Marvell Lahens (Marv) is a Chicago based-designer whose work spans digital and physical products. As a self-taught designer, he is particularly interested in the capacity of technology (specifically generative design) to invite non-designers and end-users to partake in the design process.
By day, Marv works at Airbnb as a Lead Experience Designer. By night, he can be found restlessly daydreaming and worldbuilding.
2023
"You're invited" explores the tension between the inaccessible pinnacle of design and its purveyors, and the utilitarian, often denigrated aesthetic that inhabits the halls and homes of Black America. In reappropriating one of the seminal contributions to modern design, “The Barcelona Chair” by Mies Van Der Rohe, “You’re invited” not only makes this contrast plain, but through it’s amalgamation of at times polar histories and aesthetics, offers a boundary crossing moment, pushing a representation of the Black aesthetic (though not at all monolithic) to the forefront, and demanding it’s acknowledgement within the walls of an ivory tower.
Steel, Polypropylene;
29.5"w x 30"d x 30.25"h
Exhibition: “A Love Supreme”
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's McCormick House @ Elmhurst Art Museum
Jan - April 2024
Furniture Design
2023
Self™ is a radical experiment in empowering people to design their own furniture. Here's how it works :
1/ Generate the shape of a table-top using our configurator and various pre-defined shape types, or define a custom shape yourself. 2/ Select between material (steel or plywood), color, and leg type. 3/ Place your order. 4/ Your design is produced in Chicago by local makers, and shipped to you. 5/ Show it off to your design "friends."
Product Design, UX / UI, Industrial Design
2023
Event details
As part of NYC Design week, Self™ invited the public to experiment with generative furniture design in an interactive workshop experience, featuring the work of Norman Teague and Max Davis (both individual works as well as those co-designed with SELF™).
Guests could generatively design an 18″ x 18” side-table, defining the table-top shape, material, and color, and choose between sets of pre-defined leg types. Optionally, guests were welcomed to purchase their design and have it produced out of plywood or powder-coated steel (Made in Chicago and shipped anywhere in the US).
SELF™ is a custom, made-to-order furniture line led by Marvell Lahens (ML), whose products are generatively designed by the consumer. SELF™ was conceived as an experiment in co-creation between brand and end-user: inviting, enabling, and empowering people to design the everyday objects they use and surround themselves with.
Experiential, Furniture Design, Product Design, Art Direction
2019
In this context, templates are pre-formatted, pre-positioned blocks of text that a user can apply on-top of their image, video, or montage.
c/o: Marvell Lahens; Maggie Carson Jurow
Product Design, UX / UI, User Research
2019
c/o: Marvell Lahens; Christina Loo; AKQA London:
Rishi Ramdaras; Lionel Agbadou)
Product Design, UX / UI
2023
⚠️ Non ad corporis insertionem ⚠️
3” x 1/8”
Stainless Steel
Product Design
2018
Maison Ogé is an experimental design practice and clothing brand founded by Marvell Lahens, based in Oakland, California. We exist out of a frustration with and as the antithesis to what is expected. Our beliefs lie in the gender neutrality of apparel, the derivative nature of objects and things, and the power of the simple and of the obvious.
Our collections re-conceptualize staple pieces through the proposition of alternate manifestations and the use of extraordinary and non-traditional materials and dyeing methods.
We produce a limited number of pieces at a time (sometimes made-to-order), crafted in either Los Angeles or in Oakland, California.
Fashion Design, Art Direction, Branding
2022
Product Design
2022
“WITH SELF is a collaborative playground for experimentation through furniture design. I partnered with SELF founder Marvell Lahens to design a minimal and modern side table.
In contrast to Western views, many in Chinese culture see rocks as objects of contemplation and beauty. The table was inspired by rocks worn down by water to a smooth surface texture. The edges of the table are rounded, as if by water, while the steel represents the strength and hardness of a rock.
The table was selected for “The Crossroads” exhibition at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF) in New York City, curated by David Rockwell and Pei-Ru Keh.
Furniture Design