Let’s be honest: one reason to dive into minimalism is our longing to enchant the mundane, to give the objects in our life more meaning. And what is it that has always done this job for humankind? In any culture or time? It’s tradition, rituals and memory. At first, these sociological aspects sound a bit too complex to be compatible with minimalism. But if you look at the work of Jonathan Yoshida Rowell and his brand Yonsei, you see that it’s perfectly possible to integrate these cultural techniques into minimalist design.

Be it the barstool Jueki, the wall hook Ahoy, the end table Hon or the chair High Low, all of Rowell’s designs carry fragments of his cultural background as well as a common perception of shape and form that all of us can read. Even if we might not be sure what the furniture concepts remind us of exactly, we’ll always feel the connection to tradition and memory evoked by global similarities and universal human behaviours.