Stool in styrofoam
Scanned Traces #1
2025
The project explores the boundary between surface and volume. It starts with objects at home, materials and shapes that are often overlooked.
Through scanning, these surfaces are recorded and turned into three-dimensional structures. Instead of adding or changing them, what already exists is extracted, enlarged, and given presence at a new scale.
In this transformation, a tension appears between the flat and the spatial. We usually have a fixed idea of what something is – but what happens when that boundary is disrupted and the object is reinterpreted in its most basic structure?
The project moves between digital recording and physical making, where technology is not used to create something new, but to reveal what is already there. It questions how value and form are created, and how everyday materials can contain complex spatial qualities.
As part of the process, kitchen aluminium foil was scanned, scaled up digitally, and CNC milled. The shape was then made physical in Styrofoam, a light and fragile material that strengthens the feeling of instability. The volume looks solid, but still carries traces of its origin as something thin and temporary.
By moving the unnoticed into a new scale and context, the project opens up a reconsideration of how we perceive material, form, and space. What was once background becomes structure.
The project is based on the idea that boundaries are not fixed, but open to negotiation. In this movement, forms appear that are not added, but already exist in what is being translated.
Emilie Seferaj is a Swedish designer working between material inquiry, graphic form, and spatial translation. With a background in retail leadership, she carries an enduring interest in human interaction and the construction of meaningful encounters. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Design (2025) from HDK-Valand – Academy of Art and Design at the University of Gothenburg, and has also studied at Aalto University in Helsinki.
Emilie is driven by a curiosity about stories and communication – how design can carry meaning, evoke associations, and create dialogue between humans and objects. Her practice moves between the graphic and the material, where visual languages are tested, displaced, and re-embodied in physical form. In this shifting space, surface becomes structure, and information turns into matter.