The Dining Room Minjae Kim designed most of the furniture, including the Fish chair (far left), the Temple chair (left), the Kisser chair (right), and the Douglas-fir table. He calls the Akari floor lamp, by Isamu Noguchi, “Tomito.” The artworks in the niche and above the bench are by his mother, Myoung Ae Lee.
Photo: Jeremy Liebman
Minjae Kim designs furniture with eccentric details. A chair might be topped with rabbit ears or carved fish. He calls one of his playful works of light the Hat lamp. When he set out to find a place of his own a few years ago, he went in a more conventional direction.
“I was looking for old architecture,” Kim says. He found it in a prewar building in Bedford-Stuyvesant with coffered ceilings and original moldings and shutters. The parlor-floor unit, which features an original, elaborately carved wooden mantelpiece, became a period backdrop for his hypermodern aesthetic. He painted the walls green, which can read yellow depending on the light.
“I needed a defined living room and dining space because I wanted to build a table and all the chairs around it,” he says. “I wanted to fill the apartment with 90 percent furniture that I make.”
Kim was born in Seoul and grew up traveling with his parents. His father is a Won Buddhist minister who moved the family to England for a year; his mother is the painter Myoung Ae Lee, who encouraged her son to sketch the buildings he saw during boyhood trips (he still has his notebook from a tour of Paris museums).
As an undergraduate, Kim took classes in furniture design—“It kind of got me hooked,” he says—and later, after getting a master’s in architecture at Columbia University and working for the architect Giancarlo Valle, he set up his own woodshop.
During the pandemic, Kim found more time to dedicate to his furniture practice, and in 2021, he had his first solo show at Marta Los Angeles. Now he builds and carves his pieces full time in a basement studio in Bushwick that, like home, is packed with his surreal furnishings. “I want it to be super-open-ended,” Kim says of his work. “I am still very confused: Is it design, or is it sculpture?”
The Kitchen Kim calls his cedar-and-fiberglass standing lamp “Dave.” His built-in plywood cabinet is used for “practical and impractical storing.” The large planter on the small table is by Soren Ferguson.
Photo: Jeremy Liebman
The Living Room The large oil on canvas, Ideal Landspace, is by Lee. Kim designed the Lola chair, seen in front of the Accordion lamp, by Shaina Tabak.
Photo: Jeremy Liebman
The Bedroom “I found the lamp with the sculpted figure, which I later altered to look like myself,” Kim said of the fisherman lamp. The art to the right is “Work 9711” by Lee.
Photo: Jeremy Liebman
The Fireplace The cedar-and-fiberglass Hat Lamp on the mantle is by Kim. The artwork above the window is by Lee.
Photo: Jeremy Liebman
The Sitting Area Kim (pictured) designed the pink oak coffee table.The stained-glass work in the window, Golden Eel, is by Zachary White.
Photo: Jeremy Liebman
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