GUBI Furniture and Lighting: Icons of Modern Design
GUBI is a Copenhagen-based design house known for its daring collection of furniture, lighting, and interior objects. Bringing together rediscovered 20th-century masterpieces and innovative contemporary designs, GUBI creates interiors that feel expressive, sophisticated, and deeply personal.
The collection moves confidently between eras and styles. Sculptural lounge chairs sit alongside streamlined Scandinavian lighting, while richly upholstered sofas complement tables shaped from marble, wood, metal, and glass. Each piece has a distinctive identity, yet the complete collection shares an appreciation for beauty, craftsmanship, comfort, and the pleasure of living well.
A Copenhagen Design House Since 1967
GUBI was founded in Denmark in 1967 by Lisbeth and Gubi Olsen. The family business initially produced its own furniture designs while also working with textiles for the retail market.
Over time, the company developed a more expansive and unconventional approach to design. Under owner and creative director Jacob Gubi, the brand became known for identifying overlooked historical designs and returning them to production, often in close collaboration with designers’ families and archives.
GUBI also works with established and emerging contemporary designers to create new pieces with the potential to become future classics. This combination gives the collection its distinctive range, extending across almost a century of international design.
Past Icons and Future Classics
GUBI’s collection is shaped by a dialogue between the past and the present. The company searches design archives for furniture and lighting that remain original, relevant, and capable of enriching contemporary life.
These rediscoveries are not selected simply because they are historic. GUBI looks for designs with a strong point of view—pieces that may have been ahead of their time, produced only briefly, or overlooked outside their original markets.
Alongside these archival works, GUBI commissions contemporary designers to explore new materials, forms, and ways of living. Historical and new designs are presented together, allowing unexpected relationships to emerge across decades, cultures, and creative movements.
GUBI Seating and Lounge Furniture
GUBI seating ranges from refined dining chairs to generously proportioned lounge chairs, sofas, benches, stools, and ottomans. The collection includes clean architectural forms, expressive curves, woven materials, tailored upholstery, and richly tactile surfaces.
Rather than adhering to one definition of modern design, GUBI embraces contrast. A low, organic lounge chair may sit comfortably beside a structured sofa or a slender mid-century side chair. Shared attention to proportion and materials allows these different voices to form a cohesive interior.
Extensive choices in upholstery, leather, wood, metal finishes, and base configurations make many designs adaptable to residential, hospitality, and professional projects.
The GUBI Beetle Chair
Designed by Danish-Italian studio GamFratesi, the Beetle Chair is one of GUBI’s most recognizable contemporary designs. Its form draws inspiration from the anatomy of a beetle, interpreting the insect’s protective outer shell and softer interior through a curved seat and supportive upholstery.
The chair’s distinctive silhouette feels both sculptural and approachable. Variations developed for dining, lounging, meetings, counters, and bars allow the design language to continue throughout different areas of an interior.
A broad selection of textiles, leathers, shell finishes, and bases provides opportunities for personalization. The Beetle Chair can appear restrained in a neutral upholstery or become an expressive focal point through color, texture, and contrasting metalwork.
Pierre Paulin’s Pacha Collection
French designer Pierre Paulin originally created the Pacha Lounge Chair in 1975. Its low profile, rounded volumes, and inviting upholstery offered a softer and more informal alternative to the austerity of earlier postwar furniture.
Raised subtly from the floor, the Pacha Chair appears to float. Its generous curves support the body while giving the design a relaxed and sculptural presence. The absence of conventional legs reinforces Paulin’s vision of low-level living and creates a sense of visual ease.
GUBI has expanded Pacha into a family that includes lounge chairs, sofas, ottomans, and outdoor versions. Used individually or arranged as a seating landscape, the collection brings comfort and unmistakable character to contemporary interiors.
GUBI Sofas
GUBI sofas balance inviting comfort with strong visual identity. The collection ranges from tailored, architectural designs to softer compositions defined by generous curves and deep upholstery.
Modular and multi-seat options can support both intimate residential settings and larger hospitality spaces. Carefully considered proportions allow the sofas to remain elegant even when substantial in scale.
Fabric and leather selections make it possible to tailor each design to its setting. Textured neutrals can emphasize form and comfort, while saturated colors and patterns create a more dramatic centerpiece.
Dining Chairs and Bar Seating
GUBI dining chairs bring together comfort, craftsmanship, and expressive design. Upholstered pieces provide softness for extended dining, while molded, woven, and wooden designs offer visual lightness and material variety.
Many seating families include coordinating counter stools, bar chairs, and meeting chairs. This allows designers to create continuity between dining rooms, kitchens, bars, offices, and hospitality areas without repeating precisely the same form.
Different base finishes and upholstery combinations make it possible to coordinate the seating with a wide range of tables and architectural materials.
GUBI Tables
The GUBI table collection includes dining tables, coffee tables, side tables, consoles, desks, and outdoor designs. Materials such as marble, stone, glass, wood, and metal are used to create surfaces with distinctive weight, texture, and presence.
Some tables rely on restrained geometry and refined proportions. Others feature bold sculptural bases or richly patterned natural stone that makes every example visually unique.
Dining tables establish a strong center for gathering, while occasional tables bring useful surfaces and contrasting materials into seating arrangements. Their variety makes GUBI tables suitable for both understated and highly expressive interiors.
GUBI Lighting
GUBI lighting spans pendant lamps, chandeliers, floor lamps, table lamps, and wall-mounted designs. The collection includes archival works by influential 20th-century designers as well as contemporary lighting created for modern homes and commercial spaces.
Each lamp is designed as both a source of illumination and an object with its own personality. Some fixtures use sculptural shades to control and direct light, while others explore balance, reflection, transparency, or adjustable movement.
Whether placed over a dining table, beside a lounge chair, or within a hospitality setting, GUBI lighting contributes atmosphere even when it is switched off.
Greta M. Grossman Lighting
Swedish designer and architect Greta Magnusson Grossman created some of GUBI’s best-known lighting designs. Her work combined Scandinavian clarity with the energy and experimentation of mid-century California modernism.
The Gräshoppa Lamp, originally designed in 1947, is recognized for its angled stance, elongated conical shade, and sense of poised movement. Its distinctive silhouette is playful yet highly functional, directing light where it is needed.
Grossman’s lighting collection also includes pendants, table lamps, and other designs that demonstrate her command of proportion and asymmetry. Reintroduced by GUBI, these pieces feel remarkably current while preserving their mid-century character.
Multi-Lite and Sculptural Illumination
GUBI’s lighting collection includes expressive fixtures capable of changing both their appearance and the direction of their light. The Multi-Lite, designed by Louis Weisdorf, is a notable example.
Its adjustable outer shades can be repositioned to direct light upward, downward, or asymmetrically. This flexibility gives the lamp several visual identities and allows the user to shape its effect within the room.
Such designs illustrate GUBI’s preference for lighting that invites interaction. Form and illumination work together, turning a functional object into an adaptable element of the interior.
Outdoor Furniture
GUBI extends its distinctive design language outdoors with seating, tables, lounge furniture, and exterior versions of selected icons. The collection is designed for terraces, patios, balconies, gardens, poolside environments, and hospitality projects.
Outdoor adaptations preserve the character of the original furniture while introducing materials and finishes suited to exterior conditions. Woven textures, durable upholstery, treated metals, and weather-conscious construction support both comfort and performance.
The range makes it possible to create outdoor rooms with the same attention to atmosphere, proportion, and personal expression found inside the home.
Mirrors and Interior Accessories
GUBI accessories add function and character without requiring a complete furnishing scheme. Mirrors, decorative objects, and complementary pieces can introduce sculptural shapes, reflective surfaces, or unexpected color into an interior.
Mirrors can serve as practical additions to bedrooms and entryways while also expanding views and amplifying natural light. Smaller objects provide a finishing layer that connects furniture, lighting, art, and architecture.
These pieces reflect the same curatorial approach as the larger collection: each object is selected or designed for its ability to contribute something memorable.
Materials, Colors, and Upholstery
Material richness is central to the GUBI aesthetic. Polished and honed stone, warm woods, lustrous metals, woven cane, molded shells, glass, leather, and expressive textiles appear throughout the collection.
These materials are frequently combined to create contrast. A sculptural marble base may support a visually light top, while tactile upholstery softens a precise metal frame. Natural variation gives stone and wood pieces individuality.
Many upholstered designs are offered in an extensive selection of fabrics and leathers. This flexibility allows a piece to be tailored to the color, texture, and performance requirements of a particular project.
A Global Collection of Designers
GUBI’s creative network spans multiple generations, countries, and design disciplines. Its archive includes work by Pierre Paulin, Greta M. Grossman, Mathieu Matégot, Joe Colombo, Gabriella Crespi, Carlo De Carli, and Louis Weisdorf.
Contemporary collaborators include GamFratesi, Space Copenhagen, Yabu Pushelberg, OEO Studio, and other internationally recognized designers.
Bringing these perspectives together creates a collection that resists a single period style. Scandinavian modernism, Italian experimentation, French organic design, and contemporary global influences coexist in a way that feels curated rather than conventional.
Furniture for Expressive Interiors
GUBI furniture is particularly suited to interiors designed around atmosphere and individuality. The collection allows classic and contemporary pieces to be mixed without making a room feel confined to one decade.
A sculptural lounge chair can establish a focal point, while a quiet dining table creates balance. Decorative lighting introduces warmth and vertical interest, and rich textiles bring softness to stone, glass, and metal surfaces.
This layered approach can be used in private homes, restaurants, hotels, offices, boutiques, and other environments where character is as important as function.
Selecting GUBI Furniture and Lighting
Choosing the right GUBI design begins with the scale and purpose of the space. Seating should support the desired level of comfort and interaction, while tables need to accommodate circulation and everyday use.
Lighting requires consideration of mounting height, light direction, surrounding finishes, and the mood of the room. Upholstery and material selections should complement the broader interior while meeting practical performance requirements.
For outdoor pieces, placement, exposure, maintenance, and storage may also influence the appropriate finish and upholstery.
Discover GUBI at Scott + Cooner
Explore GUBI furniture and lighting at Scott + Cooner and discover a collection where forgotten design icons meet the classics of tomorrow.
Our experienced team works with homeowners, architects, and interior designers to select GUBI sofas, lounge chairs, dining chairs, tables, lighting, outdoor furniture, and accessories for residential and commercial projects. We can assist with product selection, dimensions, upholstery, materials, finishes, and special orders.
Contact Scott + Cooner or visit one of our showrooms to experience GUBI’s distinctive combination of modern design, historical discovery, material richness, and contemporary comfort.