14/06/2026
“To strip things back, lower the volume and still trust the object to hold its own may be the boldest move of all in 2026.”
For the latest issue of Café Trend, Typeo’s creative director Micha van Dinther was asked to take the temperature of design in 2026. The short answer: the chair is having an identity crisis.
Across the industry, design is being asked to do far more than sit well in a room. It has to perform as atmosphere, narrative, lifestyle, hotel lobby, retail concept, members’ club, dinner setting and Instagram backdrop. Sometimes that adds depth. Often, it just adds noise.
His article looks at two very different responses to the same moment: Ramdane Touhami’s Words, Sounds, Colors & Shapes, a Paris and Tokyo retail world built almost like a belief system, and Thomas Haarmann’s Curatio exhibition for Maison&Objet, where limited works are shown with almost no context, branding or instruction.
One builds the world louder. The other removes the world around the object.
Our take? In a year when everyone is trying to make design speak louder, the sharper move may be to strip everything back and trust the object to hold its ground.
Read the full piece in Café Trend.
