New York 2016: Moscow architecture firm Crosby Studios' debut furniture collection includes sculptural chairs with bent metal supports designed to recall city buildings (+ slideshow).

The six-piece collection comprises powder-coated steel chairs and free-standing shelves, all of which are made in Brooklyn. The shelves come in two different heights, and feature cut-out shapes that form a surrounding cage.

The collection's chairs have thin circular seats supported by either single or double rods of metal, which bend backwards like the curve of a paperclip.

Crosby Studios has previously patterned a Moscow restaurant with Memphis-inspired patterns.

For its first furniture range, founder Harry Nuriev looked to modern Japanese and classic Roman architecture as influences for the shape of the chairs, as well as the work of Italian furniture designer Michele De Lucchi and industrial designer Shiro Kuramata.

"It's not furniture. It's art," he told Dezeen. "But you can use it as a chair or a table or a book shelf. I believe that contemporary art should be functional."

The furniture, which was first shown at the Sight Unseen Offsite 2016 exhibition, is made from steel, brass or chrome, and powder-coated in pink or black. However, Nuriev told Dezeen that the studio is also working on solid wood versions.

"My work balances functionality with engineering precision and art and sculpture, maintaining Minimalist and very pure architectural proportions in the pieces," the designer added. "In this collection the design of the objects does not conceal their material, nor does the form conceal its construction."

Similar architectural shapes feature in a pair of steel tables designed by BoardGrove Architects and a furniture collection by Seoul design studio Graft Object, which references vaulting.

Arches also made an appearance at this year's Stockholm furniture fair, in a collection of shelves with half-moon-shaped supports created by Note Design.

This year's Site Unseen Offsite took place from 13 to 16 May 2016, during New York design week. Other projects on show included a range of furniture and homeware based on the American Shaker movement, and a set of marbled packaging for salted chocolate bars.