Tali

We are a product of our environment. The spaces we inhabit and the objects we live with influence the way we feel, think and behave, and form the framework for our identities and life story. Colorado-based The Soft Minimal approaches the making of artworks like Tali, a tabletop sculpture in polished metal, from the belief that good design is an important element of a good life. Through insightful essays and the works The Soft Minimal designs, Tali came to be: made to meet and follow the principles that underpin a human-centric design philosophy we have shaped piece by piece.

The sculpture is polished to a mirror and holds the room in its reflection, warm in gold, cool in silver. The form comes from knucklebones, one of the oldest games on record. Put it down any way at all: three prongs touch the surface, three rise, and it stands. On a desk or a shelf, Tali turns that philosophy into something you can hold: minimalism that is quiet, tactile and lasting.

Our process of designing and making Tali is guided by the body and mind rather than by trends or technology: we aim to create designs that not only look good but that also feel good. It is about accommodating the artisans who craft the work through empathic design, rather than treating customers as mere buyers of an aesthetic creation. We consider our work as a facilitation of well-being for our customers, as a distillation of aesthetics that resonate with the given person and place, and as a system that supports universal human needs. Each project we design, not Tali alone, is imbued with this intrinsic quality: a simplicity that carries bigger ideas.

We have dedicated the last 15 years to the pursuit of human-centric architecture and design, and project by project, have honed a philosophy and international design approach that we call 'Soft Minimalism.' With humility, we have built our ideas on thousands of years of aesthetic evolutions and on the incredible insights of master artisans and designers working before us and beside us. These lessons merge with those we have learned along the way and with the influences of our Scandinavian context. Our hope is to offer a chapter in the story of designs like Tali, which will continue to be written far into the future.

Tali is the second piece Kacper Niezabitowski has made for The Soft Minimal, after Lapilli. A Polish architect and artist, he spent years alongside masters such as Vincent Van Duysen in Antwerp, and his work moves between two scales: buildings, and the small objects that live inside them, a dialogue of form, matter and stillness. He is drawn to the raw honesty of materials and to how light meets a geometric volume.

For Kacper, design is a language of silence. He treats the physical weight of an object as a way of steadying the mind, making pieces that invite a person to pause and breathe, and to find clarity in a world that keeps moving. Tali is that intention at desk scale: one geometric form, polished until the room shows on its surface, standing on three points.