disegno #39, Studio Brynjar & Veronika made pâte de verre windows using a glass technique that has been celebrated for its capacity to mimic natural stones.

Duncan Riches discusses Unit.d, a new gallery for affordable industrial design, whose debut show includes works by Michael Marriott and Jasper Morrison.

In Disegno #39, Rachel Lee and Sarita Sundar trace a shapeshifting chair from its colonial origins to modern deconstructions.

Phil Garnham, executive creative director at Monotype Studio, joins The Crit to talk about the changing landscape of type design.

Designer and researcher Vera van der Burg trained an AI model to generate ceramic forms that she later hand-built in clay, challenging anthropomorphic ideas about the technology by treating it like a material.

Johanna Gibbons, landscape architect and current keeper of the Faculty of Royal Designers, joins the Crit to discuss the entanglements between communities and ecology.

James Melia of Blond visits the studio for a discussion about reductionism in design, the challenges of designing refillable packaging, and his dream of designing a catheter.