Dwell 24: Presenting This Year’s Most Intriguing Emerging Designers

As design editors, we spend all year looking at thoughtfully crafted things. We travel from design fair to trade show, trying to sniff out the best of what’s coming out of Copenhagen, Milan, Beirut, New York, or anywhere else. There’s always a lot to see: tables, chairs, cups, bowls, vases—even bike locks, coat-trees, and the like. But by the grace of note-taking and beefy camera rolls, we manage to organize our discoveries into the Dwell 24, our annual list that represents the liveliest, most forward-looking work from emerging designers around the world. In these pages, you’ll find ceramic tableware from Mexico City, wooden furniture from Côte d’Ivoire, children’s toys from Lebanon, and much more.

Twenty-four slots offer enough space to squeeze in many of our favorites, but it feels like a Herculean effort to limit the list to so few. The editorial team spends hours in meetings deciding who is best suited for the list, who’s at the right moment in their career for it, and whose work is compelling enough to tell an equally compelling story about it. We ask our contributors to nominate people as well. (Special thanks to writer/curator Adrian Madlener for help scouting.)

Once we had this year’s list assembled, a few themes emerged. As we worked our way through nominees, I found myself called toward designers whose work feels playful, whether in approach, output, or both, as is often the case. Playful is often a dirty word for designers, carrying a condescending connotation, as if playful designers take their work less seriously or work less hard than their more austere counterparts. But I like these designers because of how thoughtful they must be in order to bring joy to those who use or observe their works. Playful encounters can provide relief from a world that’s increasingly filled with objects and furnishings that are as "designed" (read: personalityless) as possible.

Take Australian designer Alfred Lowe. You’d never guess by looking at his colorful pieces that the most exuberant element of them was a problem-solving tool. Lowe’s sculptures’ broad raffia skirts aren’t mere ornament—they disguise the seams that separate the two halves of his heavy pieces. Similarly, New York duo Outgoing’s impish Phase light looks like it was created just to be different from other lights (the piece can be propped up on four legs to operate as a table lamp or hung from its cord as a ceiling fixture), but it was born from the formal constraint of needing to be packed in luggage to deliver to a friend overseas. These designers’ work conveys that hiccups or limitations needn’t change the spirit of one’s practice.

Play isn’t the only thing on display in this year’s Dwell 24 list, though. Several of the designers embrace traditional motifs and practices. They riff on both broad and local design histories to deliver pieces that offer a 2026 lens on forms that have been around for decades if not centuries. Consider Lisbon design duo Macheia, led by Lucrezia Papillo and Iany Gayo, whose work I discovered when in town to cover the Portuguese city’s Design Week. They worked with Manuel Ferreira—a bulrush weaver practicing one of Portugal’s distinct craft techniques that is at risk of dying off—to create a chair that pairs natural material with a galvanized iron frame. In Beirut, designer Hamza Mekdad of Hammerspace reinterpreted the Corinthian column’s capital in a series of vases crafted from fabric, bamboo, and other materials, removing the detail from its place of importance in architecture and allowing it to take on new meanings.

Meanwhile, designers like Eduardo Orúe Barceló and Studio Ololoo play with texture and shape, balancing hard and soft edges to mesmerizing effect. Designer Yuxuan Huang is one of a few who makes paper lamps that reflect the flora and fauna of our world, with inspirations including flowers and goldfish. With his steel lamps that incorporate cheekily placed cherries and other details, Bechara Maalouf is among those whose work benefits from flourishes.

Each year when our honorees are selected for the list, in addition to being interviewed for a story, they’re asked to fill out a survey, which we publish online. One question asks, "What do you wish nondesigners understood about the design industry?" Seoul designer Yoonjeong Lee, who designs nails and other oft overlooked details, replied, "Well… We do spend a lot of time on things that probably seem pointless, don’t we?" With our selections here, we’ve tried to honor even the smallest details of the Dwell 24 designers’ work.

Discover the Dwell 24

• Dwell 24: 5 Emerging Design Studios Riffing On History

• Dwell 24: 5 Emerging Design Studios Who Are Intentional About Ornamentation

• Dwell 24: 5 Emerging Design Studios Exploring Hard and Soft Edges

• Dwell 24: 5 Emerging Design Studios Whose Work Is Seriously Playful

• Dwell 24: 4 Emerging Design Studios Engaging With Natural History

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Top photo by Mariana Pires

Selection curated by River Davies and Adrian Madlener

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