Paying Tribute To Her Roots: Behind Hannake Lourens' New Furniture Line

For her first foray into furniture, former fashion designer Hanneke Lourens knew she wanted to pay tribute to her home country. “As corrugated metal is an affordable building material, it is used a lot in South Africa’s urban environments,” she says. “That classic wavy shape just kept jumping out at me and ultimately became the visual backbone of the whole Corrugated collection.”

Lourens’ inaugural line, comprising a bench, lounge chair, and coffee, console and side tables, is composed of white oak sourced near Fort Bragg, where she is currently based. Her design process starts with copious amounts of research, deriving inspiration from myriad sources, like photographs, music and podcasts. She turns her rough sketches into miniature models and then full-size creations made of scrap wood. The designs are further refined, including the type of joinery, before being finalized. “In my fashion design life, I ended up spending a lot of time at the computer, and these days I spend a lot more time actually making things,” Lourens notes. “For me, making a physical object with my hands is incredibly rewarding.”