HIGH POINT – Architectural furniture brand Edge34 plans to debut its first artist collaborations at next month’s High Point Market.
The brand has partnered with cultural artist and product designer Sam Mangakahia and multidisciplinary designer Tym DeSanto on new pieces created specifically for Edge34.
Interior designer Kim Spencer and creative partner Philip De Rycke founded Edge34, an artisan concrete manufacturing studio in Panama which produces architectural furniture for hospitality, residential and commercial environments.
“Edge34 has always been about creating pieces that feel permanent, objects that belong to a place and become part of its story,” said Spencer, co-founder and creative director. “Inviting artists like Sam and Tym into the process adds new creative energy. They challenge us to think differently about form, meaning and how our designs can inspire the spaces where people gather, rest and connect.”
The company’s concrete furniture is shaped through a process that balances chemistry, craftsmanship and a deep understanding of the material, allowing each piece to last for decades.
For Mangakahia, who lives in Hawaii and draws creative influence from across the Pacific, design is inseparable from storytelling. Raised in a family of artists and later mentored by Māori master carver RangiKipa in New Zealand, Mangakahia developed a philosophy that every object carries cultural meaning and emotional resonance.
“The most important thing to me in design is the story it carries,” Mangakahia said. “Even when people don’t know the story, they can feel it. With Edge34, the opportunity was to translate that feeling into form—something sculptural and meaningful that becomes part of the environment around it.”
The result is a seven-foot-long undulating bench known as Tangaroa in celebration of the Māori god of the ocean.
Tym DeSanto is a multidisciplinary creative whose career spans architecture, product design, music, podcasting and television. His design sensibility is deeply influenced by architecture, particularly the powerful forms of Bruta
list structures that first captivated him as a teenager in England.
“I’ve always been fascinated by materials that feel grounded and authentic,” DeSanto said. “Concrete has this incredible duality, it’s permanent, powerful and architectural, yet it can also be shaped into something deeply sculptural.”
DeSanto’s debut piece for Edge34 is a modular lounge chair called Grimaldi which references the dramatic terrain of a lunar crater while remaining engineered for comfort and adaptability. The design allows multiple pieces to be rotated and combined into sculptural seating landscapes that can evolve
Edge34’s manufacturing studio in Panama combines traditional craftsmanship with modern concrete technology, using fiber reinforcement and refined casting techniques to reduce material use while maintaining structural strength.
The new designs will debut in Edge34’s High Point showroom located at 1700 West Green Drive.
