Self-described polymath Larry Tchogninou is here to design differently

Larry Tchogninou is breaking away from the old ways of thinking. ‘At architecture school they basically taught us that everything has been done already, that it’s almost too late for new ideas,’ explains the Chicago-based designer. That’s why he started his own studio called Ruptur Vision, which marks a clear break from this mindset.

One of his recent pieces the ‘Knuckle Shelf’, which is currently on show at the Theaster Gates’s Stony Island Arts Bank, certainly doesn’t conform. Tchogninou brings a potent imagination to life: built out of necessity for more storage space, the form was inspired by the impression that books often leave on him.

‘There are some titles I’ve read that knock me out.’ Says the self-described polymath. ‘Oriki, by Nifemi Marcus Bello, or I make Shoes by Salehe Bembury.’ This sensation was translated into the shape of a knuckle duster. Constructed using Baltic birch plywood and aluminium sheets, the system features no hardware and uses friction-fit engineering.

Larry Tchogninou: one to watch

Born in 1999 in Cotonou, Benin, Tchogninou was drawn to architecture at an early age. ‘When I was around six years, old, my mum was building a house in the Cotonou suburbs; we would visit the site weekly and I was always in awe of how everything came together,’ recalls Tchogninou. After moving to Paris in 2014, where he finished his secondary school education, he went on to study at L’Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture Paris-Val-de-Seine. Four years later, he moved to Chicago to join his mother, and studied architecture at Illinois Institute of Technology.

In 2019, Tchogninou participated in the NikeLab Chicago Recreation Lab, a summer mentorship programme led by the late Virgil Abloh. This is where he met his Points of Sail co-founder James Langford: together they design retail stores, both in Chicago and in Benin.

In the latter, they worked on a pop-up retail store called Tibi. ‘All the pieces that you see in that retail store are made in Cotonou. The silver stools are cast in aluminium,’ he explains. They were created by the same artisan that made his sand-casted citrus squeezer, ‘Beak’, forged in the shape of a swan’s neck and beak. ‘My favourite design object is the ‘Juicy Salif’ by Philippe Starck,’ he explains. Like ‘Juicy’, Tchogninou’s ‘Beak’ citrus squeezer is a conversation starter. ‘People don’t know what it is initially, but when I explain it to them, it sells like crazy.’

Tchogninou has an aptitude for the unconventional: when he worked with Serena Williams Design Crew in 2021 he created the ‘SWDC’ duffel bag, a soft lilac trapezoid sports bag, which collapses into a crossbody bag (it launched two years later).

In 2025, Tchogninou exhibited at the award-winning Benin Pavillion at the World Expo in Japan. Several of his creations featured, including an aluminium cast dish set, designed in collaboration with chef Philippe Sonou, who used it in the Masterchef UK finals. That piece was made in Benin, unlike the ‘Gbêhanzin’ egg holder Tchogninou makes himself in the US. ‘There’s a Chicago-based manufacturer called Sand Cut Sands who laser-cut the forms I then bend, break and rivet them.’

The egg holder is another item that people can’t always identify immediately, but this doesn’t scare Tchogninou, who believes that some pieces should be ‘disturbing’ as well as ‘comforting’. ‘We need both perspectives in design.’