Modular Furniture Feels Like It Landed From Outer Space

A colorful, abstract representation of chairs in space, featuring a red chair, a blue chair, and a green chair with antennae, set against a dark background with the text 'P L A - ㇱ' partially visible.

Cosmic Lego for Grown-Ups

There’s a delightful, toy-like spirit to this new modular furniture concept by designers Sihun Lim and Hyeonggyun Han. Called PLA, it’s less a single chair and more a tiny furniture universe built around one simple idea: a spherical connector that lets you snap different parts together like building blocks.

A stylized green lunar rover sits on a rocky lunar surface, with a dark background, featuring the text '01-P' and a caption about capturing a lunar rover landing.

From that glossy sphere, legs, seats, and supports radiate outward, forming three distinct pieces: a low stool, a lounge chair, and a sunbed. Same core, totally different silhouettes.

A blurred image featuring three modern chairs in different colors: a blue chair in the foreground, a red chair in the middle, and a small round table with a green accent in the background.

One Sphere, Three Orbits

The designers lean hard into a space theme, and it works beautifully. Each configuration feels like it’s in its own orbit:

Three futuristic objects displayed against a starry background: a green stool, a red chair with a ringed planet design, and a blue sunbed.

O1-P – a compact stool that echoes a lunar lander, with four spindly legs that look ready to touch down on a dusty surface.
O2-A – a chair inspired by Saturn’s rings, its looping curves wrapping around the central sphere in soft, sweeping arcs.
O3-L – a stretched sunbed that resembles a satellite, with flat panels branching out like solar arrays from the core.

Viewed from above, they really do feel like orbital machines frozen mid-mission.

A modern blue chair with a minimalist design, set against a black background with rocks. Text on the left reads 'O3-L' and 'Look at the satellite!' in bold letters.

Retro-Future Color Play

PLA’s palette makes the forms even more playful. Lim and Han pair electric blues, coral pinks, and sharp lime greens with exposed silver tubing, landing somewhere between retro sci-fi and contemporary gallery furniture.

Close-up of a modern, playful chair with a spherical yellow seat and metallic legs, highlighting its unique design.

It’s easy to imagine these pieces living in a sunlit studio, a spacecraft lounge, or a bold, color-forward apartment. They’re designed not to disappear into the background, but to spark conversation.

A green, spherical drone-like device with metallic legs and a propeller, positioned on a reflective surface against a textured gray wall.

Modularity as Quiet Sustainability

Beneath the whimsical space story is a quietly serious idea: furniture that can evolve instead of being thrown away. Because the designs are built from repeatable modules around that central sphere, individual parts could be swapped, repaired, or reimagined over time.

Modern blue lounge chair with a sleek design and metal frame, viewed from the side.

In a world of flat-pack pieces that head to the landfill when one leg fails, PLA suggests a different path: tweak, rebuild, remix.

A modern blue lounge chair positioned against a textured stone wall, illuminated by sunlight creating contrasting shadows.

A Tiny Universe of Possibilities

For now, PLA exists as a concept, not a product. But it reads like a friendly provocation to furniture design: what if our chairs behaved more like creative kits than static objects?

With its orbiting components and joyful color, PLA feels like a reminder that even everyday objects—a place to sit, a place to lounge—can invite us to play, imagine, and reconfigure our surroundings as our lives change.