In October, London’s Gallery Fumi welcomes 'Companions’, an exhibition of friendly-looking wooden furniture designed by Lukas Wegwerth and Corinna Dehn. The pair, who first met while studying at the University of the Arts in Berlin, have conceived a family of furniture clad in shingles inspired both by animal scales, wings and feathers, and by the vernacular architecture of Wegwerth’s home region in central Germany.
Part of their ongoing ‘Armadillo’ series, the six new works include two cabinets, a sideboard, a birdhouse, a dining table and a stand-alone screen. All feature the collection’s signature shingles, but with new experimentations in tone, density, and pattern. The wooden elements are sourced locally, often recycled, and processed in the designers’ own sawmill, while the colours come from natural pigments and ebonisation as well as traditional oil paints.
Working together, Wegwerth and Dehn apply the shingles to wooden structures, pushing each other in directions neither would arrive at alone, to always surprising results. Here, they tell us more about ‘Armadillo’, their partnership and their collaboration with Gallery Fumi.
Wegwerth and Dehn on their creative practice
Wallpaper*: When did you start collaborating with Gallery Fumi?
Lukas Wegwerth, Corinna Dehn: About 13 years ago. It started with ‘Crystallizations’, a series of broken ceramics that are ‘repaired’ through growing crystals in the cracks of the broken vases. Working together with Fumi has given us the opportunity to explore this process further over many years.
W*: Gallery Fumi focuses on designers and artists who blend traditional craftsmanship and innovative technologies. Are there any other creatives in the Fumi family who you find particularly inspiring?
LW, CD: We are fans of the organic, playful and architectural works of [Athens-based design studio] Voukenas Petrides. We collaborated on the very first ‘Armadillo’ furniture with them. While they came up with a shape, we developed the material strategy for the piece: it was cladded with shingles that we repurposed from the façade of our barn that we were renovating at the time. And we’ve always been fascinated by [ceramicist] Johannes Nagel’s processes and artistic works; we also worked together on the ‘Crystallizations’ series with objects he made.
And of course, Max Lamb’s distinctive way of crafting and constructing across materials and techniques continues to inspire us. We love Jochen Holz’s playful and sophisticated glass works and Saelia Aparicio’s very free spirited furniture and objects, among others.
W*: How did you two start working together?
LW: I trained as a cabinet maker before studying design and started my studio organically while I was still studying. Wood as a material and the forests I grew up surrounded by always shaped my design works.
CD: I studied fashion design and worked in the fashion industry for many years. As senior designer for Y-3, I worked in close collaboration with Yohji Yamamoto’s design team, contributing to the menswear and accessories collections. Since then I have started exploring different ways of working in the design field, among other things facilitating design workshops in Berlin’s youth prisons.
After many years of helping each other out and collaborating on smaller and bigger scale projects, we started working together more closely.
W*: ‘Armadillo’ is based on the wooden shingle, and in particular, the rounded shingles are used in buildings in Germany’s Vogelsberg region, where you have a studio. Can you tell us more about these buildings, and what they are used for?
CD: The Vogelsberg region is a widely forested volcanic region in the midst of Germany. The abundance of beech and oak wood and the local stone shaped the rural architecture. Most houses are grounded on a volcanic rock foundation and constructed as timber frameworks. The wooden shingles act as a protective layer; they wear off over the course of many decades while the actual framework is protected from the weather. The exact application and shape of the shingles’ ‘nose’ differs almost from one village to the other and from craftsperson to craftsperson, but the basic principle is always the same. Shingles had been used in all types of buildings from barns to mansions, from raw to ornamented and painted.
We are mainly inspired by the most simple ones. Time and weather let these facades become silvery and vivid. The rain shadow of each shingle is also a potential home for a range of wild bees – so the entirety of the facades does not only look like an insect wing seen under a microscope, they actually become inhabited by wild bees.
LW: I grew up in the region, in a farmhouse clad in beech shingles. I did not pay much attention to it as shingles were so normal for me, but thinking back, I feel really related to this material culture and the natural, gentle and ever-changing appearance of those buildings.
Amardillo chest, 2026
The traditional shingles of vernacular architecture are very regular, while your designs come in all shapes and sizes – why is that?
CD: Shingles are an architectural feature – that application to furniture needed some interpretation to make things work and to recreate the emotion we are inspired by. It might be true that in buildings the application is more regular, but weather and time and the use of a non-standardised shingle also reduce the feel of order over time.
But if we look at the other inspiration of our project, the animal skins, we see much more variety in size and direction of organisation around the body. A complex shape asks for more complexity and diversity of the shapes and sizes of shingles.
We were interested in combining these two realms – the vernacular building culture and the universal principle of scales in animal skins. Straight surfaces can be covered with rather large shingles, while curves need to be covered with much slimmer shingles in a wide range of shapes.
W*: This organic look, similar to scales and feathers, is reflected in the collection’s – and the exhibition’s – name. Do you see the various pieces as little creatures?
LW, CD: Yes, there is definitely a lively quality to the pieces. There is a dialogue between elements and shapes. The appearance differs from one piece to the other, sometimes the architectural references become stronger, in others the animalistic perception is more obvious. We think that a part of the animated perception is inherent to the material. Even a straight but weathered facade feels more animated with wooden shingles applied to it – so it seems to be coming from the shingle itself and is not only a result of their individual forms.
Additionally, we search for shapes that shingles can cover – it is actually not a material without limits. Certain shapes just do not go well with shingles, so we also follow the material logic on our search for shapes.
W*: What type of wood do you use for this, and where do you source the wood from? I believe you have your own sawmill in the Vogelsberg?
LW, CD: Sourcing is varied: repurposed beech shingles from our renovation site, oak beams from the repair of the timber framework, old handmade shingles we found stocked on the attic of our barn, leftover larch shingles from an architectural project that we worked on for the Crespo Foundation, an art foundation based in Frankfurt.
Making use of the sawmill is a part of the sourcing strategy for this project. It allows us to work super locally and process local wood. Vogelsberg’s vernacular buildings are defined by the local, natural materials: oak, beech, basalt stone for example.
The basalt also plays a role in our project. As in the buildings it serves to build out strong and durable details such as table tops in our case. We for example source the basalt stone from collection points to which farmers bring them when they become obstacles in their acres. This material dialogue that is very specific to the region is reflected in many pieces of the ‘Armadillo’ series.
W*: How do you work together to create these pieces? Corinna, you first work on the shingles and you shape and colour them yourself?
CD: The shingles are cut, shaped and coloured individually by hand. For some of the pieces the shingles are stained – I apply the stain in a way that creates colour gradients where different colours will blend into each other. Some pieces of the series are painted with linseed oil colours. We used these sometimes in a more transparent, light way where they are a nuance or hue of colour. Other times they are used in a way that they really cover the wood completely and highlight the texture of the different shingles.
We also investigated coloration techniques like ebonizing. This is a process using natural ingredients such as tannin, rust and lime which results in dark shades ranging from blacks and dark greens to dark browns.
W*: Lukas, you are in charge of creating the structures that will then be clad in the shingles. Where do you find the inspiration for the shapes?
LW: We develop the shapes together. Parts of the shapes are pre-planned, while many details develop over time and through experimentation. Covering the pieces with shingles requires starting at the bottom and growing the layer of shingles slowly moving from the ground up.
During the process of renovating my grandmother’s farm house, we visited a lot of farm house museums and looked at books about agricultural and vernacular architecture, traditional beehives and wooden toys. These were really strong sources of inspiration for us. We were looking for shapes that reflect the friendly and gentle attitude that we felt the shingle facades had – also something that is animate just as the facade itself is vivid and lively, seemingly but also in actuality by serving as a home for wild bees.
W*: Where are the pieces actually built? And how long would you say it takes to create one from start to finish?
LW, CD: Some were built in the Berlin studio, some were built in Vogelsberg studio. We decided to split the work following the seasonal advantages of working in the countryside. Colouring the shingles with the tannin, rust and lime required quite some space: it was perfect to use the garden and work outside. Whereas other pieces and steps of the process require different tools and machines, so working in the Berlin studio is then perfect.
A big challenge while working on the ‘Armadillo’ pieces is the slowness of the process. While it is really enjoyable to see the pieces grow and experience them becoming more and more animated, it takes a lot of time. A large piece like a cabinet will take 10 to 12 weeks from start to finish including the woodwork, the preparation of the shingles, the application and finalisation of all the details.
W: Do you have a favourite piece in the latest series?
LW: My favourite is a three-legged side table with a basalt stone top. I really love the material dialogue between the wood and stone. The shape of the structure and the variety of the different colourations of the shingles – I just feel very drawn to it.
CD: I love the high cabinet. I like its colours and the variety of the shingles – some have very beautiful gradients and others have very nice textures, so it really looks a bit like fur or feathers. A very gentle, friendly monster.
‘Companions’ by Lukas Wegwerth & Corinna Dehn, from 3 October – 28 November 2026, at Gallery Fumi, 2–3 Hay Hill, London, galleryfumi.com
Some of the pieces will also be part of Gallery Fumi's PAD participation, 13 - 18 October, 2026, Berkeley Square, Mayfair
Armadillo cabinet, 2026
