The vase is often presented as a neutral domestic object, but its persistence in interiors reveals more about social habits than about flowers. While its basic function is to hold plant life, its real role has long shifted toward representation, taste, and symbolic order within the home. Historically, vases emerged as containers tied to ritual, storage, and power. In ancient cultures, they were associated with religion, trading, and status, made through tediously time-consuming processes. Decorations, particularly in Greek and Chinese vases, held stories, morals, and status. Right from its inception, the vase was a sign in culture rather than a purely functional object.

With the establishment of the "domestic" as a site for demonstration of one’s Cultural Capital, the use of the vase as “domesticated” is contemporaneous with this historical development, beginning with the Renaissance era. Thus starting at this time, the home as we know it today became an area for cultural expression through what we would now refer to as Cultural Capital. A person began to create his or her home in a way that showed their refinement, education, and their familiarity with the aesthetic language. In addition to the use of the vase, Still-Life artists also employed the use of vases as visual representations of the owner's control over Nature, as well as the passing of time.

“Objects are no longer linked to function, but to a system of signs.”

— Jean Baudrillard, Philosopher

Although the vase is no longer explicitly identified with symbolic meanings in today's society, it still retains its historical role as a social Vehicle. Today the vase is produced so it is standardized and mass-produced making it readily available to most people. Even though it was mass-produced and accessible, the presence of vases conveys: Time, (resources spent), attention (to detail), and order (a sign of normative behavior in a household). By representing the individual’s time, resources, and attention to detail to his/her home, the vase supports the reproduction of ritualising cultural competence and domesticity.

At the same time, a parallel shift has emerged. Numerous designers have set out to redefine the vase not merely as a normal home decoration but as something extraordinary. In so doing, they seek to exploit the imperfections and time-consuming processes associated with handmade design to resist the notions of standardization and replication. In essence, the vase is transformed into a space for experimentation, where a certain degree of singularity in terms of form, material, and handling becomes not merely a consequence but the overriding goal. Within this context, the presentation of the handmade object ceases to represent nostalgia but, rather, a deliberate position, namely advocating singularity and defiance against the laws of replicability.

The NMV Vase by NM3 exemplifies this condition with deliberate clarity. Made from 1.5 mm BA stainless steel, the object rejects any ornamental softness traditionally associated with vases. Instead, it relies on raw material presence and precise geometry. The reflective metal surface does not disappear into the background of the interior; it asserts itself, mirroring its surroundings and reinforcing its objecthood.

NM3’s approach is rooted in an industrial logic. Typical manufacturing elements are not disguised but emphasized, combined through fundamental processes that foreground structure and proportion. The result is a vase that feels both familiar and abstract—recognizable in typology, yet resistant to expectation. Its potential lies not in accommodating flowers gracefully, but in exposing the tension between containment and form.

Eddy Vase produced by the brand Ferm Living adopts a rather radical stance in current design culture. The piece retains its nominal identity as a vase; however, its purpose is undermined through form. The Eddy Vase comprises mirror-polished stainless steel. The focus of Eddy Vase does not lie in its function of holding items but rather in its reflectiveness.

The curved foil element that embraces and exceeds the cylindrical form Cloud disturbs its usability and legibility. This element has no functional purpose; it only shouts gesture, movement, and excess. Flowers are relegated to secondary status and placed in a frame as accessory to the object, rather than to its purpose. Cloud is best understood as sculpture—a thing intended for circulation in interior spaces as an image, rather than for its usability.

However, when Eddy encourages the vase to engage with spectacle, the Steel Vase Tessera by Ferm Living tends to shrink back to a balancer of presence and function. Although it is still very much a showpiece, Tessera does not aspire to excess or chaos. The highly polished stainless steel affects a reservedness as it reflects its environment, thus integrating itself rather than being prominent. The vase now becomes less of a spectacle and more of a building block of form—a precise and stable architectural piece.

Its form is legible and subservient to that end. Tessera does not overextend itself but keeps its contents in check, so that flowers can co-exist and not be compromised. The reflection is expressive but not overwhelming; rather, it strikes a synecdoche between that aesthetic and the functional. Once again, Tessera keeps vases in their typographical form, reinterpreting them through materials and measurements.

While former vases negotiate between image, presence, and function, the Pressure Vase by Tim Teven Studio shifts the focus decidedly toward process. In the Pressure Series, design emerges not from formal composition but from material transformation itself. Extreme pressure becomes both method and message, foregrounding the conditions of production as the primary expressive element.

Made of open steel tubes subjected to forces up to 45 metric tons, the material yields rather than resists deformation. Folds, compressions, and irregularities arise that disturb the industrial neutrality of the steel. That which is conventionally associated with rigidity and precision is reconstructed into something unexpectedly soft and tactile. The vase records pressure as a visible and permanent trace.

With Gravity – Vase L, Fundamental Berlin reintroduces structure and system as the central design strategy. Unlike vases defined by surface, gesture, or deformation, Gravity operates through a regulating framework that actively controls how flowers are arranged. The object does not merely contain nature; it organizes it.

The design marries a glass cylinder with a geometric stainless-steel grid that wraps the exterior. Rather than a decoration, the grid is an interface that allows stems to be placed not only from the top but also through the sides. Flowers are therefore distributed according to the logic of the structure, creating arrangements that are sparse, deliberate, and architecturally composed.

The Balloon Vase concept by Nikami pushes the contemporary vase toward an explicit tension between structure and absence. Rather than focusing on surface, function, or process alone, the object stages a confrontation between what is heavy and what is immaterial. A brutalist aluminum skeleton surrounds a soft, inflated core, resembling scaffolding built to support nothing but air.

In this configuration, the vase does not contain flowers so much as it contains pressure. The rigid framework holds the inflated volume in place, making tension visible and static. What is usually invisible—air, force, expansion—is transformed into the primary subject of the object. The vase becomes a spatial diagram rather than a container.

With Soliflor Aurora, AMCA OVAL shifts the discussion from the single object to the idea of system. Rather than presenting the vase as an isolated artifact, Aurora is conceived as a module within a larger construction game, capable of interlocking with other elements to form expandable configurations. The vase becomes one component in a flexible structure rather than a self-contained statement.

Designed by Alexis Martial and Adrien Caillaudaud, the soliflore reflects a minimal aesthetic infused with subtle space-age references. Its form is reduced to essential elements: two raw aluminum plates laser-cut in France, a central glass tube, and four black rubber pods that hold the components together. Assembly is visible and legible, emphasizing how the object is made and how it functions within a system.

RC ANNEX II, by Anoe Melliou, pushes the boundaries of the vase to incorporate a new logic that is that of infrastructure. In this project, it is no longer a static object that is presented but rather a semicircular stainless steel piece that has a magnetic system that enables vases to be removed and slid along. This renders the vase active in space.

The hand-brushed stainless steel arc functions as both support and constraint. It defines a trajectory rather than a position, allowing the attached vases to shift while remaining bound to a predetermined path. Movement is possible, but never free. This controlled mobility introduces a subtle tension between flexibility and order, reinforcing the idea that contemporary design increasingly operates through systems rather than singular forms.

With the Cloud Vase, HKLIVING reintroduces irregularity and intuition into a landscape increasingly shaped by systems, control, and structure. Unlike modular or infrastructural vases, Cloud resists legibility. Its twisted, transparent body appears almost accidental—glossy yet rough, fluid yet unstable—suggesting a form that has emerged rather than been designed.

Made from clear glass, the vase emphasizes material expression over typological clarity. Transparency allows light to pass through, but the distorted surface interrupts it, producing reflections and refractions that are inconsistent and unpredictable. The object behaves less like a container and more like a sculptural organism, each piece carrying slight variations that undermine standardization.

This emphasis on material expression over typological clarity is taken further by the Tercet Vase 190, designed by Matthias Reinirkens and produced in Germany. With dimensions of 296 mm in height and 190 mm in diameter, the object asserts a clear physical presence while resisting any sense of completeness or autonomy. Made from 3 mm raw aluminium, glass, and stainless steel fasteners, the vase openly displays its construction, refusing surface refinement or visual illusion.

The Tercet Vase 190 is part of the broader Tercet product family, a series of self-assembled objects based on a shared construction logic rather than formal variation. Each piece is generated through minor iterations of the same principle: a three-wall aluminium structure combined with an additional disc. Design here progresses through adjustment and repetition, not reinvention.

At the center of the object is a glass cylinder with a rounded base—intentionally unstable and incapable of standing on its own. This instability is not accidental but essential. The glass vessel only becomes a vase through its dependency on the aluminium structure, establishing a clear hierarchy between fragility and support. The aluminium body provides both stability and definition, constructed from three untreated plates held together by visible stainless steel fasteners. The structure remains open, direct, and legible; nothing is concealed, and nothing is added for purely aesthetic reasons.

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Words: Simone Lorusso