USM furniture turns shelter in a New York exhibition 

Today (19 September 2025), modular furniture maker USM and design studio Loveisenough unveil ‘The Room You Carry’ – an immersive installation exploring the idea of shelter and interiority versus the outdoors and nomadic living. Transforming the USM SoHo showroom into a tactile, interactive environment, the project draws from the wandering spirit of Loveisenough founder Loren Daye, who has spent time living off-grid.

In ‘The Room You Carry’, Daye approaches the USM Haller system not as furniture, but as an architectural material. The familiar forms are reimagined to serve as ‘a wall, a protective surface, something to anchor to, shelter from the storm’. This conceptual shift invites visitors to reconsider the role of design objects – not as fixed or static, but as adaptive and responsive to lived experience.

Custom pieces created by Loveisenough for the installation reinterpret USM’s boxy modules as tent-like structures topped with canvas roofs and accented by paravents and casegoods made from raw steel, glass and chrome. 3D modelling by Path – which brings deep knowledge of metal systems – enabled new and unexpected applications of USM’s modular language.

Magnetic, hand-carved wooden accessories made from reclaimed timber beams (sourced from The Hudson Company) serve as tactile embellishments. These handcrafted elements, along with personal mementos from Daye’s travels, recall the natural environment of the Catskills, where Loveisenough has a base. Wildlife photographer and outdoorsman Jamie Kennard contributes audio and video projections that bring the rhythms of the wilderness indoors.

‘The Room You Carry’ interrogates the boundaries between urban and rural and interior and exterior, and Daye's ongoing interest in such liminal spaces. ‘How wild can you be inside a hard set of limiting parameters?’ she muses, adding that her collaboration with USM is rooted in an appreciation for the brand’s ethos of ‘restraint and repetition’.

This idea comes full circle in the observation of Jon Thorson, CEO and brand experience director of USM North America, that the exhibition ‘harkens back to [USM’s] roots’ – to the verdant valleys of Münsingen, Switzerland, where the brand was born.

‘The Room You Carry’ will remain open to the public until the end of 2025. As the months pass, the styling of the space will evolve to reflect the transient life of its fictional nomadic inhabitant. In doing so, the installation becomes an invitation to consider how we ‘carry’ our sense of home, wherever we go.

USM, 28-30 Greene Street, New York, NY 10013