Apple And Design Miami Showcase Emerging Talent At Paris Design Week 2026

Four emerging design practices from around the world are presenting new works at the Hôtel de Maisons during Paris Design Week 2026, exploring how physical objects capture human attention through tactile interaction. The second annual Designers of Tomorrow exhibition opened, running through October 25, 2026, in a showcase organized by Apple and Design Miami while curated by Rodman Primack.

Curating the Theme of Presence in Paris Design Week

The 2026 exhibition centers on the theme “Design for Presence,” examining how furniture and everyday objects can maintain human attention through physical interaction. Per reporting from iPhone in Canada, the participants were selected by a global jury alongside Apple’s Molly Anderson for their material innovation and craft. The showcase highlights how creators integrate consumer technology into traditional fabrication workflows without compromising physical texture.

Salem S. Charabi Builds a Lantern from Egyptian Palms and Stone

Egyptian-Danish architect Salem S. Charabi presented a sculptural fixture titled The Emergence of Light, inspired by humanity’s primal attraction to fire. The base consists of grooved limestone sourced from Egypt’s Galala Mountains, supporting an intricate framework of date palm fronds. According to Apple’s official newsroom announcement, Charabi used a MacBook Pro for digital sketching and 3D modeling to map out connections and geometry down to the millimeter before manual fabrication. The finished structure supports a veil of banana paper created through traditional Japanese papermaking techniques.

# Architectural Modeling Workflow Specification
# Device: MacBook Pro (Apple Silicon Architecture)
# Toolchain: Computer-Aided Design & 3D Parametric Modeling
cad_parameters:
  material_base: "Galala Mountain Limestone"
  material_framework: "Date Palm Fronds (Octagonal 3mm sections)"
  veil_substrate: "Banana Paper (Japanese Papermaking Method)"
  precision_tolerance_mm: 0.1

Isabel Rower Reinterprets 1860 Boudoir Seating with Ceramic Beads

Brooklyn-based designer Isabel Rower contributed Padded Chair 1860, a glossy black piece derived from nineteenth-century boudoir furniture observed at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. As detailed by Designboom, Rower constructed the wooden armature from discarded furniture found on the curb near her Brooklyn studio, building the body with papier-mâché and a pulp composite made from shredded waste paper. The traditional textile fringe is replaced by approximately 1,500 handmade ceramic beads that sway and produce a soft rattling sound when touched. Rower documents her design process using an iPhone, listens to reference audio with AirPods Pro, and maintains a visual archive on her MacBook Pro.

Yoonjeong Lee and Parafernalia Showcase Innovative Functional Furniture

Seoul-based designer Yoonjeong Lee presented New Form, a wooden table and integrated lamp built from approximately 5,000 stacked sheets of thin veneer. Lee utilized worn-down pencil stubs as functional nails to hold paper sheets in place above the table surface, relying on an iPad Pro and Apple Pencil during the initial development phases. Meanwhile, Mexican design studio Parafernalia — founded by Genki Matsumura and Sebastián Zorrilla — exhibited MonoAmbiente 1. The piece functions as an acid-etched stainless steel landscape that unfolds into a table and two stools configured for a game of chess. Matsumura and Zorrilla collaborated remotely between Monterrey and Mexico City using FaceTime, the iPad Pro, and other digital infrastructure.

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