NEFERTITI

The NEFERTITI project deepens its exploration of language collision, and estrangement with two new works: a chair and a stool. Alongside a new edition of the lamp that launched the collection, these pieces embody a rigorous choreography of transformation and continuity — the result of a near-obsessive pursuit of formal research and sculptural autonomy.
Crafted from plywood and clad in Alpi Wood veneer, the chair and stool emerge from a conceptual act of subtraction from a primary volume, generating a shift in material and grounding plasticity in absence. This approach, derived from the collection’s inaugural piece, introduces a new way of conceptualising wooden cladding itself*. The Sottsass palette, paired with bold geometries distilled from a minimal vocabulary, conjures a tension between precise restraint and the dreamlike richness of surface.
The chair asserts an almost monumental presence. Its spatial essence — a “room within a room” — allows it to function as seating while maintaining an autonomous sculptural identity. The stool, while retaining its independence, supports modular composition and spatial rotation. Like the lamps, a concealed magnetic system enables multiple units to aggregate vertically or horizontally, encouraging a curatorial approach to living. Over time, the stool transforms, becoming a journal box, bedside table, shelf, or bench.
NEFERTITI champions design with intrinsic qualities, operating through a direct and endless dialogue between perception and intellect, without requiring validation from other media or narrative frameworks.
*(Drawing submitted to Alpi Wood on March 7, 2025)

Marco Zelli is an architect and designer based in Zurich, Switzerland.
His work explores the dialectic between the permanent and the transitory, deploying different registers, from the ironic to the operational, and approaching different scales of the project, from architecture to design. He has worked in some of the most prestigious offices in Portugal, Japan and Switzerland, and in 2020 he established his own practice. He collaborates with several institutions such as the Trienal de Lisboa, the Swiss Architecture Museum and the Mies Van der Rohe Foundation. Currently he teaches at the ETH.