Year: 2023
Project: Aerde - Berlin
Client: Aerde / Justus Will
Theme: Interior and furniture design
Just under 40 m² to fit twenty seats, real storage, and a room that still felt considered.
The answer was three ways to eat in the same small space: a communal chef’s table at the centre, small tables paired with benches that quietly double as storage, and a bar counter for a more relaxed visit. Over the chef’s table, a single oversized lamp with three rice-paper shades fills the middle of the room and gives it its centre of gravity — soft, diffuse, deliberately the only loud gesture in the space.
Every piece in the room was designed from scratch — the chairs, the stools, the tables, the benches, and the central lamp. The vocabulary draws heavily on Japanese references: simple lines, honest materials, and a restraint that comes from thinking about how each piece is built. Joinery and proportions were worked out with manufacturing in mind, so nothing in the room is more complicated than it needs to be.
The thinking: treat the constraint as the brief. A small room doesn’t need to apologise for itself — it needs one generous moment, and furniture that earns its keep.
Press: MICHELIN Guide · Creme Guides · Berliner Zeitung