Header: Courtesy of Petrova.Studio
Echo is a stool designed by Olga Petrova-Podolskaya, from Petrova.Studio, after a life of observing how Russian society views form and its meaning. Made in Moscow in 2025 for Silver Home, the stool won the SIT Furniture Design Award 2025 in the “Bench” category.
Russian inspo
Echo was born from an interest in older Russian everyday objects, where form wasn’t treated as decoration but as something tied to use and meaning. For the designer, the goal wasn’t to copy historical things, but to rethink familiar forms in a modern way, without turning them into stylisation. This vision can be noticed in the way the piece is built around an arch and in how that arch is treated as the structure itself and not a decorative detail.
Arches from the past
The arch reference is quite important in this design. Echo uses arched supports much like those used between the IX and XIII centuries in Ancient Rus’ architecture, including curved portals, zakomaras and vaults. Petrova-Podolskaya wanted a monolithic object to avoid a “furniture-assembled-from-components” look, and the arches allowed her to achieve this while still having a functional and sturdy piece of furniture.
No ornaments, no fluff
Echo is designed to work as a stool and as a short bench, but it can also be combined to create a long bench with repeated arches underneath. Following her inspiration, the designer didn’t add any details or ornaments, only softening the silhouette with rounded edges and corners. The lack of embellishments does not mean that the objective was to create a blunt, rough stool; quite on the contrary, Petrova-Podolskaya was careful to achieve elegant proportions that keep the piece stable while also giving a sense of lightness through the arches.
Imperfect materials
The designer considered producing the piece with 3D printing but decided against it because the result looked too perfect and “too sterile”, in her words. Instead, Echo was handmade using plywood and a composite material from recycled paper/cardboard (recycled cardboard fibre). Petrova-Podolskaya describes the process as balancing accuracy with the material’s surface so the arches and outline stay crisp while the finish still shows the character of the wood. The work was developed and produced with im-ocean studio, a furniture and lighting studio with a focus on material experiments.
The Echo lineup
After a successful round of feedback, Echo has turned into a full furniture collection. The same arches and ideals have been applied to different objects, including other types of seating, tables, a screen, a mirror and other items.
