The fourth edition of ICFF’s Emerging Designers Spotlight Online is here. We’re excited to feature the emerging talent discovered through ICFF’s global network, whose creative voices are shaping the future of contemporary design.
Presented in partnership with CLEVER, the series offers emerging designers a platform for sustained media exposure and industry visibility. In our third feature, we spotlight three rising design practices that explore comfort, historical translation, and cultural heritage through contemporary design. From tactile furniture that fosters human connection, to digitally fabricated objects inspired by Gothic architecture, to collectible pieces rooted in Anatolian craft traditions, their work reflects a new generation’s commitment to storytelling, material exploration, and meaningful design. Together, their perspectives offer a glimpse into where design is headed—setting the tone for a series that will continue throughout the year and culminate live on stage at ICFF in May 2026.
(Image above courtesy of Clementine Long)
What inspires you as young designers?
We believe furniture should have presence. It should inhabit space with intention and leave room for imagination. We believe in the beauty of contrasts. Precise symmetry. Delicate curves. The raw and the refined. The graphic and the sensual. We believe elegance is not an ornament. It’s a posture. A clarity of form. A precision of gesture. We believe each creation should be lived with, not just looked at. A sculpture with a function. Designed as an artwork. Built for everyday use. We believe your interior deserves a narrative. That’s why we design pieces you can compose, assemble, and evolve. Modular. Personal. Timeless. We believe in craftsmanship as a form of respect. For the gesture, the material, and the time it takes to shape excellence. We believe in a singular aesthetic, born from a dual identity. Designed in Reunion Island. Made in France. Two cultures. One language: design. We believe in furniture that tells stories without words. That becomes iconic — without ever trying to be. We believe in design as a way of living. Brutal yet delicate. Sculptural yet functional. Serious yet joyfully playful.
What are you working on right now?
We unveil our latest creation in NYC at ICFF in May 2025. We’re thrilled to announce that we’ve been awarded at the 4th edition of Le French Design 100. We’re exhibiting – two TOTEMIQUE cabinets – during this 2026 Milan Design Week, at Le Design Defilé – Brera. We’re currently working on this exhibition, distribution and materials variations of our new TOTEMIQUE Collection.
What is a specific project you would like to share?
We’d like to share our 4th collection: TOTEMIQUE. YOUR TOTEM. YOUR STORY. TOTEMIQUE redefines high-end furniture through the lens of creative freedom. Inspired by construction games, each piece is made of stackable, combinable, and fully customizable modules. Between art and function, it offers a graphic and rigorous design language — playful, yet architectural. Not just a piece of furniture: a personal totem, a strong visual presence, a bold design statement. Compose. Stack. Make it yours. Designed as a sculptural alphabet, TOTEMIQUE is more than furniture. It’s an expressive structure that evolves with your space and your story. Brought to life in France, crafted with artisanal skill and technical precision. TOTEMIQUE turns interiors into playgrounds for expression. Joyfully graphic. Boldly playful. Unapologetically yours.
What do you hope to contribute to the world?
Design is fundamental. We aim to provide functional, sustainable and aesthetically attractive solutions. We customize furnitures and design spaces to create unique environments that invite art of living.
Discover more of APPRT2’s work: Instagram.
What inspires you as young designers?
For us, design often begins with small structural moments found in everyday life: a surface peeling away, a narrow slit between two planes, or a curve that suddenly creates a new function. We take these observations and reinterpret them through our own language, turning them into objects that are simple, useful, and quietly distinctive. Rather than creating objects that demand attention, we are interested in pieces that quietly find their place in daily life. We hope our work can stay with people over time — as a calm presence in the background, but also as something that gradually becomes meaningful through use.
What are you working on right now?
We have just presented our work at SaloneSatellite 2026, so we are currently reflecting on the conversations, feedback, and new connections that came from the fair. We are also refining several pieces for small-batch production and future collaborations, especially the Slit Shelving System, Peel Shelf, and Curved series. At the same time, we are starting a new chair design and exploring how our approach can move across different scales, from small wall-mounted objects to larger pieces of furniture.
What is a specific project you would like to share?
We would like to share the Slit Shelving System, a modular shelving concept built around one continuous central slit. This opening allows different modules — such as a mini table, light, magnetic clip for posters or notes, and power outlet holder — to be inserted from above or below, so the shelf can adapt to different rooms, habits, and needs. Our goal is to develop Slit into a long-lasting furniture system rather than a single object. We imagine it being used in many different scenarios: in public spaces such as offices, bookstores, or galleries, as well as in private spaces such as living rooms, kitchens, or home offices. By changing the modules and their positions, the system can shift between storage, display, lighting, work, and small moments of daily use, all held together by one clear structural idea.
What do you hope to contribute to the world?
Through our work, we hope to contribute objects that are quiet, useful, and lasting. We believe design does not always need to be loud to be meaningful. Sometimes a small structural detail can change how people live with an object, how they use a wall, organize a room, or create a personal corner at home. We want to create designs that are easy to understand but still reward closer attention — objects that feel honest in their construction, thoughtful in their function, and able to stay relevant beyond trends.
Discover more of Studio WAK Design’s work: Instagram.
What inspires you as a young designer?
I created this studio as an experimentation area to explore clay and its graphic dimensions. I’m inspired by the way objects can tell stories and the different ways in which they can be read. My approach is based on a combination of design and art, to create functional sculptures and look for new uses linked with sensibility and gesture. I’m driven by the small details from my surroundings and how it can be transferred into an object, a line, a grid, a feeling of space in architectural structures.
What are you working on right now?
I’m using clay coils to transfer my drawing process into volume in a series of minimal and playful objects. I am focusing on how to join the coils to create a structure and shift the line of a pencil to 3d space. This process led me to experiment many typologies of objects and create a collection of sculptural pieces that I still develop now, where the aim is to play with function and shape.
What is a specific project you would like to share?
The latest series that I’m developing is called Core. With the coils, I create mesh structures that act as an imaginary skeleton, as if the core of a fictional object had taken possession of its surface. Each piece is handbuilt layer by layer in stoneware clay, in a contrast between the softness left by the trace of the hand, and the regularity of the grid. In these pieces, negative space carries as much weight as matter itself, defining both structure and perception. Function remains fluid and can switch from one to another, like the Grid table that can become a lamp, or the Wheel that shifts from mural fruit basket to sculpture.
What do you hope to contribute to the world?
As a designer but also a ceramicist, I aim to highlight the inherent value of materiality. Through my work, I seek to establish a direct connection between hand and material, both in the act of making and in the experience of the user. In terms of function, I like to design objects that leave space for interpretation, pieces that invite curiosity, evoke joy or raise questions rather than provide clear answers.
Discover more of Clementine Long Designs’ work: Instagram.
