‘We were just having fun’: Barber Osgerby on 30 years of design collaboration as studio closes

On 20 May 2026, Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby announced that their award-winning design practice Barber Osgerby is permanently closing, as the British designers part ways to pursue independent projects.

Formed in 1996 after the pair met at the Royal College of Art, Barber Osgerby has since evolved to become one of the most successful contemporary design studios. Their design career officially started with plywood experiments that resulted in the ‘Loop’ table for Isokon (later developed into a desk for Cappellini), and over the course of three decades, they conceived furniture for the likes of B&B Italia and Vitra, lighting for Flos and tiles for Mutina, as well as projects for Paris' Galerie Kreo and many more. They famously designed the torch for the London Olympics, in 2012, and their cultural projects included a takeover of the Raphael galleries at the V&A, a chair for the 1930s De La Warr Pavilion and a desk for RIBA's foyer.

In 2001, the designers founded interior design and architecture practice Universal Design Studio and in 2012, Map Project Office, a 'strategy-based industrial design consultancy'.

At the recent Milan Design Week 2026, Barber Osgerby was honoured with a retrospective at the Triennale, curated by Marco Sammicheli, titled 'Alphabet' and charting the evolution of the studio's output. It felt a natural apex for the practice, and gathering its content was an opportunity for the designers to contemplate the future.

As the studio enters a period of transition that will result in the two designers working independently going forward, Wallpaper* caught up with the duo to reflect on the creative adventure of 30 years.

Interview: Barber Osgerby on closing their practice

Wallpaper*: Let’s start from the very end, the exhibition at Triennale Milano. Can you tell us about putting it together and what you noticed, looking back?

Edward Barber: We hadn't imagined it as a sort of retrospective, but then it made the most sense. And it was pretty interesting to see it come together because you realise how much the work has changed over the years from the very, very simplistic early plywood pieces that we did with Isokon, which came from all the simple model-making.

W*: Was this progression clear to you over the three decades?

Jay Osgerby: When you’re looking back across 30 years of work, it's incredibly compressed, but actually, when you're in it, it feels like it's endless. Years go on and on and on. So while we were in the middle of it, I don't think we were aware of the aesthetic approach. And I don't think we really looked back at all. We're both forward-looking people. In fact, more often than not, we've forgotten what we've been doing. And so, the whole exercise was actually really interesting because when you put it together, there is a thread that connects it. And certainly, the first period was very much an experiment; we learned everything from scratch together.

EB: The way that we work is pure experimentation. We weren't even thinking about a potential market for these pieces. We were just making stuff, folding plywood to create structures.

When we design now, we are obviously imagining how [a piece] is going to be used and what price it is going to come out at, and if it is a viable product; but with the early stuff, we had no idea and honestly didn't care either. We were just having fun.

JO: It was the passion project. But actually, we really loved this experimentation and I think experimentation is probably at the core of everything that we did over that 30-year period, in the sense that we were also teaching ourselves. Because you have to learn something every day, otherwise life gets boring.

EB: The thing that you can see most is that there are so many different types of products and different materials that we've used and areas of the design that we've been through, and that's just because we're always looking for something new, whether it's a plywood chair or a quantum computer or a coin or a train. And that's why we ended up with three companies at one point, because we were just trying to experiment and work with experts in different fields.

W*: Why was it important for you to split the different aspects of what you were doing into different entities (Barber Osgerby, Universal and Map)?

JO: This takes us right back to the beginning: it was really difficult as a young studio to try to identify what we were doing. We were doing a master's in architecture, but we didn't really see any boundaries between the disciplines. We knew that Barber Osgerby was where we wanted to be authoring work, and we knew that in architecture and interiors, it was going to always be a collaboration.

EB: We were doing collaborative projects with Stella McCartney, with Damien Hirst, there was a lot of their input into these projects; it didn't feel like our work.

JO: When we started Universal in 2001, we also wanted to create a space where other members of the team could have a sense of authorship and control and collaboration. We took our names away to enable other people to take ownership of it. Universal really became this place of collaboration over the years.

And then Barber Osgerby was also doing some projects in the [high-tech sphere], including the Olympic torch. So in 2012, we thought it would be another opportunity to start something new – that could specialise in technology, instead of spaces. And so we set up Map for the same reasons [that had prompted us to found Universal].

EB: We never really believed in a one-stop shop. We felt that, actually, different centres of excellence were much more credible than having one company, because in our experience, one company doing everything means they don't do anything excellently.

W*: The London Olympics was a very public moment for the studio, with the design of the torch. Did it feel like a turning point in any way?

JO: Apart from our becoming media savvy, I don't think it felt hugely different.

EB: Yeah, we got two offers [to design other torches], but we didn't want to become the torch people. It certainly elevated the name of the studio internationally, but didn't necessarily reflect in tons of new work.

JO: [The Olympic Opening Ceremony] was an incredibly fun night, though; it was the most insane thing to be part of.

W*: Did you get to be torchbearers?

JO: No, but we went to Olympia in Greece to watch it being lit.

EB: I highly recommend that ceremony. It's quite bizarre, like a pantomime, they all dress up like ancient Greeks and the flame has to come from the sun, so they use a parabolic mirror to reflect the sun's rays to light the first torch. But what was funny was that it was a boiling hot day, clear blue skies, and there’s probably thousands of people, and just as the time came to light the first torch, suddenly this tiny little puff of a white cloud just appeared in front of the sun. It was the only cloud in the sky and it was tiny and it was exactly in the right place.

JO: Everyone clapped, remember? When the cloud went over the sun, everyone applauded it because it was so hot. But yeah, that was a fun project. We couldn't have seen that coming in 1996.

W*: How did you initially meet?

EB: We were in a studio at the Royal College, on the eighth floor, and we had two drawing boards next to each other overlooking the Royal Albert Hall, and neither of us knew anyone else on the course; we just arrived on the first day, walked into the studio, grabbed a drawing board, and we just happened to be sitting next to each other. And I think the reason why both of us had gone there was because you could experiment – it had a really interesting mix of people.

JO: We were both really used to hanging out with all the different designers from different disciplines, and that was the start of everything that we've done, this idea of multidisciplinarity, partly because we're trying to create our own environment for learning.

EB: We tried to create our own Royal College when we were in [our studio in] Shoreditch. We had four or five studios across different buildings that are connected with an underground passage, and in one room, there's someone on a sewing machine making something, another room had people making an architectural model. Then you go upstairs, and there are 20 people on computers, and then over the road to Map, and they are just building this structure. We sort of created our own college.

W*: When you started out, you had a list of companies that you were hoping to work with. How did you go from experimenting with material to deciding you were going to be serious about the job?

EB: We had the list from early on. You need big companies with deep pockets to be able to experiment. With a small workshop, you can do wood, but if you want to get into plastics and cast metal and electronics, obviously you need a much bigger company. And so we wrote the list. But as an up-and-coming designer, you can’t just phone up a company and say you want to work with them, because they want to see what you can do before they’ll take you on. It’s a chicken-and-egg thing. So gradually, you get one project, and then you really have to focus and make sure it's a great project, and then the other companies will see that. But it took probably ten years.

JO: But it's fair to say that our association with Wallpaper* at the beginning really helped us in terms of credibility. In 1997, Ed suggested to Wallpaper* that they should be at [the London fair] 100% Design and that we should design the stand.

EB: And so we positioned our first piece, the ‘Loop’ table [for Isokon], in the centre of the Wallpaper* stand, and that's where Giulio Cappellini spotted it. And that was the very start, really. But Wallpaper* had also been the first to publish us. In those days, we used to send out transparencies to magazines. There was no internet, and so we'd have something photographed at great expense and make loads of transparencies and send them out to the key publications that we wanted to be included in. And the only one that got back to us was Wallpaper*.

W*: Tell us more about the ‘Loop’ table.

EB: We didn't have a workshop, so we were making all the models out of cardboard, and we just translated those pieces straight into sheet material, which was plywood. We were very fortunate to come across Isokon early on and [the company] was very much an influence on our early work. Chris McCourt [Isokon Plus’ owner at the time] taught us a lot about woodworking, and that really informed the first period of our work. The ‘Loop’ table, when you look at it now, doesn't look particularly extraordinary, but at the time it came out, it was a bit strange, it was different.

JO: It was improbable.

EB: And I think the other magazines were just like, well, I don't know. And then as soon as Wallpaper* published it, they all called up afterwards.

W*: How do you feel about looking back at things you've done decades ago? Do you ever think, ‘Oh, we wish we hadn't designed that’?

EB: No, I have to say, we've been pretty careful about what we've actually put out. I'm sure we’ve designed a load of terrible things over the years, but we just didn't put them out. But when we look back at all the things that are in the Triennale, for example, it's really about remembering that period of time. Every project has a memory.

JO: You're completely right, looking at the exhibition at the Triennale, at the beginning, we were 26, and at the end, we're sort of 56. So it's a big slice of life. You can walk around and go, 'My daughter was born here.' But apart from that, I feel like the objects themselves aren't stuck in time. They feel like they could have been done sometimes much earlier and sometimes much later. For me, that's the success of the studio's work, that you can't really pin it down to a particular time.

EB: And also that the majority of the pieces in that show are still in production.

W*: It's interesting that you said you can't pin down the pieces to a specific time, but do you think you can pin them down to Barber Osgerby?

EB: It's a conversation that has come up a lot over the whole period of our collaboration, and although people say they can tell when it's a Barber Osgerby, we still to this day somehow can't. Some studios have a very distinct style, and we've tried really hard not to do that, because each project has its own different starting point. We start from scratch every time, but inevitably, it's the same two people, so there will be a common thread that runs through all the pieces.

JO: We actually spend a really long time working on things because we work in a way that is immensely analytical, something gets really thought about almost to destruction.

W*: Do you know what is coming next?

JO: This is all part of the experiment really.

EB: From the start, we went to the Royal College because we didn't really know what we wanted to do, and we still don't. I thought I was going to do sculpture, then I suddenly flipped into doing design, and then I flipped into doing architecture, but at the same time, I thought maybe I'd be a photographer, and then we start an architectural studio, but then we start doing furniture. And then suddenly we're working in technology, and then we're doing torches. So we don't really know what's next.

JO: The thing about us is that we're unpredictable. And I think all the way through our business life and our practice, we've always thrown that stuff up in the air and given something a go because that's just the type of people we are. I also think that the Triennale exhibition is the pinnacle of achievement in our particular discipline. And I think all great creatives recognise an inflection point and react. And I think that's what we've done. And who knows what will happen in the future; it's definitely time to try new experiments.