Los Angeles, Calfiornia, USA

Michaele Simmering and Johannes Pauwen of Kalon Studios have designed a new furniture collection that is eco-friendly, embracing traditional craft modalities as well as high-tech precision manufacturing and modern forms.

Kalon Studios’s new furniture collection recently won a 2022 Green Good Design Award from The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies.

Rooted in a belief in the simple beauty and emotive power of everyday objects, Kalon Studios seeks to deepen the human relationship with the things we live with.

Their design perspective foregrounds a warmth and humanity not often seen in modern furniture design and they champion organic materiality to recenter the people and places that bring their work to life.

Kalon Studio’s work maintains a strong point of view informed by American furniture traditions and modernist design, with a focus on elemental forms, natural materials, and versatility.

The designers are committed to a 360° approach to sustainability, which encompasses economic, environmental, and humanitarian impact.

They consider the full lifecycle of our designs, from harvesting of materials to manufacturing, to consumption, and end-of-life biodegradability.

Named for the ancient Greek word “kalon,” a philosophical concept of ideal beauty that considers moral worth and usefulness as inextricable from aesthetics, Kalon Studios was founded not only to create work that stimulates and inspires but to use design for positive change.

When an object is “kalon,” it is beautiful because there is inherent goodness that radiates from each detail.

For the designers, pursuing design in this manner is both a guiding vision and a call to action.

They don’t simply design to industry standards but develop beyond them.

Their intent is to reform the industry from within by introducing the shops they work with to sustainable methods and materials.

To this end, there is not a single piece in the Kalon Studios catalog for which they have not engaged in a many months-long discovery process to identify and adopt better practices.

A 100 percent non-toxic, organic oil/wax finish was developed; inspired one of the world’s premier upholsterers to offer 100% natural latex rather than poly foams and helped shops reduce factory emissions by 90%.

Across all of the collections, they work with solid hardwoods sourced from local, sustainably managed forests and put minimal restrictions on the grain structure of the woods selected, which is vitally important to reducing waste in the timber industry.

These are just some of the ways they have encouraged the industry to embrace new methods of production, and in so doing, their impact extends beyond the confines of the brand.

Over the years, domestic manufacturing has proven to be the company’s greatest struggle.

Every consultant who has looked at Kalon Studios has given the advice to move production to low-wage countries, but they remain committed to domestic production.

Today, Kalon Studios work with a third-generation furniture maker in Monson, Maine, and partner with several Mennonite furniture shops, building on a long history of woodworking.

Focused on part manufacturing instead of finished goods, many of the old shops can’t compete with overseas pricing and are also not able to innovate to adapt to the needs and demands of this new generation.

Their intent is to sustain and revitalize the businesses, communities, and woodworking traditions in these communities, in the hope that future generations have more viable options.

Kalon’s designers view design as part of an ecosystem of impact: from those involved in creating work to the production choices.

The collection follows a philosophy of local manufacturing where products for Europe are manufactured in Europe and products for the United States are made in the United States.

The materials are sustainably harvested from forests most local to where pieces are made.

Their operations follow a small to Batch Size One production model making as efficient and cost-effective to produce a single item as it is to produce 1,000.

In this way, they break from destructive cycles of mass production, overconsumption of resources, and wasteful overproduction.

All collections are made using all-natural, fully biodegradable materials meeting extremely high standards of 90 percent material efficiency or more.

Despite this already industry-leading example, Kalon is continually redeveloping its manufacturing process to create less waste as any lumber off-fall is repurposed as heating fuel or for other wood products.

Project: Kalon Studios Furniture
Designers: Michaele Simmering and Johannes Pauwen, Kalon Studios
Manufacturer: Kalon Studios