EP38: Markus Töll On True Materials: Craft, Silence, and the Freedom of Making Things That Last

Markus Töll is the founder of SUPERSEDIA, a Vienna-based studio dedicated to the hand manufacture of seating objects. He grew up in his father's metalworking workshop in Bressanone, trained as a metalworker, and went on to study architecture at Vienna's Technical University. The practice brings structural rigour and craft intimacy together in chairs and objects that sit somewhere between furniture, sculpture, and small architecture. Since 2022, SUPERSEDIA has collaborated with Stone Island across more than 20 flagship stores worldwide, and was named in Wallpaper's Future Icons 2026.

What if the most honest thing a chair can do is have no front, no back, no upside, and nothing to hide?

Töll's practice is built on the constant dialogue between an idea and its immediate realisation. He works slowly, plans obsessively, and insists on making everything by hand, including, until recently, the screws. He sources materials exclusively from four traditional artisan workshops in Vienna. He chose a studio across the Danube so that no one passes by coincidentally. His furniture is reduced without being minimalistic. Made from true materials. Built to be inherited.

In this episode, Markus speaks about growing up beside his father at the workbench, the physical and emotional cost of going fully independent, and what it means to build a practice on patience rather than urgency. We talk about Carlo Scarpa, the Stone Island collaboration that started with a Shanghai daybed he redesigned, why he believes the handmade detail lives in the moment you stop, and what it means to work in silence every day toward something you are not yet ready to show.