Offering, material and the relationships between objects in Spring Summer 2028
Some signals for future interiors begin with an action. In my research for ATHOME Spring Summer 2028, I kept returning to the gesture of offering: fruit gathered in a bowl, flowers brought together, a vessel made to hold something for another person. These gestures have a physical language. They influence the openness of a form, the way objects are grouped and the colour and material relationships around them.
Image credit: Edible work from FAT POWDER FRUIT SUGAR by Imogen Kwok, curated by Noura Residency for 3daysofdesign 2026. Photograph: Titia Huisman.
At 3daysofdesign 2026 in Copenhagen, I photographed FAT POWDER FRUIT SUGAR by Imogen Kwok, an edible installation curated by Noura Residency. Kwok shaped whipped butter into a cone and covered it with foraged herbs, leaves and flowers. The work brought cuisine, craftsmanship and design together. Its carefully made form existed for a brief moment before people touched and ate it.
In Milan, I photographed fresh flowers scattered across the floor at Galleria Rossana Orlandi. Their placement changed the reading of the room: colour and fragility moved from a vase into the space people walked through. It was another moment that caught my attention, from a very different angle.
Galleria Rossana Orlandi, Milan Design Week 2026. Photograph: Titia Huisman.
At Paola Lenti's Dialoghi presentation, a dark bowl of green citrus fruit offered another reading of the same question. The fruit, vessel, textured floor and daylight worked together. It was the relationship between them that stayed with me, rather than the colour of a single object.
For me, these encounters echoed other signals I had been noticing around offering and sharing. The meaning of an object changes through what happens to it: it is held, offered, touched, consumed or passed on. These actions have consequences for form, surface and scale. They place the object within a relationship as well as a space.
Bowl with green citrus fruit in Paola Lenti's Dialoghi presentation, Milan Design Week 2026. Photograph: Titia Huisman.
From gesture to design language
Furniture can carry a gesture in its structure. In The Conversation We Never Had by Atelier L'inconnu, which I photographed at Galleria Rossana Orlandi, two seats grow from a woven rattan table to form one continuous piece. The relationship between people is built into its shape. For my JULY research, it offers a useful way to think about how an idea can travel from a social gesture into proportion, material and the arrangement of a space.
Atelier L'inconnu, founded by Fadi Yachoui, The Conversation We Never Had, integrated configuration. Woven rattan table and seating, photographed at Galleria Rossana Orlandi, Milan Design Week 2026. Photograph: Titia Huisman.
In JULY, one of the six directions in ATHOME Spring Summer 2028, this thinking develops through fruit, flowers, natural growth and generous forms. Colour, surface and finish carry the idea further. A bowl, a textile and a decorative object can belong to the same direction through their proportions, tactile qualities or colour relationships, while each retains its own purpose.
This is where a trend direction becomes useful for product development. The starting point can travel across product groups and into the wider interior. It gives a design team a way to make connected decisions about form, material, pattern and atmosphere, rather than treating each object separately.
ATHOME Spring Summer 2028 develops JULY and five other directions with colour combinations, material references, design language and original patterns.
