CALL OF NATURE

FROM HIS VERDANT STUDIO ON THE OUTSKIRTS OF AMSTERDAM, DUTCH DESIGN STAR JORIS LAARMAN LOOKS TO MOTHER EARTH AND THE LATEST TECH FOR INSPIRATION.

- SARAH MEDFORD

Vacations are usually eventful and sometimes restorative. But life-changing? Honestly, how often can you say that?

In the winter of 2018, the Dutch designer Joris Laarman and his family traveled through the wilder reaches of southeastern Australia, returning home stupefied by the unruly beauty of its plant and animal life. The following year, they learned that bushfires in the region had decimated 59 million acres of land, home to billions of living things.

PHOTOGRAPHED MID-CONSTRUCTION, THE 2025 PLY LOOP DESK IS FABRICATED, BOTH DIGITALLY AND MANUALLY, USING OAK-AND-WALNUT VENEER.

“It was awful, and we were very touched by it,” Laarman says. “We just made the decision—okay, let’s try to focus on working together with nature, and also in nature. Which is hard to find in the Netherlands, honestly, because we are a crowded little country.”

Laarman is one of his nation’s master problem solvers, the kind of clairvoyant who can bend steel and make compostable surfboards—and has. Since graduating from Design Academy Eindhoven in 2003, he’s created a pretzel-shaped bench printed by robots for the LeBron James Innovation Center, on Nike’s Oregon campus, and designed the world’s first 3D-printed bridge, for Amsterdam’s red-light district.