About us

About us

Miduny is an artisanal furniture studio in Brooklyn led by Italian-born architect Alessandro Preda.

Our small-batch products are honest and authentic. Each design is developed with great care and built with passion–to last generations. From the wood veneer book-matching, to the sanding, to the finishing, the masterful touch of our craftsmen is visible in the final piece. We hand-stamp a unique serial number underneath each product tying it to the craftsmen that made it.

Design Principles

Slow furniture: Miduny’s products are intentional, concise, and long-lasting—an act of resistance to the poorly built, fast furniture that ends up in landfills.
Sustainable Materials: Miduny’s products employ sustainable and renewable materials, such as wood slabs, wood veneer, and plywood sourced from FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) certified producers, to ensure provenance.
Made by Humans: We collaborate with master artisans in Italy to produce small batches of beautiful objects. The care of the artisans’ hands is visible in the final product. We are proud to participate in the time-honored process of turning natural materials into well-designed, useful products.
Flat Shipping in Custom Boxes: Our products come in carefully designed and built boxes that solve several purposes. To store the products efficiently, to ship safely and sustainably with regular ground services, and to allow assembly directly within the box.
Designed in Brooklyn. Made in Italy: We design and prototype furniture and objects in our Brooklyn workshop. Once a design is ready for production, we begin looking to source the best materials and manufacturing partners with a suitable skill set.
Easy-Peasy Assembly Takes Only Minutes: Our signature joinery system makes assembly–and, importantly, disassembly– incredibly easy. As simple as placing each leg in the tabletop slot through a pressure-fit joint and then adding two bolts per leg.

Founder

Ale Preda (Italy) is a registered architect practicing in Brooklyn, New York. Growing up in Brescia, Italy, he came into contact with a rich culture of design and manufacturing. The iconic Riva wooden motorboat are built in Sarnico, and Flos, the manufacturer of Castiglioni Arco Lamp, is based in Bovezzo, both in Brescia’s province.


Ale graduated from Harvard University Graduate School of Design with a Master of Architecture degree and from Bocconi University in Milan with a Degree in Economics and Management.

Prior to founding miduny design, Ale was an Architect and Project Manager at Deborah Berke Partners in New York. Ale, is founding Principal of Ale Preda Architecture, a bespoke architecture studio in Brooklyn and Brescia, Italy.

Fun Facts.


Our logo symbolizes a crab’s claw. 

Among Chuang-tzu’s many skills, he was an expert draftsman. The king asked him to draw a crab. Chuang-tzu replied that he needed five years, a country house, and twelve servants. Five years later the drawing was still not begun. “I need another five years,” said Chuang-tzu. The king granted them. At the end of these ten years, Chuang-tzu took up his brush and, in an instant, with a single stroke, he drew a crab, the most perfect crab ever seen.

Italo Calvino, On Quickness, Six Memos for the Next Millennium

Calvino’s Six Memos for the Next Millennium is a constant source of inspiration. To us the crab’s claw is a visual reminder to be patient and thoughtful in the conception, authoritative and decisive in the execution. We aspire to imbue our design with these values.