Apple's latest design showcase uses familiar objects to explore how people connect with their surroundings and each other.

Apple's second Designers of Tomorrow showcase brings four emerging design practices to Design Miami Paris. This year's Design for Presence theme explores how physical objects encourage attention, reflection, and interaction.

Curator Rodman Primack heads the exhibition, which Wallpaper* previewed ahead of its opening. Participants used Apple tools, including iPad, Apple Pencil, and MacBook Pro, to develop their work.

Hand using a stylus draws sketchy pencils and a yellow brush stroke on a tablet screen, with a digital color palette and drawing tools visible at the bottom

Image credit: Apple

Egyptian-Danish architect Salem S. Charabi created "The Eminence of Light" using materials found around his Cairo studio. The lantern combines a limestone base, a banana paper diffuser, and interlocking date palm fronds.

Minimalist rectangular table lamp with warm light, thin wooden tripod legs, and textured paper shade, shown on a white pedestal and in a close-up detail against a neutral wall background

Image credit: Apple

"For this project, every component had to be mapped out in detail. I sketched and did all the 3D modelling on my MacBook Pro. It was a complex process getting everything to fit just right — from the carving of the stone and the paper moulds, down to the delicate base."

Brooklyn designer Isabel Rower based "The Padded Chair 1860" on a historic chair she photographed in Paris. Its fringe contains over 1,500 ceramic beads, designed to produce an appealing sound when brushed.

Black leather chair with tall curved back and seat, supported by a skirt of dense metallic beads, standing on polished herringbone wood floor before ornate blue and cream paneled walls

Image credit: Apple

"A few years ago I took a photograph of a boudoir chair from the 1860s in the Musee des Arts Decoratifs in Paris. I found the form highly unconventional and I was drawn to its dramatic fringed skirt. When faced with the prompt of 'Design for Presence', I felt that this chair was the perfect object to revisit."

Seoul artist Yoonjeong Lee's "New Form" combines a wooden table with an integrated lamp. Roughly 5,000 veneer sheets form its base, while three worn pencils secure the paper lampshade.

Wooden lectern holding an open book in an elegant room with blue-paneled walls, alongside a close-up of a pencil suspended above a glowing white surface on the lectern

Image credit: Apple

"One day, I was looking at a pencil that was almost used up, and I noticed its shape looked like a nail," she told Wallpaper*. "A pencil doesn't disappear as it wears down. It stays on in a new form: as a letter, as knowledge, as music. For me, it stayed on as a nail."

Mexican studio Parafernalia developed "MonoAmbiente 1", a folding table with two stools that nest beneath it. Its acid-etched stainless steel surfaces form a continuous landscape when the furniture is closed.

Corner of a wooden chessboard with black and white squares and dark chess pieces, resting beside a textured yellow cushion on a wooden floor

Image credit: Apple

"Conversation is rarely an isolated activity. We talk while we play, eat, drink, walk, or cook. In this piece, the accompanying activities create the conditions for dialogue rather than defining it," the designers said of the piece. "The deployment of the piece marks a shift from solitary observation to shared occupation, from looking to participating."

The exhibition runs October 21 through October 25, 2026, at Hotel de Maisons in Paris.