The intersection of architecture and industrial design often finds its most tactile expression in furniture — the scale where structural logic meets the body. At this year's Milan Design Week, Dutch brand Bert Plantagie and architecture firm Mecanoo presented "Macaron," a modular sofa system that takes its formal cues from the layered geometry of the classic French pastry. While the name suggests a certain whimsy, the design is a disciplined study in functional adaptability, using a stacked construction principle to create a versatile seating landscape. The collection debuted in the Dezeen Showroom, a platform that has become a reliable channel for design brands seeking visibility beyond the noise of the Salone.
The system is built around chunky, curved modules that can be deployed as standalone pieces or joined to form expansive configurations. Structural foundations in walnut or oak support layers upholstered in bio-based textiles — a material choice that signals alignment with the broader industry shift toward sustainable sourcing. The flexibility to recombine components sits at the center of the collection's identity, positioning it for both residential interiors and the contract market, where spatial requirements change with greater frequency.
Architecture Firms and the Furniture Brief
Mecanoo's involvement is worth noting not for its novelty but for what it represents as a pattern. Architecture studios have long moved between scales — from urban masterplans to tableware — but the frequency with which established firms now collaborate on furniture collections has accelerated in recent years. Practices such as OMA, BIG, and Zaha Hadid Architects have all developed product lines or partnerships with furniture manufacturers, treating the discipline as both a laboratory for material research and a revenue diversifier. For a firm like Mecanoo, best known for large-scale cultural and civic buildings, a sofa system offers a different kind of design problem: one where ergonomics, logistics, and domestic context replace structural engineering and municipal planning. The translation is not always seamless, but when it works, it tends to produce furniture with a stronger spatial awareness than what emerges from purely product-driven studios.
The Macaron system reflects this architectural sensibility in its modularity. Rather than designing a sofa as a finished object, the team approached it as a kit of parts — a logic more familiar to building systems than to upholstered seating. The stacked, layered composition allows users to adjust height, depth, and configuration, treating the living room floor as a kind of plan that can be redrawn.
Bio-Based Materials and the Circularity Question
The use of bio-based textiles places the Macaron collection within a conversation that has become central to furniture design discourse: the tension between sustainability claims and verifiable circularity. "Bio-based" is a broad descriptor. It can refer to materials derived from plant starches, agricultural waste, or other renewable biological sources, but the term alone does not guarantee compostability, recyclability, or a lower lifecycle carbon footprint. What matters is whether the modular architecture of the product — the separability of frame, upholstery, and filling — actually enables repair, replacement, and end-of-life recovery. The Macaron system's mix-and-match premise at least creates the structural preconditions for that kind of circularity, even if the full material story remains to be scrutinized.
This is where the macaron metaphor proves more than decorative. A macaron is, by construction, a laminate: distinct layers with distinct roles, bonded but not fused. Applied to furniture, that principle suggests components designed to be disassembled rather than glued into obsolescence. Whether the collection delivers on that promise in practice — through standardized connectors, replaceable covers, and available spare parts over time — will determine whether it represents genuine circular thinking or simply borrows its vocabulary.
The broader context is a furniture market under pressure from two directions: consumers who increasingly expect environmental accountability, and commercial clients who need interiors that adapt without full replacement cycles. A modular, bio-based system that can serve both audiences occupies a strategically coherent position. The question is execution — whether the modularity holds up under the entropy of real use, and whether the supply chain behind the bio-based materials can scale without the compromises that often accompany green branding at volume.
With reporting from Dezeen.
Source · Dezeen
