You’re one step away from finishing your new flat furniture, only to realize that one last screw is missing. A devastating, but very real, situation. While flat furniture provides many advantages over traditional boxes, there are still some pain points that need to be addressed, and missing hardware is definitely one of them. Enter it DADO system with Ior Items by Allen Kaufman. No hardware, no glue, no snap — the system is meant to snap together with friction, precision and finesse alone.
AKO’s first comprehensive collection, presented in its best light at Berlin Design Week 2026, cleverly combines the strength and lightness of solid wood with the detail that designers expect from sensible construction. Developed under ALLEN KAUFMANN ARCHITEKTEN since 2014, AKO brings architectural thinking to the scale of furniture and objects: things that can be owned, assembled by hand, taken apart, repaired, moved and preserved.
No hardware means no screw holes to cover, no seams to hide, no uncomfortable bottom that tells a different story than the polished surface above. Everything is exactly where it should be – no more, no less. The pieces can technically be used in any direction: nothing to hide.
As simple and elegant as it is, powerful shapes emerge — a graphic grid, the architect’s plane. Thinner boards are intersected with the larger frame to strengthen the structure, running diagonally across the shelves and supporting the horizontal planes as they bisect the legs. A load-bearing element that also serves as subtle decoration, this structural rhythm creates visual interest along the underside of the shelves while keeping the tops completely unobstructed, ready for storage, display and serving.
The DADO series joins AKO’s Dovetail pieces, which use interlocking dovetail geometry to transform a traditional joint into a structural, spatial and visual principle. A stool also joins the collection, with five specialized pieces joining together to form a solid geometric seat. Assembly is intuitive, with each cut quietly delineating where the next piece can go. As designers, it is our duty and privilege to make the things we create as understandable as possible.
Entering the sunny space, one immediately encounters a series of chairs, decorated with pastel cushions in various colors. The body of each chair forms a square, its sides extending to form the back, seat and points of contact with the floor. Balanced, subtle, yet elevated, AKO’s philosophy is as much about what doesn’t exist. No brackets. No clips. No one-time tool you’ll keep for six years and never find it when you need it. There is no small landfill of unnecessary parts inside the box.
Demonstrating a commitment to the honest use of material, AKO takes this beyond product design and into a more philosophical approach. The paper asks whether furniture can be materially purer, structurally more honest, more comprehensible and more worthy of preservation. Wood, after all, is renewable and of low toxicity, but it is also difficult. It moves. It has grain, intensity and quirks – almost like a fingerprint. Rather than flattening these qualities, AKO works with them through precision joinery, repetitive geometry and construction that remains visible.
Justin Allen, co-founder of ALLEN KAUFMANN OBJECTS, shares the “why” behind DADO: “One material. Traditional frames with inventions. Flat pack. Built to last and built to move with you. Flexible, like our lives. Flexible like wood.”
To learn more about the DADO system from Allen Kaufmann Objects, visit allenkaufmann.de or akobjects.com.
Photo courtesy of Allen Kaufmann Objects.
