Of all the paths one might take, the creative path may be the loneliest. There is no fixed route to follow, and no one else can walk it for you. The thought of giving up can surface without warning. As a young designer, Hsiang Han Hsu once stood outside a glass display window, gazing at a brand he admired. It was close enough to touch, yet seemed to belong to another world. That longing, edged with a quiet refusal to settle, lit a small flame in him. “When will it be my work in that window?” he wondered. No one knew how far he could go. Not even he did. Yet by keeping his head down, his hands on the work, and his attention never straying from it, he eventually made his way to Milan Design Week, becoming a name people would come to recognise and remember: Hsiang Han Hsu.
➤ Tenderflame
A Material Language Tempered by Inner Fire
Standing beside his latest fireplace designs for Tenderflame, Hsu watches smokeless flames flicker within cave-like forms shaped from stainless steel. They evoke the first fire of civilisation, as if bringing the story back to its source. “Creation is a little like moving through darkness,” he says. “Once you see even a small point of light, you focus on moving towards it.” The way he handles materials still recalls the child he once was, exploring his family’s factory and getting covered in dust and grime. There is the same curiosity towards the unknown, and the same alertness in his eyes, untouched by fatigue.
➤ New Works by Hsiang Han Hsu
The three designs, each distinct in form, distil the thoughts and experiences he has gathered over the past seven years. “I first met the brand at a talk in 2018, but I wasn’t ready at the time, so we did not officially begin working together until 2025,” he says. His calm tone reveals how carefully he treats every step forward. He would rather move slowly than move without conviction. As is often his practice, he arranged the first meeting with the brand’s head of development at the factory, so he could understand the brand from the inside out. After seeing the sophistication of its flame technology firsthand, he began to consider a more fundamental question: how could fire create value in contemporary life? Fire carries a life of its own. It is both beginning and end. From the outset, the design strategy was clear: these pieces could not simply serve as vessels for flame. Even when unlit, they had to hold their own presence within a space.
➤ Volcano
Torch takes the form of a cone-shaped fire piece that appears to be melting, pairing metal with glass to create a surreal sense of suspension. Inspired by volcanic clusters, the Volcano series is made with a recycled cement-based material, capturing the rough tactility and latent warmth of volcanic rock. Through Tenderflame’s flame technology, the flames take on distinctive movements, spiralling upward or rising in mountain-like forms. Halo, meanwhile, has the poise of a contemporary sculptural installation. Its mirrored surface quietly reflects ambient light, turning the glow and atmosphere of fire into something close to art. These works are not simply about making “beautiful products”. They are grounded in a rigorous understanding of materials and the stories they can carry. Hsu knows that when a product begins only by solving a need or fulfilling a function, it will eventually meet its limit. For him, the first task is to create desire: a vision that reaches beyond use.
➤ Halo
➤ Halo
➤ Torch
Designing for Value Before It Is Defined
Hsiang Han Hsu is often described as a designer with an instinctive command of materials. Yet when he speaks about his work, his thinking rarely begins with how something is made. More often, it begins with why it should be made at all. This habit, he says, took shape through his work with Cappellini. “When I work with a brand, the first and most important thing is to define the final goal, and the value the work is meant to create,” he says. With X Table System, the question he faced was not simply how to make a table more beautiful or easier to manufacture. The question was: how can a table become more than a table? Could it become a modular system that addresses the high transport costs associated with Italian furniture, while retaining the allure of an artwork and speaking to contemporary needs and sensibilities? Only after the question had been clearly framed did material experimentation begin. He initially explored aluminium alloy, but after taking into account later-stage processing costs and the environmental impact of surface treatments, he eventually settled on a plastic material containing recycled content. In such a process, unexpected outcomes are part of the work itself. In fact, when everything proceeds too smoothly, he tends to feel uneasy. For him, what is already known is often where the real risk of creation begins.
➤ X Table System
➤ X Table System
➤ X Forest
➤ Vortex
Equally intriguing is his reluctance to predetermine how a work should enter everyday life, whether it is to be used, viewed, or reinterpreted. This balance between precise control over material properties and a deliberate openness in function runs through much of his work. VORTEX takes its name from the swirling motion of a whirlpool. Resembling a sculpture in stainless steel, it is made through the lost-wax casting process and seeks to capture the whirl of water set in motion by a rotating propeller. “It can be a side table, a stool, or anything you want it to be,” he says. To express stainless steel’s sensitivity to oxidation and its tendency to retain fingerprints through use, Hsu worked closely with the manufacturer and insisted on revealing the gradual polishing process from a matte surface to a mirror-polished finish. This lends the object a trace of the human hand, setting it apart from industrial objects that can be readily reproduced. His sensitivity to the traces of time reveals his fidelity to the material’s own nature, and it is also one of the reasons international collectors have taken notice of his work.
➤ Precision CNC Milling
➤ Hand-Finishing the Surface of a Stainless Steel Sculpture
➤ Lost-Wax Casting of a Stainless Steel Sculpture
In 2026, he made his seventh appearance at Milan Design Week, presenting works across four exhibition venues. Years of steady work seem now to be taking visible form. Asked about his future plans, he remains eager to work with new materials, visiting factories whenever he can and planning further cross-disciplinary experiments. He is not in a hurry to define what a “Hsiang Han Hsu style” might be. A director at Cappellini once offered him a piece of advice: style is something later generations will define. All you need to do is stay focused and enjoy being yourself. For Hsu, seeking inspiration has long been as natural as eating or breathing. He walks in parks, takes in the way sunlight falls, and observes the textures left in sand after the wind has passed over it. These fragments accumulate slowly, then, through nature’s own logic, settle into his language. “I don’t think anything makes me as happy as creating,” he says. It is as if that young, determined version of himself were still standing before the display window, looking back at the Hsiang Han Hsu of today. The same sincerity remains. The same longing. The same focus on a question that remains open: what place might a value still waiting to be defined claim within the unfolding history of furniture design?
➤ Milan Design Week 2026
