Apple has revealed its 2026 Designers of Tomorrowexhibition in Paris—a collaboration with Design Miami—featuring four rising designers whose creations question what it means to be “present” in a world overwhelmed by speed and distractions. The show launches October 20 at Hôtel de Maisons, curated by Rodman Primack, and highlights how physical objects can hold attention through furniture, lighting, and sensory storytelling.
Designing Presence: What the Artists Made
Salem S. Charabi, an Egyptian-Danish architect, presents The Eminence of Light, a lantern blending date palm fronds, banana paper, and limestone. The lantern’s soft glow and natural materials evoke craft traditions, while Charabi used a MacBook Pro for the 3D modeling and sketching process that brought the lantern into being.
Brooklyn-based designer Isabel Rower created Padded Chair 1860, inspired by 18th- and 19th-century papier-mâché furniture. She contrasts a polished gloss finish with ceramic bead fringe that rustles under movement, turning sitting into a mindful encounter. Her workflow mixes iPhone for documenting ideas, AirPods Pro for ambiance, MacBook Pro for archiving visuals, and Keynote to experiment with image and text pairings.
South Korea’s Yoonjeong Lee reimagines familiar items in New Form, a dual-use piece that’s both table and lamp. She employs worn-down pencils as structural nails, paper sheets as a diffuser, and layers roughly 5,000 veneers for the base. Her creative arsenal includes iPad Pro, Apple Pencil, iCloud, AirDrop, and Notes to sketch concepts and streamline transitions between work environments.
Parafernalia, a duo with studios in Monterrey and Mexico City, offer MonoAmbiente 1, an acid-etched stainless steel object that unfolds into a table and stools. In its folded state, it resembles a sculptural landscape; when opened, it invites shared activity. Their collaboration relied heavily on remote tools—iPhone, iPad Pro, Procreate, FaceTime, Messages, and iCloud—to exchange sketches and evolve the piece in real time.
Curator’s Vision & Creative Tools
This year’s theme, “Design for Presence,” was chosen to explore what continues to draw our attention in an age of constant distraction. Primack, formerly creative director at Design Miami, emphasized that objects themselves—through material, light, sound, transformation—can shape physical environments and alter how we experience space.
The selection process drew from a global jury across craft, storytelling and material innovation. Apple played a central role not only in judging but in how each featured work integrated Apple’s tools—MacBook Pro, iPad Pro, iPhone, Apple Pencil, software like Keynote—and cloud connectivity. These technologies are presented not as flashy add-ons, but as core to the designers’ methods of ideation, refinement, and sharing.
The exhibition is open at Hôtel de Maisons in Paris from October 20. Objects across the four pieces invite slowing down—touching, listening, observing—encouraging visitors to dwell rather than merely glance.
Apple’s spotlight on digital tools in physical design demonstrates a shift in how creativity is structured—where devices like iPad, iPhone, and Mac become seamless partners in craft, not just instruments of convenience. But what’s more interesting is the show’s deeper provocation: in a world racing ahead, what we truly value may be what asks us to stop and engage. As observers, the curiosity stirred here may offer lessons—not just in design, but in how we choose to inhabit our objects and surroundings.
