‘The world doesn’t necessarily need any more chairs’ and other design quotes to take into 2025

As always, the Wallpaper* team has been busy tracking the pulse on the design radar throughout the past year – through product and space launches, collaborations, exhibitions and fairs around the world. We’ve had the pleasure of speaking with designers and curators, from the esteemed to the emerging, giving their insight into the current design landscape. Here are just six of our favourite design quotes – and a chance to revisit the interviews they came from – to inspire us into 2025.

Six design quotes to take you into the new year

Faye Toogood

During Salone del Mobile 2024, Poltrona Frau unveiled 'Squash', a collaboration with Faye Toogood, as part of the Italian furniture company's 'Imagine' collection. Expression is a distinctive trait of Toogood’s. Her work is sculptural with soft edges, inspired by three-dimensional artworks and informed by nature, with a nod to ancient artefacts and folk. In this case, an exploration of the Poltrona Frau archives, paired with Toogood’s own universe, resulted in what she describes as ‘English Folk with Italian Horsepower’. She spoke with Wallpaper* about working with the Poltrona Frau and injecting a playful sense of naivety and folksy elements into the collection.

READ ‘English Folk with Italian Horsepower’: Faye Toogood and Poltrona Frau unveil their collaboration

Michael Bennett

NFL player-turned-designer Michael Bennett, the founder of Studio Kër, spoke with us in 2024 about the studio's debut furniture exhibition, ‘We Gotta Get Back to the Crib’, presented in Chicago by LA gallery Marta and Theaster Gates’ Rebuild Foundation. Bennett had worked on the collection with industrial designer Imhotep Blot, who died before the project was presented. The pair drew from their shared upbringings in the coastal American south, and their African and Haitian roots, to create a collection of sculptural furniture with poignant references to Black history and African diasporic design.

Together they questioned the euro-centric nature of design, and dived deep into what African design is and what the future of design is for Black people. ‘The main thing that we always talked about,’ said Bennett of his partnership with Blot, ‘was how do we create something that outlives our physical beings and becomes a part of the universe.’

READ: Discover Super Bowl star-turned-designer Michael Bennett’s furniture

Luca Guadagnino and Nicolò Rosmarini

In September 2024 the 3rd edition of Homo Faber took over the Fondazione Giorgio Cini on San Maggiore. Across 11 spaces, visitors were introduced to ‘The Journey of Life’, where more than 800 crafted objects by around 400 individuals or studios from 75 countries were displayed. Beyond curation, creative direction was always going to be a vital part of bringing the experience to life in a coherent and compelling way. Hats off to the Michelangelo Foundation for selecting film director Luca Guadagnino and architect Nicolò Rosmarini to oversee proceedings. Wallpaper* sat down with the two men to hear more.

READ: ‘You should not take yourself too seriously or you risk becoming boring’: Luca Guadagnino and Nicolò Rosmarini on Homo Faber 2024

Omer Arbel

After almost two decades’ developing dazzling sculptural lighting and buildings, Omer Arbel discussed the ‘constructed discomfort’ that allows his studio to innovate. When he started his design company Bocci almost 20 years ago, his experimental approach to manipulating glass and other materials into novel forms, and then turning these into commercial products like lighting, catapulted the Canadian architect and designer to fast success. Ever since, Arbel and his team have never stopped experimenting, constantly finding new processes and materials, and applications for them at scales from table lamps to private residences – each a numbered entity in a growing archive.

Ahead of Bocci’s anniversary milestone, Wallpaper* spoke to Arbel about how his practice has – or hasn’t – changed during this time; being a ‘matchmaker’ between the company and external opportunities; and a surprising use for the doomed cedar trees in the Pacific Northwest.

READ: Omer Arbel reflects on 20 years of ‘making materials uncomfortable’ to generate novel forms

Miranda Keyes

For Wallpaper’s 2025 Next Generation issue, we scoured the globe to compile a hotlist of emerging designers to know now, spotlighting ten newcomers who are shaping the present and forging the future. The designers – from Adelaide, Tokyo, London, Lagos, Guatemala City, Mexico City, Loch Lomond, New York and Paris – are all stars ascending and their various viewpoints were refreshing, intriguing and inspiring. Among them, London-based Miranda Keyes, who specialises in glass, shared an infectious enthusiasm for her craft. ‘I feel lucky I’m able to make a living out of what I do. There are no pinnacles; the highlight is the thing itself. It’s a miracle being able to live off what you love.’

READ: ‘I began experimenting and haven’t really stopped,’ Miranda Keyes on working with glass

And meet all ten 2025 stars ascending

Ini Archibong

Designer Ini Archibong was invited by music legends Dr Dre and Snoop Dogg to design the packaging for their canned Gin & Juice drink, unveiled in August 2024. Archibong – with a back catalogue including furniture, lighting, and glass, as well as architectural spaces such as the Pavilion of the African Diaspora at London Design Biennale in 2021 – duly leapt into the world of 2D design. Archibong spoke with us about working with the musicians – ‘With Dre there’s a lot of technical intuitiveness, whereas Snoop is the spirit and energy of the brand. Snoop is Snoop’ – and his greatest takeaway from the project.

READ: Ini Archibong explores 2D design with Dr Dre and Snoop Dogg for new canned gin drink