INDERGARTEN by Yellow Nose Studio

Berlin‑based duo Yellow Nose recasts childhood building blocks as usable objects—ten wooden forms you can sit on, pick up, and rearrange.

In their Berlin studio, Hsin‑Ying Ho and Kai‑Ming Tung start most days by stacking offcuts. Pieces tip, settle, and suggest new shapes—the same circle, square, and rectangle that anchor INDERGARTEN, their ongoing furniture series. The title drops the “K” from kindergarten on purpose: a nod to Friedrich Fröbel’s learning‑through‑play method and to the wooden “gifts” that train the eye and the hand. The project has moved between cities since its debut—first as a solo exhibition at Pon Ding in Taipei (with a satellite presentation in Tokyo), then as INDERGARTEN: A Second Field at LICHT Gallery in 2025—always inviting people to sit, touch, and move the pieces around.

The objects stay close to the raw material. Ten variations in beech, cedar, and pine read like scaled‑up blocks—seats, mini‑stools, and vases arranged on plinths of concrete, stone, and carpet. You see tool marks, eased edges, and the simple hardware that holds wood to wood; some feature key ceramic elements into timber so the two materials meet without drama. A single‑radius arc or a small setback is enough to change how a piece sits or how a hand finds its grip. The studio’s slim book with METER captures that spirit in print: 64 pages, HelloMe’s graphic design, Daniel Farò’s photographs, and a straight record of the forms as they evolve. Additionally, the limited edition version adds three signed wood prints.

What lands, in person, is the pace. You pull a small seat from a stack, feel the weight of beech, and set it next to a vase whose ceramic surface keeps a trace of the makers’ hand. The pieces are steady enough for daily use as well as open enough to invite a little experimentation—the kind of furniture that turns a room into a quiet game of arrangement. That ongoing loop—try, adjust, live with—ties the work back to Fröbel and forward to the studio’s own routine: simple shapes, made carefully, that teach by being handled.

INDERGARTEN — the book

INDERGARTEN now has a book—the studio’s first monograph: a compact hardbound volume that puts the series in one place. Ten wooden forms—built from a circle, a square, and a rectangle—transform into seats and vases, photographed clearly so grain, edges, and joinery read. It’s a straightforward record of Yellow Nose Studio’s way of working—minimalist shapes meant to be handled daily, through play—and an easy entry point if you’re new to the project. Available to the public from Yellow Nose Studio.