Nika Zupanc’s approach to the predominately male furniture-design market is to counter their technical, rational, sober, and utilitarian designs with her own more feminine poetic judgements. See Exhibit A, Zupanc’s Knitty Lounge Chair for Moooi. This lounge chair won a Best of Year 2023 Interior Design Award.

This woven chair is an experiment of scale and softness. It’s 3D proof of how Zupanc sets off in new directions when she merges technology, materials, and possibilities in her own original forms.

Knitty is made out of what appears to be extra-large “yarn” that has been “knitted” around a wooden frame in a chunky basket weave. You can almost feel the heft of it just by looking at it.

Its possibility plays with perception, but its originality becomes part of its playful charm.

“Knitting is typically associated with small, delicate objects,” Zupanc says. “However, by scaling up the knitting pattern, the Knitty Lounge Chair becomes something entirely different. It transforms into a large knot, like the ones used to tie down huge ships in ports.”

As a designer Zupanc wants to be “communicating the things that cannot be told.” If it can’t be told, can it be shown? Part of her role in bringing original designs to life is self-identifying herself as an inverter. Where others see an object and its utility, she re-imagines function as part of the fun.

For more by Zupanc check out her delicate hand-blown Bubble Lamp in pink Murano glass for Vistosi.