TOEI at Madrid Design Festival 2023, ft. Álvaro Catlán.

Slow furniture for Fast Change

In today’s high-speed urban environments, where life is driven by constant movement and productivity, design can offer something essential: a pause, a moment of serenity, and a reconnection with nature.

This project embraces the principles of the Slow Movement, focusing on responsible life cycles, emotional connection, and a slower, more intentional way of living. Inspired by organic forms—specifically the Chinese lantern fruit—the design explores how nature can inform modular structures that promote harmony and balance.

Selected by AHEC and showcased at the Madrid Design Festival 2023, the piece features an enveloping form with four seats and four access points, creating a space that invites rest, reflection, and renewal in the heart of the city.

  • The main focus was to achieve workers in the fast cities to have an enveloping space at the office, to reload energies, disconnect to reconnect,

  • Materials, forms, textures, always.

    The importance of wood as a path that connects us to our roots in nature.

    The forms that envelope what is inside like fruits, or flowers, a peel that protects us, but at the same time lets us see the outside.

  • The selected concept was redesigned in oder to choose whatever distribution is wanted, two, five, eight and wheelchair…