3:4 Low Rack is a minimal shelf as part of the Chapter 2 furniture collection created by Belgium-based designer Joris Verstrepen. The aluminum frame sits on the gallery floor, its precise angles capturing a fragment of burled wood like a photographer framing a fleeting moment of natural beauty. In Verstrepen’s second collection, we witness how the cinematic language of aspect ratios has been repurposed to create a new design grammar—one that examines our relationship with nature’s impermanence through the lens of carefully considered proportions.

Where the first collection employed diamond-inspired settings of aluminum to display natural materials, this evolution draws inspiration from photography’s compositional language. The familiar ratios that shape our visual culture—16:9, 4:5, 3:4—become more than mathematical relationships; they transform into windows framing transcendent natural beauty, creating a dialogue between the precision of human creation and the organic irregularity of natural materials.

This deliberate framing recalls the Japanese concept of shakkei, or “borrowed scenery,” where garden designers precisely frame distant landscapes. Yet Verstrepen’s approach inverts this tradition—rather than borrowing from distance, these pieces capture nature’s essence within the domestic sphere, allowing intimate engagement with materials that would otherwise remain remote or ephemeral.

The console pieces particularly exemplify this philosophy. Each frame presents a different material dialogue—here, the cool rationality of aluminum contrasts with the warm, complex patterns of figured wood; there, stone appears suspended like a geological photograph, its formation history captured in perfect stillness. The proportional relationships create a cinematographic experience, transforming static furniture into visual narratives about material and time.