Study O Portable reinterprets ancient ruins as bouncy rubber furniture

London design studio Study O Portable has created Rubber Rocks, a collection of furniture for Gallery Fumi that is made from rubber but resembles "weathered architectural elements". The collection comprises 15 pieces in total, including a selection of stools, armchairs and planters that take the shape of broken columns and arches. The playful furniture is The post Study O Portable reinterprets ancient ruins as bouncy rubber furniture appeared first on Dezeen.

Study O Portable reinterprets ancient ruins as bouncy rubber furniture

Photograph of four stools and the coffee table in the collection.

London design studio Study O Portable has created Rubber Rocks, a collection of furniture for Gallery Fumi that is made from rubber but resembles "weathered architectural elements".

The collection comprises 15 pieces in total, including a selection of stools, armchairs and planters that take the shape of broken columns and arches.

Photograph of the exhibition's explanation, which has been printed on a light pink wall, with a planter from the furniture collection and a woman sat on a stool from the collection. — The Rubber Rocks collection aims to explore ideas of material permanence

The playful furniture is made from silicone rubber, marble dust and different pigments to replicate the colour and texture of specific granite types.

Study O Portable founders Bernadette Deddens and Tetsuo Mukai aimed to explore ideas of material permanence by contrasting the enduring nature of granite with the transient existence of a rubber eraser.

Photograph of two pieces from the collection, including a blue granite-looking armchair and a white granite-looking stool. — The furniture pieces were cast into shapes inspired by ancient columns and arches

"Granite, one of the hardest materials on the planet, has been used in construction for millennia," the duo explained. "It is imbued with a sense of permanence and stability – causing it to seemingly exist forever."

"At the opposite end of the spectrum are rubber erasers – commonplace, ephemeral and designed to disappear through use."

Photograph of an open-plan gallery exhibition showing various pieces of colourful granite-looking furniture such as stools, tables and benches. — The pieces are made from a mixture of silicone rubber, marble dust and pigments

"Rubber Rocks exists between these extremes, exploring the interplay between the slow geological formation of stone and the fleeting, consumable nature of rubber erasers," the studio continued.

The resulting furniture looks like granite but is soft to the touch and even bouncy, as demonstrated in a video produced by Gallery Fumi. All the pieces are crafted by Study O Portable at the duo's workshop in London.

"The process begins with pigmenting the rubber to create colours that reflect the variations found in granite, before being granulated, mixed and cast into simple geometric shapes," explained the studio.

"The material is then meticulously hand-carved to evoke weathered architectural elements, such as arches and columns, with functions such as stools, armchairs, coffee tables, benches, consoles and planters."

Photograph of two planters from the collection that resemble decaying granite columns. — Planters, stools, benches and a coffee table are among the pieces in the collection

Mukai and Deddens told Dezeen they drew on a range of different references for the architectural forms, from Joseph Gandy's painting of the Bank of England to the etchings of ruins made by classical Italian architect Giovanni Battista Piranesi.

"Like the granite, we wanted the work to be a composite of many small ideas and images from history," the duo explained.

Photograph of the granite-looking, grey shelf holding books against a light pink backdrop. — The furniture is on show at Gallery Fumi

Other furniture collections recently featured on Dezeen include Mara Bragagnolo's puzzle-style furniture collection for autistic children and Sam Baron's wooden seating collection for Portuguese brand De La Espada.

The photography is by Penguins Egg Studio.

Rubber Rocks is on show at Gallery Fumi in Mayfair from 15 May to 28 June 2025. See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world.

The post Study O Portable reinterprets ancient ruins as bouncy rubber furniture appeared first on Dezeen.