Emiliana Design Studio creates the Naoshima stool

Spanish company Emiliana Design Studio recently launched itself as a maker of its own designs at the Stockholm Furniture Fair with its new Naoshima stool.

As Ana Mir and Emili Padrós, the studio’s co-founders, say, when they first began to work together, it didn’t occur to them that one day they’d produce their own designs. (Previously, they’ve always designed for companies and clients.) But now they’ve done precisely this by creating Naoshima, which is made of plywood with an oak finish. The design involved technical challanges yet has a handcrafted look. Its name derives from a trip its designers made to the enchanting, eponymous Japanese island, which greatly inspired them. The stool is constructed from four identical plywood legs, which make it very strong and stable. The interplay between the solid stool and empty spaces under its seat creates a dynamic yet visually unimposing effect that makes the design perfectly suited to both contract and domestic projects. Naoshima is certified as having met or exceeded European and US resistance tests for frequent, everyday use.

Emiliana Design Studio was founded by Mir and Padrós in Barcelona in 1996. Since then, it has designed furniture and products for such companies as Escofet, Vibia, Kettal, Nani Marquina… The studio offers clients a fresh approach with each new project, thanks to its constant experimentation with materials, interest in interactive design, not to mention its concern for a design’s functional, technical and commercial aspects. Its pieces have been included in international touring exhibitions in cities such as New York, Milan, Lille, Louisiana, Tokyo and Paris, while some are found in the collections of the Fonds National d’Art Contemporain in Paris, the Indianapolis Museum of Art in the US and El Museu del Disseny in Barcelona.