by Stephanie Forsythe and Todd MacAllen

The foundation of molo’s design ethos is about more than visual aesthetics—it’s rooted in the orchestration of sensory experience.

Every object we create is conceived as a layered encounter—where touch, temperature, sound, light, and even instinctive emotional responses are all active participants in the dialogue between design and space.

We believe our objects should evolve with each user, revealing new dimensions over time. By imbuing a living essence into our designs, we discover how a texture, a shift in acoustics, or the way light filters through material, contributes to our lived experience.

What might shift in our lives if we allowed our senses to lead—if we curated our environments not just for function, but for feeling?

enhancing sensation

Across cultures, tea drinking is one of the world’s oldest shared rituals—as seen in ceremonies from Japan to Morocco. But sharing tea is not about the object; it’s about the immersion of the leaf, pouring a cup for a companion, and social connection. Beyond the desire to create a beautiful object, we wondered how we could use this multi-sensory aspect as a guiding principle in design.

The result was float tea lantern. By making a completely transparent glass vessel void of extraneous materials, the simplicity of float tea lantern allows the object to disappear, allowing the real visual expression to come through. In addition to the vessel itself, we were drawn to the way many drink tea by holding a cup with both hands. Considering how temperature is felt differently across the surface, we created glasses that gave warmth or coolness depending on the way it was held.

float tea lantern

matcha green tea in a glass cup with a whisk.
Against a brightly lit, white background, a hand is pouring a pale yellow liquid, likely tea, from a modern, clear glass carafe with a distinctive circular cutout handle into a small, clear, double-walled glass. The glass being filled is one of three identical glasses arranged in a row on a light wooden surface; the other two are already filled to different levels with the same pale yellow liquid. To the left, another similar clear glass contains clear water, and behind it stands a taller, cylindrical clear glass vessel, possibly a water filter or another carafe. A small, lit, peach-colored tea light candle sits on the wooden surface between the pouring action and the taller vessel. The image has a clean, minimalist aesthetic.

design beyond visuals

Contemporary design is often defined by a devotion to aesthetics and form, which is subsequently motivated by trends. We prefer to move beyond that overreliance on the visual in favour of a richer sensory spectrum by asking: What happens when we consider sound? Touch? Or the layered experience of a space?

Having trained in a hands-on era—sketching, building, and walking the sites—we learned the value of being present with materials and landscapes. Even now that we regularly use computers, it’s nowhere near as satisfying to do research virtually as it is to engage in real life.

Because something marvelous happens when we are present in an environment. While building in a forest, we consider how aspects like its quiet insulation, natural paths, the flow of wind, are points of inspiration. There is a symphony of sound and feeling you can create depending on the environment and form you’re creating. It happens naturally as you really place yourself mentally in a place, and how to celebrate all of the things that happen there.

An aerial shot captures two people sitting within a curved, light brown, accordion-style seating structure. A person with shorter dark hair, wearing a black top and black pants, sits facing left, writing in a notepad. To their right, another person with shorter, lighter-colored hair, wearing a patterned blue short-sleeved shirt and dark pants with white socks, also writes in a notepad. Between them and to the right, a circular, light brown, textured table with a grey top features two white circular coasters. Another section of the curved seating is visible in the upper right corner with a similar coaster on its surface. The floor is white.
A man and a woman are carrying a long, curved, light brown, accordion-style bench in a large, white, brightly lit room with high ceilings. The room has large, multi-paned windows on the left, through which trees and a grey SUV are visible. Sunlight streams in from these windows, casting shadows on the white floor. Several large, white, cloud-like light fixtures hang from the ceiling. Another smaller, curved section of the same type of bench sits on the floor in the foreground. The man on the left wears a black t-shirt and blue jeans. The woman on the right wears a black t-shirt and black pants. They are both looking at the bench they are carrying.

the material feeling

Design speaks to the body as much as the eye. In our studio, each choice is guided by how it feels, smells, sounds, and settles in the body. By nature, each material brings about a sensation, and that is inherently an emotional experience. Scent can summon memory more quickly than sight. The warmth of a surface can evoke comfort, whereas cold can create distance.

We’re reminded of this in our own kitchen, where our marble island acts as a natural hearth to gather around. Since marble is cold to the touch, we soon recognized how uninviting the material was for this purpose. It could have regained that sense of connection if we had added heat beneath the material. But regrets become design lessons. This serves as a reminder that materials are not just about performance, but about how they participate in experience.

A close-up shot showcases the intricate honeycomb structure of several round, light brown, paper or cardboard fanning stools. The top surfaces reveal a mesmerizing radial pattern created by the folded material. Sunlight highlights the edges and textures of the stools, casting subtle shadows and emphasizing their depth and dimensionality. One stool in the foreground is a darker brown, while the ones behind it appear lighter, possibly due to lighting. A sliver of white floor is visible in the background.
A close-up shot focuses on a person's left hand gently resting on the textured surface of a dark grey or black paper bench. The surface of the bench, originally likely smooth or uniformly patterned, now shows a compressed and variegated texture, with countless small, irregular, and somewhat flattened paper edges visible, indicating it has been sat upon and has conformed to use. The lighting highlights the details of the hand and the unique, worn texture of the bench against a dark, out-of-focus background.

a natural dialogue

The sensory nature of our work reveals itself most vividly in the way people engage with it. Children, unencumbered by instruction, reach out instinctively to objects like softwall — touching, exploring, and experiencing the material.

This sensory dialogue deepens over time, as our pieces evolve with use. softseating, for instance, is literally impressed by touch and experience, as if it has memory. As people sit on it over time, a gentle crushing of each fold becomes a new texture, a visual record of interaction. There’s a quiet poetry in that change, echoing natural processes, like wind tracing lines through tall grass, or waves etching patterns into sand. For us, there’s something comforting about watching the process of change – it just feels right when there are irregularities and imperfections.

We enjoy the way natural materials rejoin the rhythms of nature over time. It’s as if the objects have an organic, living awareness.

a living quality

It is proven that having living objects in a space helps us mentally, which is why we give molo objects a living quality. As they 
engage the senses, they engage the mind in more creative and productive ways.

In our studio, we aim to foster a sensory experience by encouraging our team to reimagine their workspace each day. It’s a ritual of renewal and a rebellion against sensory monotony. These daily shifts—moving a softwall, adjusting light, responding to sound—reconnect us to the physical world. They remind us that space is not static, and neither are we. To design for sensory discovery is to create the conditions to allow people to shape 
their environments as they shape themselves.

A young woman with blonde hair, wearing a black long-sleeved top and black pants, sits barefoot on the edge of a large, white, expandable, accordion-style bench or partition. She is smiling and looking off to the left. To her right, a young man, wearing a black long-sleeved top and khaki pants, is adjusting or expanding the same white, textured partition. He is leaning forward and holding the edge of the flexible structure. The scene takes place in a bright, modern, white room with white brick walls and a white floor. Large, white, cloud-like or disc-shaped light fixtures hang from the ceiling. The lighting is bright, casting soft shadows.