Axel Chay

Axel Chay is a self-taught designer based in Marseille, working across sculptural furniture, lighting, and art objects. He co-founded Nova Obiecta in 2013 before launching his own studio in 2020, now run as a family enterprise: Axel designs, his wife Melissa handles communication and brand identity, and his brother Aimeric produces the pieces in their Marseille atelier.

His work draws from the Mediterranean coastline where he grew up, from the kinetic artists he admires (Donald Judd, Tom Wesselmann, Julio Le Parc, Geneviève Claisse), and from the Memphis movement's rejection of neutral design. He resists any fixed identity: "I try to draw things that I like and that are not trivial." The result is sculptural furniture and lighting that is colorful, graphic, and built to hold its presence in a room.

Materials are chosen empirically. Steel and aluminum form the backbone of most pieces, welded and ground by hand in the Marseille atelier. Cork, wood, expanded foam, plaster, onyx, and selenite appear where the design calls for a different weight or texture. No piece is standardized; the production process is deliberately non-industrializable.

The studio's bestsellers (the "Modulation" lamp, the "Coquillage" wall lights, and the "Septem" stool) have earned international distribution and brought Chay into collaboration with Monoprix (Folies collection, 2024), Pradier-Jeauneau (Calade, presented at PAD Paris 2024), and Galerie Liberté in Luxembourg (Précieuse, 2025). Each project extends the same logic: objects that break from decorative convention and function as Mediterranean design sculpture.

On Monde Singulier, Axel Chay's furniture and lighting from the Marseille atelier occupy a distinct position in the catalog: sculptural, colored, emphatically non-neutral.