Apple's Designers of Tomorrow invite us to slow down at Design Miami Paris

'Good design minds are always, fundamentally, surprising,' says Rodman Primack, who returns as curator for this year's Designers of Tomorrow at Design Miami Paris. 'It’s why we need them: not for the mundane - to find the most efficient choice - but to offer an idea that deviates from the standard.'

Led by tech giant Apple, the showcase brings together four emerging design practices from around the world to create original works around a theme. This year's topic, Design for Presence, seems particularly pertinent in the era of the attention economy.

Apple Designers of Tomorrow 2026 explore presence

That theme takes shape in thoughtful, highly crafted objects that invite us to slow our pace – to bask in the soft glow of a lantern by Egyptian-Danish architect Salem S. Charabi, listen to the ceramic beaded fringe on Brooklyn-based designer Isabel Rower’s chair, marvel at the intricacy of Seoul-based artist Yoonjeong Lee’s table and lamp, or share a moment of connection within Mexican design studio Parafernalia’s expandable seating area.

Primack – a designer, curator, former creative director of Design Miami and co-founder of AGO Projects – sees a common desire to make something meaningful, even as the four studios approach materials, craft and their local contexts in ‘fundamentally different’ ways.

'I do think designers, not just this years cohort of Designers Of Tomorrow, are seeing that our lives need shape and boundaries and that they can help us by creating objects and circumstances that allow for grounding, for communion with ourselves or each other by inviting contemplation, or the sharing of an experience, or actual presence through physical sensation,' he reflects.

The 2026 cohort was handpicked by a jury of figures working across the creative industries – including Alexandra Cunningham Cameron, Fabien Cappello, Jennifer Dunlop Fletcher, Minjae Kim, Hun Chung Lee, Marion Mailaender, Nifemi Marcus-Bello, Jennifer Roberts, and Apple’s Molly Anderson. All four practices used Apple tools and platforms, from iPads to Apple pencils, to develop their pieces.

Wallpaper caught up with each studio to find out how this new generation of designers is thinking about materiality, making and human experience.

Salem S. Charabi, Cairo, Egypt

Charabi's lantern, The Eminence of Light, is made from everyday materials found around his Cairo studio, including a limestone base and a banana paper diffuser. The lantern's delicate skeleton frame is made by stacking date palm fronds using a traditional Japanese method.

Wallpaper*: How did the idea for 'The Eminence of Light' emerge?

Salem S. Charabi: Our first point of gathering was around the fire. I wanted to create this totem of light, to celebrate the moment the days turns to night.

W*: Can you tell us about the making process?

SC: Each strand is an octagon in profile – just 3 millimetres wide, split by hand, and carefully drilled. The ends are then sharpened with a chisel to interlock.

For this project, every component had to be mapped out in detail. I sketched and did all the 3D modelling on my MacBook Pro. It was a complex process getting everything to fit just right — from the carving of the stone and the paper moulds, down to the delicate base.

W*: How will it encourage people to slow down?

SC: I think innately, observing light slows us down. The way its reflected on the moon, the way it may hit the crown of a tree. It makes us wonder.

Isabel Rower, New York, USA

The dramatic proportions of Rower's 'The Padded Chair 1860' draw on 18th- and 19th-century papier-mâché furniture and objets d’art. Its high-gloss finish stands in sharp contrast to its ceramic beaded fringe, chosen for the appealing sound it makes when brushed.

W*: How did 'The Padded Chair 1860' begin?

Isabel Rower: A few years ago I took a photograph of a boudoir chair from the 1860s in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. I found the form highly unconventional and I was drawn to its dramatic fringed skirt. When faced with the prompt of ‘Design for Presence’, I felt that this chair was the perfect object to revisit. Ceramics are not simply a medium but a transmission of thought: a way of communicating ideas and variations through touch, and of constantly reworking the material to generate something new.

I was interested in how swapping the textile fringe of the historic object for a skirt of over 1,500 ceramic beads would not only bring it into a contemporary present, but would bring the person sitting into a state of presence.

W*: How do you imagine the piece will encourage people to slow down?

IR: I investigate emulation and the stories of surfaces, drawing from 18th and 19th century papier-mâché furniture and objets d’art. The chair will offer a passage from the surface to interior histories. The sound of the ceramic beaded fringe when brushed against brings awareness to its materiality. It also works to bring the body that is brushing against it into a space of curiosity and presence. It moves sitting from being a passive activity to an activating one.

Yoonjeong Lee, Seoul, South Korea

The base of Lee's 'New Form' – a wooden table with an integrated lamp – is made from roughly 5,000 thin sheets of stacked veneer. Sheets of paper serve as a lampshade held in place by a trio of worn-down pencils that have been given new life as hardware.

W*: How did 'New Form' take shape?

Yoonjeong Lee: I’ve been making nails for a long time. The reason is simple: I wanted to turn something called a 'fitting', a mere part, into something more meaningful and independent. My work is about looking closely at objects that need to be seen differently.

One day, I was looking at a pencil that was almost used up, and I noticed its shape looked like a nail. A pencil doesn’t disappear as it wears down. It stays on in a new form: as a letter, as knowledge, as music. For me, it stayed on as a nail.

I made a nail from the worn-down pencil and used it as hardware. That small piece of hardware became the starting point, and the work took shape step by step from there.


W*: How does the theme, 'Design for Presence', show up in the work?

YL: I approached the future differently. Usually, we set a goal first, picture what the result will look like, and plan the process around it. I stepped back from that and focused on what I was doing right now. I finished the smallest unit in front of me first, and decided the next step based on the result. What we build by focusing on the present adds up to the future. Tomorrow is built on what I did today.

I spend more time looking at what’s around me, and I think that improves my focus on the moment and the quality of my work. This piece was made that way too. It started from one pencil nail. I chose materials that suited it, and used them to decide what the piece would do. I made the wood for the pencil nail from scratch as well.

Instead of carving a log, I stacked thin veneer, one layer at a time. These choices built up one by one, and the piece came together. The finished piece shows the theme, but I think it also matters that I practiced this year’s theme myself, through the process.

W*: How do you imagine people interacting with your piece?

YL: Grand, heavy, epic narratives are certainly important in their own way. But I like a modest ripple. Something moderate, small, slight, yet with an unexpected impact. That’s why I work with familiar objects and prefer physically small ones.

My pencil and nail works are small, so people sometimes walk past them in the exhibition space without noticing. That’s not a problem. If I can share a moment with the person who does find them, that is enough. I think a work made with a focus on something small has a certain pull. At first the overall form catches the eye, but gradually it draws people closer to the small details.

As people look at the pencil nails, each material, and the many layers of the wood, what makes up the whole slowly begins to come into view. When people realise that the pencil nail was originally a pencil, I hope some of them will remember the pencils they used. 


A pencil carries memories that many people share, but within that, everyone has their own personal ones. I can’t predict which memory it will be. But following that memory, even briefly, can be a way of staying in the moment, or with the time that has passed.

Parafernalia, Monterrey and Mexico City, Mexico

Parafernalia founders Genki Matsumura and Sebastián Zorrilla conceived 'MonoAmbiente 1' as an intimate setting, where two people can converse, play chess, or share a drink. When not in use, the expandable seating area – consisting of a table and two stools and featuring acid-etched stainless steel surfaces – can be neatly folded away.

W*: Where did the idea for 'MonoAmbiente 1' come from?

Parafernalia: We interpreted 'Design for Presence' as an invitation to look at the different ways presence can occur: in solitude, in our relationship to our surroundings, and in moments shared with others. This led us to explore an object that could move between these states, from a landscape that invites observation when closed, to a space for conversation and shared activity when deployed.

Conversation is rarely an isolated activity. We talk while we play, eat, drink, walk, or cook. In this piece, the accompanying activities create the conditions for dialogue rather than defining it. The deployment of the piece marks a shift from solitary observation to shared occupation, from looking to participating.

W*: How did the theme ‘Design for Presence’ shape your choice of materials?

Parafernalia: The material selection was mainly based on what we’re personally interested in at the moment, and the decision was cemented once we determined that etched stainless steel could embody different intentions and qualities, from the decorative to the functional, and that these characteristics would be present in the piece. The high contrast graphic nature of the process invites onlookers to observe with a bit more attention, a bit more closely.

W*: How do you imagine people will interact with your piece?

Parafernalia: For starters, we imagine the piece will be difficult to digest at first – there's a lot going on. The piece is deployable, it is a foldout table and 2 stools that nest underneath, completing the landscape etched in the steel. This produces curiosity and invites close inspection. It makes taking your time and slowing down a necessity in order to fully understand the what’s going on.

We hope it will be fully interacted with, and explored with curiosity. A lot of thought was put into the different details in different parts of the piece and we expect the discovery of each one to be an activity in itself.

Design Miami and Apple Designers of Tomorrow is on view at Design Miami Paris, 21-25 October 2026

Hôtel de Maisons, 51, rue de l’Université, 75007 Paris, France