COSMOS, modeled upon our universe, is a chair that aims to strengthen the relationship between objects and humans by exploring non-linear human processes, incorporating tangible fantasy, and creating intuitive interactions beyond cognitive understanding. The chair is comprised of 400 parts assembled together, blending different styles from different times, and combining digital and analog craftsmanship.

Design Team

Glass Fabrication - Esteban Salazar

Brass Casting - Alyson Thomson

Photograph- Martin Seck, Andrew Longo

New York, NY — Brooklyn-based designer Peter Minsoub Sim has created COSMOS, a hardwood chair reflecting the intricacy of the universe. Made of over 400 unique pieces, the chair combines digital fabrication with hand craftsmanship, incorporating cast-brass, 3D-printed, and glass elements.
First exhibited at Wanted Design and SoMMwhere on Ludlow, COSMOS is now shown at Room 57 gallery. The first in a series of nature-inspired, craftsmanship-focused furniture pieces, COSMOS embodies Sim's signature approach, which is at once intuitive and intentional.

Sim believes that objects have the power to connect us to each other and to the world around us. This is evidenced in the elements he chooses for COSMOS, his first opus: the sun, the earth, trees, clouds, waves, water droplets, birds and fish. A hand-carved sunflower, and in a halo around the sun, stars digitally sculpted in 3D, then cast in cobalt blue glass.

Alongside these non-human elements, the human presence in the chair is the chair itself – not only the negative space of the person who shall find a seat in it, but in the hand of its maker. Though it looks somewhat alien, the chair is grounded by the sensitivity evident in its shapes, proportions, and elements.

Expressed in curves, grain, materials and color, COSMOS speaks its own language – but one that all of us can, with enough attention, understand. With all its different parts, the chair is an invitation to witness the intricacy of interconnectedness, and the miraculous possibility of harmony therein. Far from fantasy, COSMOS is a love letter to our physical world. Far from sculpture, COSMOS is a chair.

In the end, the strength of COSMOS is in making words superfluous. You can sit comfortably in it, you can notice and enjoy its forests, oceans, skies. You can feel giant in your observation of the little brass birds. You can feel human-sized in relation to the painstaking hand-craftsmanship of the chair. Ultimately, COSMOS offers a moment to wonder, to be curious, and reminds us that those moments are worth cultivating. That, like the little brass birds, they are there, hiding, perched, conversing, shining, for us to find, love, and cherish.

Written By Heba Malaeb

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