Featured Architect series traces practices that redefine the contemporary architectural discourse through critical thinking, spatial intelligence and a distinct authorial voice. The series explores the ideas, methodologies and cultural positions shaping architecture today, foregrounding work that resonates with clarity, experimentation and lasting relevance.
Based in Berlin, Jäll & Tofta explore a contemporary form of minimalism shaped by colour, material and playful interventions. From a bold circus kitchen and a vivid green matcha bar in Berlin, to a curved pink workspace lounge in Chicago, adaptable children’s furniture and a mirrored kitchen that quietly dissolves into its surroundings, the studio approaches each project with a clear yet expressive design language. Clean lines, honest materials and bespoke furniture provide a quiet framework, while colour, geometry and unexpected details bring warmth and character to everyday interiors. Across their work, Jäll & Tofta demonstrate how minimalism can remain precise and enduring while also feeling playful, personal and distinctly human.
Design Philosophy
Based in Berlin, Jäll & Tofta is an interior and furniture design studio founded and run by product designers Jakob Dannenfeldt and Sina Gwosdzik. Partners in both life and work, the couple met while studying product design and gradually developed a shared creative practice alongside their family life. Their professional journey began with children’s furniture, prompted in part by becoming parents themselves, before expanding into interiors and residential projects. Today, they live and work in Berlin with their two sons, seamlessly weaving their personal and professional lives together, with their own home often becoming an intimate extension of their creative practice.
For the studio, minimalism is less about restraint than about creating spaces with a lasting sense of character.
Its design philosophy is rooted in the belief that thoughtful interiors should feel considered yet warm, precise yet playful—where clean lines and honest materials create a quiet framework for everyday life, enlivened by unexpected moments of color.
Sustainability is understood not as a trend, but through the inherent quality, longevity, and timelessness of a design.
Whether shaping a bespoke piece of furniture or an entire residential, commercial, or retail environment, the studio approaches each project through close collaboration, pairing a clear design language with the expertise of local craftsmen.
The result is a contemporary form of minimalism that is deliberately human: durable, adaptable, and designed to put you in a good mood.
Built Works
Circus Kitchen | Berlin | 2025
In this Berlin apartment, Jäll & Tofta use the kitchen furniture to do more than accommodate the functions of cooking and storage: it also separates part of the existing space to create an additional room. The carefully integrated kitchen unit incorporates a sliding door, allowing the furniture to act as a subtle architectural boundary while maintaining continuity throughout the interior. Behind it, a compact children’s room is completed by a platform bed. The project demonstrates how a kitchen can become an organising element within the home, combining everyday functionality with an efficient use of space.
Photography by Anne Deppe.
Pink Panther Kitchen | Berlin | 2025
An 82 m² apartment in an old Berlin building is transformed from a sequence of small, enclosed rooms into a more open and flexible family home. The wall separating the living room and bedroom is removed, allowing furniture rather than fixed partitions to define distinct areas while preserving a sense of retreat within the larger open space. The opening from the hallway into the main living area is widened, while custom-made furniture connects the entrance, study, and living spaces, providing generous integrated storage throughout. This continuous built-in element guides movement through the apartment and leads towards the kitchen, which becomes the spatial and social centre of the home. Clear and restrained in form, the kitchen is distinguished by a comparatively bold combination of colours and materials, introducing a vivid focal point within the otherwise airy interior. The result balances openness with intimacy, using furniture, storage, and carefully defined thresholds to reorganize the apartment without compromising its domestic character.
Photography by Anne Deppe.
Pink Green Workspace Lounge | Chicago | 2024
Created for Breakfast For Dinner Studios in Chicago, the Pink Green Room reimagines the conventional studio green room as a space for hospitality, interaction, and retreat. Designed as the gateway to the production studio, the interior reflects the playful and highly stylized character of its creative environment. The entire room is enveloped in a vivid pink, creating a cohesive and energetic atmosphere, while a series of curved forms softens the space and gives it a more welcoming character. The combination of saturated colour and rounded geometry transforms a traditionally functional backstage area into an expressive interior designed for clients, performers, and crew to gather, pause, and recharge.
Photography by Alex Wallbaum & Evan Sheehan
New Kids Beds | Berlin | 2022
Designed for a family home in Berlin, these two custom beds are positioned at the centre of the children’s rooms and conceived to remain relevant from toddlerhood through the teenage years. Their compact architecture combines sleeping areas with integrated storage, helping accommodate the many belongings of childhood while maintaining a calm and uncluttered environment. The bed surfaces are finished in natural linoleum, chosen for its durability and resilience, allowing the furniture to withstand years of everyday use. Designed as adaptable pieces rather than short-term children’s furniture, the beds combine longevity, functionality, and a simple material palette within the domestic setting.
Photography by Anne Deppe.
Matchasome Bar | Berlin | 2022
Designed for Berlin’s first matcha-only café in Mitte, the bar counter and colour scheme establish a distinctive focal point within the compact interior. Its concise, organic form draws inspiration from the rolling fields where matcha is cultivated, translating the landscape into a sculptural element visible through the café’s windows. A vivid green finish gives the counter an immediate visual presence, referencing the colour and vitality of green tea, while crisp white surfaces provide a clean contrast that intensifies its saturated tone. Together, the simple palette and flowing geometry create a recognisable interior identity centred around the preparation and experience of matcha.
Photography by Anne Deppe.
Invisible Kitchen | Berlin | 2020
Designed for their own Berlin studio, Jäll & Tofta explore how a highly functional element can become integrated into the spatial experience rather than standing apart from it. Mirrored fronts allow the kitchenette to visually recede, reflecting the surrounding room and shifting light while giving the interior a subtle sense of movement. At the same time, the reflective surfaces lend the kitchen its own presence and identity, creating a dynamic interplay between the furniture and its surroundings. By reducing the counter to its essential elements and concealing much of its functional character, the project challenges the conventional visibility of the kitchen within the living space.
Photography by Anne Deppe.
