modular brass grid chair replicates coreless exoskeleton skyscrapers

Copia New Yorkea Translates High-Rise Structures into Furniture

Italian architect and designer Massimiliano Malagò presents Copia New Yorkea, a chair that translates the structural logic of coreless exoskeleton skyscrapers into furniture form. The piece combines brass, velvet, 3D printed PLA joints, and gold thread, situating itself between functional object and critical inquiry.

The design employs an isomorphic process, mapping the spatial and structural qualities of high-rise architecture onto a domestic seat. A brass grid frame recalls the column-free curtain wall of corporate towers, within which a suspended fabric cocoon creates the seating surface. Modular 3D printed nodes join the frame, reflecting the parametric connectors typical of high-rise engineering systems. Unlike biomimicry, where natural forms inspire architecture, Copia New Yorkea reverses the process by drawing directly from architectural typologies. By adapting the monumentality and logic of the skyscraper to the intimate scale of the body, the work raises questions about the transfer of design languages across scales and contexts.

all images by Helene Helleu

Massimiliano Malagò Explores Power & Privilege Through Design

The chair’s enclosed form resonates with historical precedents such as the sedan chair, once used to transport elite individuals. Massimiliano Malagò draws a parallel between these vessels of privilege and modern skyscrapers, both of which serve to elevate, conceal, and project authority. ‘Their reflectivity and transparency are curated, not democratic. Nor is any of the scale of them proportional to the merits of those who inhabit them,’ notes the designer. ‘Copia New Yorkea reframes the curtain wall not just as an aesthetic, but as a social and political skin.’ The brass grid and textile cocoon become both structural and symbolic, framing the chair as a reflection on architectural skins and their social dimensions.

The project traces its origins to Malagò’s experience at OMA in New York, where questions regarding the narrative strategies used to justify skyscraper design sparked a broader reflection on isomorphic design methodologies. Later, during his time at Bond NY, he experimented with translating texts into architectural forms, a method that informs his current practice. Copia New Yorkea continues this trajectory, positioning isomorphic design not as a stylistic exercise but as a critique of how architectural references are deployed. Through this translation of high-rise engineering into a furniture object, Malagò opens a dialogue on the role of analogy in design, the politics of architectural form, and the legitimacy of transscalar methodologies in contemporary practice.

Copia New Yorkea chair by Massimiliano Malagò translates skyscraper logic into furniture design