Armando Cabral Turns the Cult-Famous USM Shelving Into a Collection Steeped In West African Symbolism

Getting creative with modular furniture can require a certain amount of inventiveness; there are only so many ways to organize a rigid set of components, as in the Swiss company USM’s signature Haller storage. So to produce something never before seen from such a precise framework — metal rods, ball-shaped connectors, and a system of wildly colorful milled steel panels — a designer really needs to think outside the, well, box. “Restraint sometimes allows you to think further in order to arrive at something unexpected,” says Armando Cabral, who has entwined the expressive elements of his West African heritage with strict Swiss production parameters in a new collaborative collection with USM.