The steel in Sarah Naghawi’s JAWF collection looks caught halfway between a box and a balloon. Surfaces bulge, dip, and crease, giving rigid metal the appearance of something you might squeeze. I like that moment of confusion, especially because the material remains so obviously metallic. Presented at Amman Design Week 2026, the Jordanian designer’s experimental collection explores how pressure can turn stainless-steel sheets into sculptural objects with their own internal spaces.
The problem being explored belongs to the workshop rather than the living room: how to give sheet metal volume, depth, and an interior through the forming process itself. Naghawi uses hydromechanical forming, introducing hydraulic fluid pressure into welded sheet assemblies so the metal expands and deforms. Pressure becomes a shaping tool, pushing the steel beyond its original flat condition. The attraction is that the resulting surface helps define both the object’s exterior and the space within it.
Designer: Sarah Naghawi (photos by ASPIRE Ali Saadi Photography)
That industrial terminology sounds less approachable than the result. Think of the principle of inflation, except the steel permanently retains the deformation created during fabrication. Outward curves and inward hollows remain as evidence of the forces applied to the material. This gives the objects a physical history you can read in their surfaces. The process hasn’t been hidden beneath a decorative finish; its effects supply much of the visual character.
The name helps explain why those hollows matter. JAWF comes from an Arabic word referring to an inner chamber or protected cavity. Naghawi treats that interior space as a starting point for design, with recesses suggesting possibilities for storage and enclosure. I appreciate that emphasis because sculptural furniture can sometimes ask us to admire its silhouette while leaving its practical purpose unresolved. Here, the cavity is central to the investigation, even if everyday usefulness still needs closer examination.
In the exhibition photographs, a tall rectangular piece stands on slender, splayed legs, with three pronounced recesses arranged vertically across its face. Nearby, a horizontal piece stretches across angled supports, its upper surface rising and falling rather than settling into a conventional flat plane. A smaller stacked form brings the same swelling geometry closer to the floor. The family resemblance comes through clearly, but each silhouette gives the pressure-shaped surfaces a different setting.
The reflective finish makes those shapes particularly animated in photographs. Blue from the exhibition floor and bright patches of window light break across the steel, making some edges easy to follow and others surprisingly difficult to locate. To my eye, the pieces sit somewhere between furniture and oversized, crumpled silver packaging. That comparison is affectionate. The familiar shine draws you in, while the uneven geometry prevents the objects from becoming another exercise in polished metallic perfection.
The studio’s balloon reference feels especially useful here. A balloon’s skin and its interior volume develop together under pressure; JAWF translates that relationship into a material that holds the resulting shape. The resemblance stops short of literal imitation, which is a good choice. These aren’t novelty balloons recreated in steel. Their boxy outlines, compressed areas, and deep cavities give them a more awkward, interesting presence. They look like objects negotiating with the force that made them.
I’d want dimensions, weight, pricing, and evidence of everyday usability before treating JAWF as a furniture recommendation. A striking recess doesn’t automatically make a convenient shelf, and an expressive surface doesn’t establish how comfortably an object fits into a home. Those questions don’t diminish the experiment. They establish where the next stage of development would become interesting: translating a compelling material study into pieces whose proportions and functions feel equally considered.
For now, I’m persuaded by the decision to leave the steel’s deformation visible. JAWF gives the eye plenty to enjoy, but it also makes fabrication part of that enjoyment. You can follow a bulge into a hollow and understand that the two belong to the same event. That’s a satisfying reason to look twice, even before deciding where the object might live.
