- Art & Design
During NYCxDesign 2025, Ah Um Design Studio presents its very first furniture collection to the general public. The young studio, founded by designer and musician Zack Nestel-Patt, is making its debut at Wanted Design. The centrepiece is the Jura Collection, a range of furniture that invites touch, use and attachment - designed to collect traces of life with age.
Founded in Los Angeles in 2024, Ah Um Design Studio is the brainchild of Zack Nestel-Patt, who began his career as a musician. That intuitive, rhythmic and contrasting background makes itself felt in his designs. In his West Coast studio, the designer is guided by a fascination with texture, both in a material and emotional sense. His furniture emerges from a free, experimental approach in which mistakes provide direction. In doing so, the studio resists conventional ideas about luxury design: imperfections and visible handwork are not flaws, but the core of his aesthetic. 
The Jura Collection began with a single piece for the designer's own home in Los Angeles, which suddenly received a lot of attention through the alternative platform Not Normal Market LA. What followed was an organic growth from an idea to a full line, including a side table, mirror, bench, and pedestal. The latest additions, now being shown for the first time in New York, include a club chair, a tiled floor lamp, and a tiled accent chair. Each piece stays true to Ah Um's DNA, using rough finishes, tactile materials and a subtle tension between soft fabrics and sharp lines.
Rather than objects to be admired from a distance, these are pieces of furniture that gain personality the more they are touched.
The collection reflects not only the founder's visual language, but also his personal living environment. The objects were originally created for the interior of his own home, with the idea that they would be used and loved on a daily basis. Rather than objects to be admired from a distance, these are pieces of furniture that gain personality the more they are touched. His references to George Nakashima and Luis Barragán, among others, are palpable but never dominant. Each design remains deliberately functional and down-to-earth: a chair serves to sit on, a lamp to give light. 
What makes this collection special is the emphasis on what Zack Nestel-Patt calls ‘emotional texture’: the traces of life, memory and craftsmanship that permeate each object. Each piece of furniture carries a story within it, so to speak, built from use, material and intention. With the Jura Collection, Ah Um Design Studio establishes itself as a new sound within contemporary furniture design characterised by its sincerity and approachability. 
Photography by Ryin Rosenberg
Text by Carolien Depamelaere