Outdoor

Gabor Gobi

Budapest, Hungary

"Budapest-based collectible designer crafting sculptural furniture and functional art objects from salvaged wood, marble, and reclaimed materials."

Gábor Góbi is a Budapest-based collectible designer working at the intersection of sculptural furniture, functional art, and environmental consciousness. A self-taught maker with over a decade of practice — rooted in a background in graphic design — Góbi has built a body of work defined by the conscious rejection of synthetic materials and a restless pursuit of meaning in what others discard.

His studio, Góbi Design, operates as both workshop and manifesto. No plastics enter. Nothing is wasted. Working exclusively with earth-derived materials — salvaged wood, marble remnants, stone, and reclaimed metals sourced from scrapyards and the streets of Budapest — Góbi transforms the overlooked into objects that carry the weight of their past lives. Techniques such as Yakisugi, the ancient Japanese art of wood preservation through controlled charring, hand carving, and natural beeswax finishes bring each piece into being without industrial polish or artifice.

Informed by wabi-sabi philosophy and movements including slow living and degrowth, his work resists the perfection of mass production in favour of objects that meditate on time, decay, and resilience. Each hand-carved piece exists as both functional sculpture and quiet argument — for second chances, for the inherent value in materials most would overlook, for a different relationship between making and the natural world.

Exhibiting internationally at venues including Collectible Brussels, Milano Design Week's Alcova, and Maison&Objet Hong Kong, Góbi's reach continues to grow. The work remains grounded — literally and philosophically — in the soils and salvage yards of Budapest.

For me, to create is to search. — Gábor Góbi