Monochrome’s debut collection, ‘Basic’ by designer Ximi Li uses aluminium as the base material

Ximi Li Design is a Shanghai-based studio active in multiple fields like creative direction, interior designing and furniture designing. In a recent collaboration with Monochrome, the brand's debut collection, ‘Basic’, was created by Ximi Li, which took a fundamental approach to evaluate the viability of contemporary industrial design applications for an avant-garde result.

Li created practical chairs and tables out of thin tubes by folding, bending, and fusing them together using aluminium as the base material. Despite the welding scars and the unpredictable results caused by the material's toughness, the pieces had an elegant, somewhat organic feeling of fluidity that contrasted with their industrial design.

Basic, a piece created for Monochrome, a stand-alone division of Urbancraft, a furniture design company, examined the ambiguity between materiality and industrial craftwork and accepted its results.

Aluminium served as the collection's primary and only building material since founder Ximi Li questioned the conventional design and structural logic. It was sturdy, ductile, and may be extruded or moulded into many shapes.

'We want to preserve its state between manual and industrial production while maintaining consistency in design process and expression. Meanwhile, we retain the natural form of welding scars, which has become a unique label throughout the series,' said Urbancraft.

The resulting minimalist, contemporary, and raw style of the tubular furniture pieces are defined by unexpected results and subtle welding scars that serve as a process expression. The simple, monochrome forms that are folded, weaved and welded together to form sculptural bar and dining tables, stools, and seats result from Ximi Li's unrestricted aluminium experiments.