Change is the only true constant. The rhythms of life are never still: places transform, connections unfold, and the way we live is continuously rewritten. In 2019, René Martens and Dario Schröder founded Noah Living together with Creative Director Hannah Schröder and Industrial Designer Felix Landwehr on the quiet belief that furniture should not resist this natural motion, but move gracefully with it.

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The Berlin-based brand approaches furniture as living systems rather than static objects—designed to adapt, endure, and connect. Modularity, material integrity, and circularity form the backbone of their philosophy, resulting in pieces that grow with people and their changing lives.

What began as a simple idea in a family upholstery workshop has slowly taken shape over time. It’s a way of working that values clarity and warmth, with pieces made to last and adapt as life changes. Rather than chasing what’s new, it focuses on building quiet, lasting connections between people and the things that surround them.

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ZUZANNA: Noah Living was founded quite recently, around 2019–2020. Do you remember the early days and your very first products? Do you look back on them with a sense of sentiment, or more as a starting point for what was to come?

NOAH: We started Noah Living in 2019 with the ambition to prove that design furniture can be beautiful, joyful, and responsible all at once. As design lovers, we felt strongly that our times call for more radical ideas in furniture: greater flexibility and smarter answers to today’s environmental challenges.

Starting a furniture brand from scratch was a bold endeavor. Most people we knew in the industry gave us a friendly pat on the back, wishing us “good luck.” Looking back, it was exactly this strong sense of something missing, something we ourselves desperately wanted, that became the driving energy to push through and still keeps us going today.

Our very first product was a modular sofa system, designed and tested in René’s parents’ upholstery workshop in North Rhine-Westphalia. With naïve courage and obsessive perfectionism, we set out to completely rethink the sofa: modular at its core, highly adaptable, and inherently circular. There’s some sentiment attached, because this is where Noah’s DNA was born. It was a prototype not just of a sofa, but of a philosophy.

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Z: The soft seating segment is often seen as one of the most challenging in the furniture industry. Why was this category interesting for you, and what made you decide to start with sofas?

N:Sofas are the heart of a home and the place where life happens. We felt the need for more flexibility: life changes, life evolves, and sometimes life gets messy. That’s why we set out to create a sofa designed for real life.

At the same time, sofas are among the most resource-intensive pieces of furniture. Making them circular not only extends their lifespan but also prevents vast amounts of valuable materials from being wasted too early.  The sofa is the perfect starting point for a change in the industry.

Z: Ten years ago, sofas were hard to repair or recycle and often ended up as waste. Has design thinking moved forward meaningfully, or does fast furniture still dominate?

N: Fast furniture has become the industry standard - cheap, quick, and disposable. While sustainability is increasingly used in marketing, the companies that continue to grow are largely those driving the fast furniture model.

There is genuine progress in parts of the industry, yet too often these efforts remain isolated capsules, while the mainstream still thrives on volume and waste. The real transformation will only begin once circularity is no longer a selling point, but the baseline for all design.

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Z: Responsible design seems deeply embedded in Noah’s DNA. Do you believe sustainability has already become a default standard across the entire furniture industry, or does it still require constant effort to push, educate, and convince both customers and manufacturers?

N: The conversation and understanding around sustainability still focuses mainly on materials. Whether cotton is organic or not is an easy message to communicate and to understand.

Circularity, on the other hand, requires much more education and we are still at the beginning of the education process. It only works if brands and consumers build a long-term relationship. Instead of a linear exchange, selling a product and then possibly never hearing from each other again, circularity requires a shared ecosystem in which both sides ensure that products and their resources are used and reused in the most sustainable way possible. This is a complex story to tell. It doesn’t fit into a quick marketing claim or a simple sustainable badge on a product. Circularity is a new kind of user experience between brand and customer. It begins with the design of the product and extends into services such as an easy-to-navigate parts shop, repair and maintenance guides, or a second-life platform.

The good news is that within these long-term circular relationships lies many benefits — not only for sustainability but also for greater convenience, trust, and meaning. In the end, both customers and brands have much more to gain than just a reduced footprint.

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Z: Modularity has become a signature of Noah Living. What are the biggest challenges when designing modular furniture? Are there situations where modularity becomes a limitation rather than an advantage?

N: Modularity looks effortless in photographs, but in reality it is a demanding design discipline. You are not just designing a sofa, you are designing interfaces, the way pieces connect, detach, and endure over time. The biggest challenge is to make it feel harmonious rather than mechanical. Modularity can sometimes limit us, especially when radical shapes or ultra-slim profiles would compromise stability. Yet we treat these constraints as creative fuel because they push us to innovate within boundaries. Modularity also codes for the non-linear customer relationship we foster. If you can change, maintain and repair your design over long periods of time, the customer relationship does not end at the furniture sale but stays with us for as long as the furniture stays with them. 

Z: Your sofas and accessories are often described as timeless. What does that actually mean in your design practice? What must a product have in order to truly withstand the test of time, both aesthetically and functionally?

N: Timelessness is not about being invisible. It is about resonance across decades. For us, a timeless product has three qualities. First, clarity: the form is reduced to essentials without gimmicks. Second, integrity: the materials age gracefully rather than fall apart. Third, adaptability: the product can live with you through changing homes, tastes, and life stages. When these qualities are present, a product has a real chance of surviving the noise of trends.

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Z: Designing a sofa is particularly challenging, given that the ergonomics are well-established and so much has already been done in this category worldwide. How do you approach this process of creating something both original and enduring?

N: Ergonomics are essentially a solved equation, but that does not mean the story is finished. Our approach is to zoom out. Instead of asking how to design a prettier sofa, we ask how to design a better sofa system. That shift in scope is where originality lies. We are not chasing novelty for its own sake. In most cases, our modularity goals push us to integrate elements that wouldn’t be part of a “classic” design, like the poles of our first Noah Sofa. Without their function, these features might seem odd. But we learned to cherish such functional necessities, as they also bring originality into our designs.

Z: Beyond sofas, you are also developing a line of complementary pieces. What are the guiding principles behind these designs? 

N: All Noah products are independent products that share the same design approach and philosophy. The guiding principle is always the same: modularity, material integrity, and local craft. We want the ecosystem to feel coherent but not dependent, like a family of products that can thrive together or independently. The Lino bed and the Heia bed are incredible products in and of themselves, they take sustainable design to a whole new level.

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Z: Looking ahead, how do you envision the future for Noah? What are your ambitions?

N: Our ambition is to create a blueprint for how brands and their customers can build a new kind of relationship, one that enables more responsible consumption and moves us closer to a circular economy. This is not just a question for the furniture industry but a general one. 

For us, growth means developing more circular products and services, finding smarter solutions for local supply chains, and inspiring more customers to see furniture as an investment rather than something disposable.

And through it all, we aim to create beauty and joy, because this is what the objects that surround us should do for us. —