Industrial Designer of the Year 2026: Nolan Talbot-Kelly

Some designers began with a sketchbook. Nolan Talbot-Kelly began at the dump, hunting for old electronics with a rocket scientist.

To be fair, the rocket scientist was his uncle. But the childhood project they built together—a homemade spaceship simulator rigged with springs, switches, lights and sound effects—seems like an early blueprint for Talbot-Kelly’s practice: take what’s available, figure out how it works and build something stranger, sharper or more alive from the pieces.

“I think some of that, the way that we built then, I carry through,” says Talbot-Kelly. “It’s a very ad hoc, resourceful way of designing: making do with what is available.”

The spaceship may be long gone. The impulse is not.

SECOND LIFE: Talbot-Kelly’s Contemporary Waste/Embracing the Utilitarian series uses parts already in circulation, keeping scuffs, marks and traces of previous lives visible while revealing its process of assembly. Image courtesy of Nolan Talbot-Kelly.

The Notch vessels begin as circular tubing, notched together and sealed to form watertight sculptural vases. Photo by Nolan Talbot-Kelly.

Today, our 2026 Western Living Industrial Designer of the Year makes lighting, furniture, vessels and sculptural material studies from the still-useful parts most people don’t give a second look. His Vancouver-based practice, Nolan T.K. Studio, moves between function and sculpture, scalable production and salvaged parts, refined objects and pieces that still show how they came together.

His eye was trained early. Growing up in Gibsons, B.C., Talbot-Kelly lived in a house that was always changing. His dad is an architect, so the family home was “constantly in flux,” he says—renovated, adapted and adjusted. As a kid, Talbot-Kelly himself made cardboard swords and game props, built skateboard and bike ramps, and spent time at the beach climbing, sitting on and launching himself from logs. “Making things to play on was a big part of it,” he says.

So was learning by doing. In 2013, while working at a taco stand in Gibsons, he met furniture designer Riley McFerrin, who had recently launched Hinterland Design. The chance connection became an unofficial apprenticeship: Talbot-Kelly started by sweeping up and eventually managed production, learning woodworking, material behaviour and the realities of running a small independent studio.

“I was so lucky that I worked with Riley and had actual experience running a small studio before going to school,” says Talbot-Kelly, who later studied industrial design at Emily Carr University of Art and Design. “It allowed me to not have any misconception of what was after school.”

His studio process still starts with the physical thing. Talbot-Kelly keeps a library of offcuts, samples and found pieces gathered from construction sites or elsewhere: brackets, fasteners, supports, deflection tracks, sash weights—the practical parts most people walk past.

“I spend a lot of time looking at the built environment,” he says. “What I’m drawn to is often utilitarian details. Details that are maybe designed not with the intention of making something beautiful or to be the centre of attention, but something that’s infrastructural or supporting the systems that we operate in.”

In the Slotted series, that background language comes forward—literally out from behind the wall. “The Slotted light is a pretty direct reference to a slotted track, which is used in metal stud framing,” says Talbot-Kelly. “It’s a component that’s in the walls of most modern builds now, but it’s often hidden in the sense that it gets drywalled over. But I really liked that form and the kind of repetitive perforations to it.”

LIGHT WORK: For the Slotted series, Talbot-Kelly transforms the perforated language of metal stud framing into warm, multidirectional luminaires. The pieces use dim-to-warm LEDs, frosted acrylic diffusers, sheet metal and CNC-machined components. Image courtesy of Nolan Talbot-Kelly.

He bought the track and started prototyping, asking, “How could it work as a system?” The final lights don’t use the off-the-shelf track itself. Talbot-Kelly kept the form but made it “a little bit more intentional,” using thicker aluminum rather than galvanized steel “so it had more structure.” Warm light slips through the slots, and the once-hidden architecture of the wall becomes atmosphere.

Judge Lyndon Cormack, co-founder of Herschel Supply Co., calls Slotted “genuinely clever,” praising Talbot-Kelly’s ability to find “a fresh idea inside something overlooked.” The series also marks a move toward a more traditional industrial-design model: a product that can be made locally, assembled by hand and scaled beyond the studio.

WEIGHT FOR IT: Designed for Hinterland, the Sash series brings the counterweighted mechanism of traditional sash windows into full view. Exposed weights help the cabinet panels glide vertically, turning an otherwise hidden architectural detail into the main event. Image courtesy of Hinterland Design.

That same instinct carries through the Sash series, Talbot-Kelly’s 2024 design for Hinterland and a full-circle moment in his career. The made-to-order system borrows from the concept of old sash windows, where counterbalanced weights are typically hidden inside the frame, quietly helping panels lift and stay in place. In Talbot-Kelly’s Sash hutch, that background mechanism steps forward, making the cabinet panels glide vertically—and giving a humble architectural workhorse the starring role. The challenge wasn’t simply pairing traditional joinery with hardwoods, glass, stone and cast brass. It was touch. A counterweight system may be straightforward in theory, but furniture has to move beautifully in the hand.

Judge Samuel Lambert, founder of Lambert & Fils, recognizes a clear design voice emerging. “I believe Nolan Talbot-Kelly is developing a singular practice that belongs on the international design scene,” he writes. “His work reveals a mastery of assembly techniques and a willingness to explore diverse materials. A certain poetry emerges from his objects, resolutely industrial.”

Today, Talbot-Kelly balances Nolan T.K. Studio with his work at Vancouver lighting studio A-N-D. He also co-created Obj:Obj, a showcase of Vancouver’s independent design scene, and will co-curate it with Annaka Hoelk again during Design Vancouver Festival this September.

He wants the studio to become his full-time focus eventually, but not at the expense of the hands-on experimentation that got him here. “I still want to make sure I’m involved in physically handling materials and making things,” he says. “I do kind of like making stuff myself.”

Nolan Talbot-Kelly on Design

Photo by Tanya Goehring

If you weren’t a designer, what would you be doing?

Beachcomber.

What do people often get wrong about design?

Asking questions can be just as important as solving problems.

What are your design pet peeves?

Manufactured obsolescence. Too many things in the world are designed to fail, or greatly compromised to meet an unrealistic price point. We all pay the cost for cheap disposable goods eventually.

Any podcasts you follow?

Design Discord is a great resource that provides interviews and insights into the behind-the-scenes of contemporary design.

Is there a famous project or object you wish you’d designed?

Philippe Malouin’s Offset stool and coffee table. Image courtesy of Philippe Malouin.

The Offset stool and table series by Philippe Malouin: it features such a subtle departure from the archetype of wood stool/table and results in an engaging, truly unique yet familiar design.

Nolan’s Local Favourites

For Breakfast and Dinner

Hunnybee Bruncheonette in Vancouver. Image courtesy of Hunnybee Bruncheonette.

Hunnybee Bruncheonette and Thank You Pizza: I love how this space is shared between two establishments. It’s a smart use of space in an expensive city. It’s located on a bike path, so there’s always good bike watching and pals will inevitably pass by—and the food from both is top notch and approachable.

For Lunch

Phnom Penh for deep-fried chicken wings.

For Wine

La Fabrique St-George: a beautiful, refined, unpretentious space with good wine and delicious snacks.

For Design Shopping

It’s not a shop, but Addition is one of the few spaces in the city showing and selling contemporary design and art. I wish there was more intermixing of the two in Vancouver.

For Local Shopping

Alterior/A Living Taste: Dallas and Cole offer a curated selection of goods from local talents and international brands as well as facilitating a welcoming environment to pop by and hang.