Company: Sandler

Company URL: www.sandlerseating.com

Product/Collection Name: Kawa

About This Product: Designed by Annie Lee, ENV New York. Manufactured in Conover, NC

Every morning, designer Annie Lee looks out at the Hudson River. Trees, rocks, pebbles, shifting water. Nothing stays exactly the same, yet somehow it all belongs together.

That became the idea behind Kawa.

Created as an organic counterpoint to the tailored geometry of Klip, Kawa takes its name from the Japanese word for river. Lee wanted to capture something softer and more fluid while preserving the ability for a space to adapt over time.

The result is a collection of organic forms designed to work in relationship with one another, much like the changing contours of a riverbed. Curved elements nest, separate, and recombine, allowing designers to compose an environment rather than conform to a prescribed configuration.

For Lee, nature offered the perfect model:
“There’s not a single answer. Rainy days are as beautiful as sunny days. Low tide is as beautiful as high tide.”
— Annie Lee, ENV New York

That absence of a single answer is central to Kawa.

A composition can grow or contract. Pieces can separate or come together as the number of people changes. A setting designed for a few doesn't have to feel wrong when the group gets larger.

Lee captures that idea in five words: “You always have room for one more.”
— Annie Lee, ENV New York

It may be the simplest explanation of what makes Kawa different. Its flexibility isn't merely about rearranging furniture. It's about creating places that can welcome change, collaboration, and people.

Nature isn't merely referenced in Kawa's shape, either. It can become part of the furniture itself.

Integrated planter elements allow greenery to be considered as part of the composition from the beginning. That was important to Lee, who often sees plants introduced only after an interior is finished, leaving designers to find somewhere to put them. With Kawa, greenery can belong to the architecture of the seating rather than being an accessory to it.

And as the larger environment changes, Kawa can change with it. Existing elements can be rearranged, separated, combined, or supplemented for new layouts and uses.

Kawa isn't designed only for a floorplan.

It is designed for the life of a space.

Like the river that inspired it, Kawa can change, adapt, and make room for what comes next.

Why Kawa stands apart:
Inspired by nature. Designed to behave like it.
Organic forms express a system intended to shift, adapt, and evolve.

No single right configuration.
Kawa gives designers creative freedom to compose environments around the needs of each space.

Greenery by design, not as an afterthought.
Integrated planter elements make nature part of the composition from the beginning.

Always room for one more.
Kawa can respond naturally as groups expand, contract, gather, and collaborate.

Designed for the life of a space.
Existing elements can take on new configurations as needs change over time.