AtMa: J39.5 — AtMa

Ateliers Courbet is pleased to introduce J39.5, Japanese design studio AtMa’s open series of unique chairs resulting from years of research and development on upcycling and recycling materials. J39.5 pays homage to the design legacy and principles of Børge Mogensen, as each of the chairs in the series is a playful reconfiguration of upcycled materials and restored parts salvaged from the Danish designer’s historical J39 chair. Opening on September 19, 2026, at Courbet’s new master-craftsmen’s residence and private gallery at 53 Crosby street in SoHo, the exhibition marks AtMa’s first exhibition in the US, presented with the gracious collaboration of design critic and curator Glenn Adamson.

What became a fully immersive project for the studio began with the encounter of a damaged J39, found in a vintage furniture warehouse with a missing leg and a cracked backrest. The object was too significant to discard, yet too costly to repair. AtMa took the chair back to their studio and, working only with what remained, reassembled its surviving parts according to what each configuration made possible. No new materials were introduced.

Broken legs and backrests are crushed into powder, strained into paper, and twisted into cord for the seats, so that the chair’s own legs become its seat. The series has since grown into an open-ended research inquiry. The more time AtMa spends with Mogensen’s design, the better they understand its logic, and the more freely they are able to work within it and against it. Written in the spirit of a software update, the title marks both a debt to the original chair and a small step beyond it.

The J39.5 project sits within AtMa’s larger practice, which returns repeatedly to the question of what a material or an object already carries before a designer intervenes. Rather than treating found parts as raw stock, the studio works to understand a piece thoroughly before altering it, a method the studio has described as adding only what is required, and a little more. The approach has drawn attention from design juries internationally, and situates AtMa within a broader lineage of designers working through salvage and reassembly, while remaining distinct in its sustained focus on a single source object.

Mogensen’s iconic J39 chair, produced by FDB Møbler, was designed for postwar Danish households and remains one of the most recognizable achievements of Scandinavian modernism. AtMa’s series treats that legacy not as a subject for commentary, but as raw material for continued use, extending the life of a design already built to last.