Our research & studio practice is driven by an ongoing apprenticeship in nature.
Our design practice focuses on learning from the dynamics of nature to define and develop meaningful nature inspired solutions that serve as transformative and ultimately net positive tools for human & non-human life.
By exploring our complex relationships to nature, past, present and potential future, within the ecological, cultural and economic dynamics of the day the studio creates thoughtful products, proposes radical ideas and explores new systems that work in symbiosis with our shared ecology in an emerging age of precarity and meta-modernity.
New Native is also a small design brand. To share our work and to support more experimental projects, we develop in-house small batch production projects that contribute materially to our mission. We craft these editions ourselves and in collaboration with partners that share our vision for an authentically sustainable and ecologically equitable world.
Our vision:
An effortlessly sustainable world where we live in balance with and in conscious relationship to natural world.
Our mission:
To inspire and help to materially create a world of local communities more connected to nature.
Our first in-house project is the Nion Collection, a modest, yet playful lighting range, made from a single tree, in a single batch, once a year. Learn more here.
Founded by designer David Hood, the studio is an expression of his own personal journey to find solutions and models for contemporary living with greater connection to both nature and community, while embracing the promise of technological and social advancement. From its London base, the studio works on independent projects and a growing brand collection while building long-term partnerships with a diverse cohort of collaborators.
David, is an experienced designer that has worked in the field of product and furniture design, craft, and creativity in education for 14 years. As a graduate of the Royal College of Art and University of Brighton, he has developed a practice that operates fluidly between design thinking and design doing; design through making and designing with users. As a skilled strategist, researcher and gifted maker he blends the work of New Native between the studio, the workshop and getting outside, developing projects in the real world with people and places of community and nature.