Issey Miyake’s Milan Shop Transformed Paper Into Marble

One of the most talked-about installations during Milan Design Week was The Paper Log: Shell and Core, a project led by Satoshi Kondo of Miyake Design Studio in collaboration with Spanish architecture office Ensamble Studio. It took over Issey Miyake’s via Bagutta boutique with furnishings crafted from compressed paper—made to resemble marble and other, lighter, materials.

The idea derives from the pleated couture that Issey Miyake is known for. To make his origami-like clothing, a compressed roll of wafer-thin paper sheets protect the fabric as it is fed through the pleating machine. “The name Paper Log derives from the roll’s structural similarity to a tree trunk, with its circular marbling resembling growth rings—a suggestion of the passing of time in both a plant’s life and the pleating process,” the brand explains. After being fed through the machine, the rolls are also used to easily transport the pleated pieces.

Across the showroom, the original inspiration and point of departure—the compressed paper roll—was given new life in various guises. Ensamble Studio crafted ethereal pieces that looked like a cross between clothing and sculpture by peeling sheets from the Paper Log, then treating them with hardening agents.

The in-house team, meanwhile, devised prototypes of furniture, such as a marble-like block that served as a display table and was complemented by a Corbusier-like armchair; and long, log-like benches that revealed their knotty ends, as if the paper log were channeling its former, tree-like state. They accomplished these marvels by soaking the paper in wax, painting it with glue, or tying it into bundles.

This isn’t the first time that Satoshi Kondo has been inspired by this easily adaptable byproduct of fashion. He created seating and other installation elements for the ISSEY MIYAKE Spring Summer 2025 show in Paris by cutting the paper log crosswise. For the Milan boutique, he and Ensamble expanded on these initial concepts to give the material’s creative possibilities—which hover between the ephemeral and the concrete, the delicate and the robust—the most luxurious of interpretations.

Photography editor’s own.

Elizabeth Pagliacolo is the Editor of Azure magazine and Executive Editor of Design Milk. Based in Toronto, she covers design at every scale, from the spoon to the city. Some of her favourite things, in no particular order, are Mulholland Drive (the movie and the place), burnt Basque cheesecake (preferably from Toronto’s Bar Raval), true crime podcasts (indiscriminately) and the sound of boots crunching down on fall leaves.