Many designers talk about imbuing their work with character, whether that means giving them anthropomorphic features, unusual shapes, or textures that reveal the hand of their maker. But Jorge Kilzi takes this concept a step further: His furniture and lighting designs really do resemble animate beings. It’s not that Kilzi’s designs are overtly human; it’s that the forms he’s achieved somehow conjure movement, emotional expression, and personal connection all at once, as though they could have been alive and talking while you were out of the room, then froze just before you entered — a kind of domestic Toy Story.

For the designer, this approach comes out of storytelling through cultural objects and a celebration of heritage. Born in Venezuela to a Spanish father and Syrian mother, Kilzi signs his pieces with his mother’s surname as a tribute to her and to their roots. “After three generations of immigrants, the stories of the past and traces of other cultures, as well as a sense of mobility and nostalgia, were embedded in me in my early years and in my current work,” he says. “The objects around my family’s homes and their use were tokens for a ‘lost’ past: symbols of other lands and ways of living.”

Kilzi is an architect by training. He studied at the Polytechnic School of Catalonia in Barcelona, gained his Masters at Lausanne’s EPFL, and spent a six-month period as an exchange student at HanYang University in Seoul. He worked in Japan and Spain, before going freelance and eventually starting his own studio in 2022. Kilzi has since debuted a motley crew of furniture and lighting pieces, each made by a team of skilled craftspeople near Barcelona.

Perhaps his best-known works are the Mush series of lamps, formed from Japanese paper into compact shapes with a charming and inquisitive nature, as if they’re about to dance to Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite in Disney’s 1940 animation feature Fantasia. Kilzi’s Tumble chairs, which he exclaims are “filled with charisma!,” are constructed from light tubular stainless steel sections that resemble “a stretching back or a crooked branch leaning to one side.” Meanwhile, his Giraffe Lamp, made from thin stainless steel “with sleek, flowing lines that evoke the majestic elegance of its namesake,” gracefully presides over a desk exactly as you would expect a giraffe to peer over a treetop.

“In our design practice we see our objects as snapshots of a changing living thing,” Kilzi explains. “The same way animist cultures see it, we want to convey character and a soul to our pieces and for them to offer company to our clients, as that quiet friend that doesn’t need to say or do much to let you know he’s there.” As companions to everyday life, his designs form a cast of characters that many – including us – would be happy to befriend.

PHOTOS BY SALVA LOPEZ