Hisakazu Shimizu x Nippon Benex create sheet metal furniture with soft geometries

The ‘Suite Furniture’ series, part of the larger ‘EETAL’ project, is borne out of the desire to explore the possibilities and potential of sheet metal. The project owes its presence to the collaborative effort of Japanese manufacturer Nippon Benex and product designer Hisakazu Shimizu.

Made using high-quality processing technology, the furniture series is characterised by soft organic geometries that efficiently level out the stiffness associated with sheet metal. These petite furniture pieces are versatile enough to occupy both indoor and outdoor spaces as well as casual and semi-formal settings. Sturdy, yet fashionable, the subtly striking features of the furniture pieces grant them the ability to easily mix and mingle in all kinds of spaces, both as utilitarian objects and as trendy furniture pieces.

The ‘Suite Furniture’ collection comprises a stool and a table. The built of both of these items allows them to be used alternatively, the stool as a table and the table as a stool. Made out of two steel plates that are 2 mm thick, the stool and table appears visually light and exists without dominating the space it occupies.

The different colours of the furniture pieces further adds flavour to the collection and makes it suitable for people of different ages, having different colour preferences. Suite Furniture’s unostentatious design enables it to be a suitable part of our day to day lives, sometimes acting as a side table, sometimes as a platform for books and vases, and sometimes, as a work platform.

Hisakazu Shimizu is a Japanese product designer who founded S&O, an industrial design company with Eizo Okada in the year 2012. While Shimizu has been a prominent name in the design world for several decades now, the new and upcoming design company specialises in designing and building products that utilise extant technologies and manufacturing processes to deliver innovative objects.