“Rite of Passage” is the debut collection built from SYN:Ligna, a new material language developed through an extended investigation into FDM 3D printing. Rather than treating 3D printing as a mere tool for prototyping, the project asks whether the process can become a craft in its own right—one capable of producing objects with the depth and refinement associated with traditional materials.
SYN:Ligna reconstructs the hidden anatomy of wood—its grain, its fibres, and its growth logic—inside a translucent printed shell. Light passes through it, while density and direction can be shaped with precision. It is not an imitation of wood, but a synthetic interpretation: familiar in logic, yet entirely its own.
The collection turns to Hong Kong’s origins as Heung Gong, the Fragrant Harbour. Once a centre of the agarwood trade, the city’s identity was shaped by wooden boats, coastal temples, incense, and ritual. A table and an incense holder draw from temple traditions, whilst three illuminated sculptures take their forms from sailboats and seafaring trade.
“Rite of Passage” is not a recreation of that history, but a crossing of it—carrying an inherited structure into transformation, asking what remains of an origin once it has been remade.
Ultramar—Latin for “beyond the sea”—is a Madrid-based furniture and object design studio founded in 2023, inviting you on a journey through narratives and folklore from across the sea.
Our studio creates objects through a dialogue between culture, architecture, material, and technology. We look to what has been crafted before us—not for how it appeared, but for why it existed—extracting principles rather than reproducing forms. A shape becomes a principle; a ritual becomes a structure; an artefact becomes a language.
Material and process are integral to the design itself, not subsequent steps. Constraints become features, while technical anomalies are elevated into aesthetics. Moving between furniture, sculpture, and architecture, the work often demands time to fully reveal itself.
The past is material for the future.
11:00–15:00 (20/11)
11:00–20:00 (21–29/11)
11:00–15:00 (20/11)
11:00–20:00 (21–29/11)