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There is something about the work of Simone Brewster that feels at once ancient and futuristic. Artist, designer, educator and cultural change maker, her practice has a distinct aesthetic – bold silhouettes, tactile surfaces and symbolism – but is shaped by something less tangible: memory, inheritance, and the emotional charge carried by objects.
Throughout her work, she challenges viewers to consider what kinds of stories are embedded in materials, what kinds of bodies are allowed to be celebrated, and what kinds of histories are carried through our public and domestic environments.
PLATFORM is an annual display on the first-floor atrium gallery in the heart of the Design Museum, that is free to visit
'To me, design isn't just about creating objects – it's about giving voice to identity, heritage and memory,' explains the London-based designer. 'Through scale, material and form I aim to make visible what has often been invisible and to share narratives that connect us and ground us to objects and to each other.'
In February 2026, Simone Brewster became the second designer to feature in PLATFORM, the London Design Museum's annual free-to-visit display series dedicated to bringing contemporary design practice into wider public view.
This year’s edition of PLATFORM marks Brewster's first museum show
Following Bethan Laura Wood's 2025 presentation, the new edition marks Brewster's first museum show – a significant moment for a multidisciplinary designer whose work resists easy categorisation, spanning art, architecture, sculpture, adornment and furniture.
The showcase includes this necklace made of silver, gold vermeil, copper beads and synthetic hair
Brewster challenges some of the assumptions embedded in contemporary design culture, returning repeatedly to questions of value
Here, Wallpaper* reflects on some of Brewster’s most significant works to date.
Training and approach
Brewster's work resists easy categorisation, spanning art, architecture, sculpture, adornment and furniture
Born and bred in London, the daughter of a Jamaican mother and Trinidadian father, Brewster originally trained as an architect at The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, before obtaining an MA in Design Products at the Royal College of Art. Her education lends an architectural discipline to her objects, which are rarely treated as isolated products, but instead as fragments of a larger environment. Her forms often borrow from structural logic – columns, arches, thresholds – while retaining the sensuous presence of sculpture.
She has described her approach as an 'architecture of intimacies': a way of looking beyond the physical properties of materials and instead translating their geographic, historical and emotional associations into three-dimensional form. It is a framework that challenges some of the assumptions embedded in contemporary design culture, returning repeatedly to questions of value: what we consider precious, what we dismiss as decorative, and what histories we allow materials to hold.
Objects
In her 'Ebony Revolution' jewellery series, Brewster combines the dark wood with warm copper tones to create oversized rings, bracelets and statement necklaces
Although Brewster experiments with a wide range of materials – including hair, copper and cork – it is wood, in particular, that has become one of her most distinctive and resonant mediums. She frequently works with repurposed ebony, mango and tulipwood, elevating the material through carving and scale, and treating it with a reverence more often reserved for metal or stone.
In her 'Ebony Revolution' jewellery series, dark wood is combined with warm copper tones to create oversized rings, bracelets and statement necklaces. Their graphic geometry and heightened proportions shift jewellery away from delicacy and towards presence – pieces that assert themselves as objects, rather than accessories.
The 'Crown' series of sculptural wooden combs highlights the significance of Black hair and how it has long been tied to identity, status and community in many African cultures
That interest in ornament as cultural language is also apparent in Brewster’s 'Crown' series of sculptural wooden combs. In many African cultures, hair has long been tied to identity, status and community; Brewster’s combs function not only as tools, but as tributes to those traditions, their carved forms transforming something intimate and everyday into something monumental.
Public works
'Spirit of Place' was an installation of sculptures on The Strand made in collaboration with Amorim cork, intended to ‘capture the essence of the forest’
If Brewster’s smaller-scale objects speak to intimacy, her public works tend to amplify the same concerns through space and atmosphere. 'Spirit of Place', a commission for The Strand during London Design Festival 2023, for instance, saw her collaborate with Portuguese cork manufacturer Amorim to create a forest of cork pillars. Intended to evoke the cork oak landscapes of Portugal, the sculptures drew attention to the environmentally positive processes behind the material.
In another London installation, 'Temple of Relics', Brewster transformed the public realm into a space for reflection, play, and connection
That impulse – to build environments that feel ceremonial, spiritual or emotionally resonant – runs through much of her spatial work. A pavilion project such as 'Temple of Relics', commissioned last year for the London Festival of Architecture at Principal Place, similarly used furniture and ornament as tools for storytelling. Appearing like fragments of ancient architecture, towering red and orange stucco structures formed archways with bench seating below, turning a public space into a 'place for reflection'.
Furniture
The black female form is deconstructed and reformed in the 'Negress' chaise lounge, Brewster's contemporary take on the colonial domestic object
It is perhaps in her furniture works – particularly those that incorporate the female form – that Brewster’s practice becomes most potent. Her sculptural 'Mammy' bench and 'Negress' chaise longue confront the long history of Black women’s bodies being fetishized, commodified and objectified. In these works, the body becomes literal structure: breasts, thighs and torsos are transformed into supports and surfaces, bearing the weight of the furniture itself.
For the PLATFORM exhibition, Brewster has unveiled ‘Negrita’, a bench crafted in ebonised tulipwood wood
Brewster’s use of racist terminology here is deliberate, employed as critique – forcing the viewer to confront the violence embedded in language and the cultural stereotypes it continues to carry. It is design as confrontation, but also design as refusal: an attempt to give shape to what has historically been suppressed, dismissed or made invisible, and to reclaim the narrative around Black women’s bodies on her own terms.