Nature Meets Furniture – Habitat / District x Adam Cornish

Globally-recognised Australian product designer Adam Cornish and District are launching a locally designed and manufactured range of furniture intended to revolutionise the modern workplace. Entitled ‘Habitat’, evoking connections to nature and a system for building one’s own personalised environment, the range includes adaptable furniture pieces for commercial settings that seek to effuse new senses of calm through integrated botanical elements.

Adam’s work has always been drawn to horticulturally-based products – such as breathing wall modules or vertical garden solution – as a natural continuation of growing up on a New South Wales fern nursery. Adam harnesses his wonder for the natural environment and how organisms adapt to their environments to influence his designs for Habitat, with a wider sensitivity to new expectations for commercial space. The collection is a response to the evolving world of the workplace interior, finding ground in attitudes towards wellbeing at work that prioritise community and connection.

“I would love to see herbs and food grown within the workspace environment. It is my belief that this experience of new life and change we witness within our gardens and parklands can be fused with our work life and creates a healthier and happier place to work,” remarks Adam.

The collection’s modular seating elements enable the pieces to work flexibly within complex workspace environments. Consisting of straight, rectilinear forms juxtaposed with curves and organic shapes, the carefully considered seating pieces can join in countless variations to form unique configurations. Each seating element is also available in metal leg or upholstered seat to floor options.

Habitat represents a vision for a workspace environment in which botanical elements are unified with furniture and by extension become inseparable from working life. Nature is invited to slice through the modular soft seating while plants can be rearranged with the collection to adapt with the user. Edible plants can even be integrated to enhance horticultural relationships as well as connections to seasonal change.

At its core, Habitat presents a highly adaptive, customisable design experience intrinsically connected to nature. Together, Adam Cornish and District present a gentle and yet dynamic recalibration of how places of work should evolve in the post pandemic world.

Habitat engages with softness as a direct allusion to the language of the home, bringing the associated feelings of comfort and casualness that workers have become used to during the pandemic into the commercial market. The generously proportioned soft elements of Habitat combine with French seams and quilting inspired techniques to reveal a range of low sofas, medium privacy zones and soft seating options in three different heights.

The ‘trellis’ components of the collection take visual inspiration from nature, offering semi-transparent screens to divide space by layering across the workplace alike to an interplay of native Australian foliage. The trellis also acts as a host framework for additional design components such as shelving, visual aids, personal tools and technology mounting points.

When integrated with planters or climbing plants, the junction between screen and plant creates softly dappled light across space. This can not only transform the atmosphere of space but offers both privacy and the ability to remain visually connected to one’s surroundings. “We wanted to use plants as screens not just for the obvious visual beauty but for their acoustic and screening advantages. You can be partially hidden within your environment, yet still be recognisable. It’s these kinds of nuanced qualities that I wanted to integrate,” says Adam.