Sofa Shelf is the latest from Nayeon Yoo and Yuchan Choi, who run their practice around an idea they call personal display. Their work begins with the smallest gestures of everyday life, clothes left on a chair, objects settling into familiar places, and enlarges them into furniture that frames our habits and preferences. As they describe it, if daily life were a book, their design process would be like finding a sentence within it and highlighting it.

That thinking carries into how they hope Sofa Shelf gets lived with. Over time, the shelf itself should recede, letting the books come forward, so the piece becomes less about their design and more about the person’s own accumulation of interests, memories, and taste.

Read the full conversation below.

Your practice starts with small, unnoticed gestures, clothes left on a chair, things slipping between sofa cushions. How did the two of you land on this idea of personal display, and how did the studio come together around it?

Personal Display was not a concept we began with. It was something we discovered later, after looking back at our body of work and recognizing a common thread running through it.

We are consistently drawn to the act of turning something unremarkable into something remarkable. We take a small gesture, object, or moment from everyday life and bring it forward by enlarging its presence. If daily life were a book, our design process would be like finding a sentence within it and highlighting it. The moment a sentence is underlined, it begins to carry the reader’s own perspective. We see our role as designers in a similar way: bringing attention to things that might otherwise pass unnoticed and allowing them to be encountered differently.

seamlessnote gradually formed around this shared way of looking. Although our individual interests and approaches are not always identical, we found that we were both drawn to noticing and reframing overlooked moments. Personal Display eventually became a way of naming the common perspective that had already been present throughout our work.

Sofa Shelf takes the horizontal logic of a sofa and turns it vertical, so the soft gaps become places where books are partly held and partly hidden. How did the piece develop from that first observation, and how does it actually get made? We’d love to hear about the materials and construction behind those soft gaps.

The idea began with a familiar observation: the way a hand or an object can unintentionally slip into the gap between sofa cushions. Although the piece originated from a sofa and retains something of its visual language, we wanted to transform that observation into an object that functions entirely differently.

This led us to rotate the horizontal logic of a sofa into a vertical structure and develop it as a shelf. The accidental condition of something becoming caught between cushions was turned into an intentional method of holding and displaying books.

Its construction also differs from that of a conventional sofa. At the center is a concealed frame made from straight steel elements. Horizontal supports are fixed to the frame to hold four individual foam volumes and carefully control the distance between them. Each foam section is fitted around this internal structure and upholstered separately.

The resulting gaps are therefore not incidental. Their dimensions and softness are deliberately calibrated so that they can grip books while leaving them partly visible and partly concealed. The exterior appears soft and simple, while the hidden steel structure precisely maintains the form and spacing of the piece.

There’s a nice tension in the piece between hiding and displaying, where what slips into the gaps becomes an expression of personal taste. How do you hope people live with it, and what do you imagine ending up on its shelves?

Paradoxically, we hope that over time the user stops noticing the form of Sofa Shelf itself. As the piece is lived with, its shape should gradually recede, allowing the books placed within it to come forward.

We also hope that its soft, sofa-like surface allows it to settle naturally into the user’s life without feeling imposing or out of place. Rather than standing apart as a sculptural object, it should remain quietly present, much like a sofa that has always belonged in the home, even though it does not perform the conventional function of one.

What matters to us is not the shelf as an isolated object, but the collection it holds and the choices of the person using it. The books might be carefully selected, casually inserted, repeatedly removed, or left untouched for a long time. Through this gradual accumulation, Sofa Shelf becomes less about our design and more about the user’s own display of interests, memories, and personal taste.