There’s something deeply satisfying about furniture that refuses to stay in one place. Not in the sense that it walks around your living room, but in how it adapts, shifts, and changes with you. Taishi Sugiura’s Hayashi Cabinet does exactly that, blurring the line between functional storage and something far more poetic.
The word “Hayashi” translates to “forest” in Japanese, and once you see this piece, the name makes perfect sense. Instead of traditional cabinet doors or panels, Sugiura uses actual Japanese cypress branches arranged across the front of the frame. These aren’t decorative touches glued on for aesthetic appeal. They’re the real deal, thinned branches that would typically be left discarded in the mountains after forest management. Sugiura saw potential where others saw waste.
Designer: Taishi Sugiura
What makes the Hayashi Cabinet genuinely clever is its movability. Each branch can slide left or right along the cabinet frame, letting you customize the openness or privacy of your storage space. Want to show off that vintage record collection? Slide the branches apart. Need to hide some clutter? Push them together. It’s like having adjustable blinds, except way cooler and made of wood.
This design philosophy stems from traditional Japanese spatial concepts. Think about shoji screens and sliding doors in Japanese homes, elements that define space without rigidly locking it down. Sugiura brings that same flexibility to furniture, creating something that responds to your changing needs rather than forcing you to work around it. Some days you want minimalist display, other days you need concealment. The Hayashi Cabinet doesn’t judge either choice.
The materials tell their own story. Japanese cypress branches have these gorgeous tight grains and natural curves that you’d never find in standard lumber. They’re inherently asymmetrical, which means no two cabinets will ever look identical. As light filters through the gaps between branches throughout the day, the shadows shift and dance, transforming the piece from static furniture into something almost kinetic. It’s the kind of detail that makes you notice your own furniture, which sounds strange until you realize how rarely that actually happens.
Sugiura studied at Nagoya University of Arts, and his material-first approach runs through all his work. Before designing the Hayashi Cabinet, he created the Kintoun Kits, playful modular construction sets that won a JID NEXTAGE silver prize. That same curiosity about how people interact with objects translates beautifully into this domestic context. It’s not just about looking good on an Instagram feed. It’s about living with something that genuinely adapts to you. We’re already flooded with mass-produced, one-size-fits-all storage solutions but here’s a piece that celebrates imperfection and individuality. The branches aren’t perfectly straight. They don’t align in rigid rows. They breathe.
There’s also an environmental angle worth noting. Using thinned cypress branches addresses a real problem in Japanese forestry, where these materials typically get abandoned as too difficult or low-value to process. By turning them into design features rather than treating them as scraps, Sugiura gives them new life and purpose. It’s sustainable design that doesn’t announce itself with green marketing buzzwords but simply makes smart material choices.
The beauty of the Hayashi Cabinet lies in its restraint. It could easily tip into gimmicky territory with all those moving parts, but Sugiura keeps the overall design clean and understated. The frame stays simple, letting the natural cypress branches become the focal point. And because you’re the one deciding how open or closed the front becomes, you’re essentially co-designing the piece every time you adjust it. The Hayashi Cabinet doesn’t need batteries or WiFi. It just needs you to slide some branches around. Simple, tactile, human. That’s the kind of interaction design that endures long after the tech trends fade.
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