Ideas For Business – Call #1: Meet the three winning projects

In an age where furniture is expected to do more than simply furnish, DesignWanted launched, this May, a call to rethink one of the most overlooked domestic objects: the side table. Designers were asked to challenge their conventional form and function, exploring new rituals, materials, and meanings for a piece that often goes unnoticed – but is always close by. The initiative is part of Ideas for Business, a broader platform by DesignWanted that connects forward-thinking designers with industry players open to fresh ideas. Through open calls, brief-driven competitions, and curated opportunities, Ideas for Business promotes projects that are not just appealing, but also relevant, thoughtful, and ready to meet the challenges of contemporary living.

More than 150 proposals were submitted, each reflecting care, curiosity, and effort. The jury – Juan Torres, DesignWanted’s Creative Director; Mario Alessiani, product designer and DesignWanted contributor; and Denis Aktay, designer and founder of the design studio DEZIN – was faced with the difficult task of selecting just three winners among all the outstanding projects.

The selection chose three projects that stood out, besides their design quality, for their ability to respond to a shifting idea of domestic life. Each one offered a distinct take on care, intimacy, and everyday life, showing how this humble object can become emotional, sculptural, or quietly intelligent. In today’s home, the side table is no longer just a place for books and lamps: it now sits beside a bed, a table, a sofa that can transform itself into an office, a lounge, a refuge. The designers who won the competition, then, embraced this complexity with clarity and character.

What this call revealed, immediately, is that the side table is no longer just a peripheral object. It can also be seen as a micro-stage, able to change the perspective on shifting the storytelling of domestic life. In its humble scale, it becomes a mirror to broader themes, as we saw. The proposal was pushing and defining new narratives through sustainability, technological integration, emotional wellbeing, and the growing fluidity of space in our homes, and the selected projects demonstrate that good design today doesn’t need to be loud to be relevant. It can be quiet, attentive, and still full of intention.

Each of the winning entries takes this approach in its own way, drawing on different aspects of DesignWanted’s own research. Bable speaks to a future where care and technology coexist gently, offering a glimpse of how machines might support us emotionally, not just functionally. Bale grounds innovation in material experimentation, reminding us that sustainability is not a buzzword – it’s a process of prototyping, testing, and refining. And Ardea lifts the typology to a more expressive realm, suggesting that function can still be poetic, and that even utilitarian objects can hold artistic value.

Bable by Abin Rajendra

A side table that reimagines the home robot. Designed to blend in by industrial designer Abin Rajendran, Bable brings subtle intelligence to the bedroom through ambient lighting, gentle notifications, and a ring light for nighttime orientation. It avoids the typical tech tropes, proposing instead a new kind of presence: familiar, understated, emotionally tuned. Its strength is in its softness. This design isn’t trying to be smart, it’s trying to belong to the domestic environment quietly effortlessly. And that’s why it won: for its poetic restraint and sensitivity, which proposed a bedside table that cares and inhabits our houses.

Ardea by Giuseppe Campanale

Designed by product designer Giuseppe Campanale, Ardea is a sculptural, almost architectural piece that impressed the jury with its formal coherence and dual function as a shelf and light. An elongated vertical element evokes a minimalist art object, yet one designed to be inhabited. Ardea sits delicately between functionality and poetry, a calm presence in the chaos of contemporary interiors.

Bale, from Bundle Studio

This highly functional side table is made from a bio-composite of flax fibre and PLA. Designed by Copenhagen based Bundle Studio for the living room, it doubles as storage and seating, with four identical thermo-pressed panels joined by visible snap rivets – a construction that’s both practical and expressive. Its strength lies in material honesty and emotional clarity: approachable, repairable, and adaptable. What convinced the jury was not just the idea, but its readiness – Bale is quiet design with loud potential.

The diversity among the three projects reflects the richness of the submissions received. Some entries explored speculative technologies; others focused on handcrafted aesthetics, modular systems, or social rituals. All approached the side table as a lens for observing how we live now – and how we might live differently.

With this first edition, we discovered that an open call can be more than just a competition. It can become a new way of conceiving proposals and ideas — a dialogue between designers and their approaches. A conversation that sparked fresh interpretations of a quiet object, reminding us that no detail in the home is too small to be reconsidered, especially in a time when design is often expected to be radical or revolutionary. The three winning designers will receive dedicated visibility through editorial features, social media promotion, and newsletter inclusion — a way to celebrate and amplify their work within the DesignWanted community.

Stay tuned for updates on upcoming Ideas For Business calls — and don’t miss the chance to share your vision in the next one.