The furniture pieces by HALE have a clean and minimalist aesthetic. The wide range of furniture pieces, often geometrically formed, share the pure simplicity in design and functionalism. The pieces, often made of industrial materials like concrete and metal, are robust and also appear to have a certain unfinished or unrefined appearance.

American furniture designer Jonathan Nesci is interested in the variety of ways to connect materials and likes to discover different ways of uniting objects. Many objects are monochromatic because of the idea of seamlessly uniting material until visually the parts become one. Take for example the pieces featured, taken from his own first collection of monolithic metal tables, chairs, and shelves comprised of wax-polished aluminium. Even in this collection some pieces have a subtle hint of complexity in their design.

The forms are very simple, but the awe factor lies in how well they’re made.

Jonathan Nesci founded HALE, a part-design, part-production industrial design company, in early 2012. Before then, he worked for five years at the restoration department of Richard Wright’s eponymous Chicago auction house. In the restoration department his interest in minimalist art and sculpture grew and the degree to which those pieces count on materiality and process.

I am informed by the work that has preceded me and aim to add a building block in the continually changing landscape of product and process.

Nesci admires and draws a lot of his inspiration from a number of illustrious designers including Scott Burton, Donald Judd, and Tony Smith. Most of these designers have worked alongside craftsmen to fabricate their work and Nesci appreciates this way of working too, collaborating with others to realise his concepts. In many of his projects, Nesci’s designs are formed around the industry capabilities and expertise from craftsmen in a variety of manufacturing and production processes.

His recent furniture pieces still lean towards a minimalist aesthetic and process-based concepts, but revolve around the endlessly variable files generated by the golden ratio.

This article was originally published in Minimalissimo Nº1