A Conversation with Rafael Oliva

Every piece in our collection starts as an idea in someone else's hands before it ever touches Portuguese wood. In our latest conversation, we sit down with Brazilian designer Rafael Oliva to trace the path that led him to the Nook chair and Nook lounge chair, and to a way of working that treats craftsmanship less as a technique than as an inheritance.

Rafael's relationship with woodworking didn't begin in a studio. It began in childhood, watching his grandfather, an Italian carpenter from Atripalda, a small town near Avellino in Campania, work with his hands. That early exposure shaped a career that has since moved between industrial precision and artisanal practice: a degree in Product Design from FAAP, a period at the University of Plymouth, and formative years at Philips and Estúdio Campana, where he also taught traditional making skills to young people in São Paulo through Instituto Campana. In 2019, he founded his own studio, LABMOBILI.

That back-and-forth between industry and artisan, Brazil and Portugal, is written into the Nook chair itself. Rafael split the piece into two distinct identities: a solid wood structure, robust and permanent, and an upholstered leather seat that softens and moulds to the sitter over time. The name says the rest: inspired by a bird's nest, Nook is built on the idea that comfort is something earned gradually, not delivered on day one.

In the conversation, Rafael talks through that process, how a chair can hold two continents' worth of design language without feeling like a compromise, and what it means to design something meant to age well rather than simply look good on day one.

Watch the full conversation here.