UK-based designer Lara Bohinc has unveiled a series of bulbous furniture and decorative objects for public use at the Miami Design District during the city's art week.

Called Utopia, Bohinc's collection comprises four different clusters of sculptural forms, placed both in the Miami Design District and outside of the Design/ Miami fair in Miami Beach.

The pieces are ergonomic, taking the shape of chairs, benches and tables with bulbous forms rendered in cork and then finished with pastel colours. Among the designs is an egg-shaped object with hollow insides meant to be a play-place for children, surrounded by two pink benches arrayed in front of a Balenciaga storefront.

A series of hundreds of birdhouses, also egg-shaped, were hung from the trees throughout the Design District.

Another ring of seating was placed around an expressive sculpture with a slightly humanoid figure. It was placed in front of the district's famous geodesic dome by modernist architect and thinker Richard Buckminster Fuller.

The juxtaposition seems fitting given the utopian impulse of Fuller and the explicit utopian themes of Bohinc's installation and she told Dezeen that she picked the spot – a feature of winning the design competition that decides the commission each – for that reason and for its "organic" appearance.

Bohinc aimed to work with this natural form, working in dialogue with the form of Fuller's work.

"His project was the direct inspiration for the piece," she said.

"It's called fly-eye dome, but to me, it looks like a cell multiplying and overtaking the square and – and I thought, what if those cells kept multiplying?"

In line with the "natural" theme, it was also important for Bohinc that she used organic materials. The structures were constructed using blocks of cork pasted together and supported by steel frames, fabricated by a family-run studio in Portugal.

The pieces were then painted with a water-resistant paint used for outdoor furniture.

"It's a natural material," Bohinc said. "That was very important for me, because it's really about nature, and life and cells and organism and growth, and this kind of lifeforce."

A reusable material was also important because the installation is temporary. Bohinc wanted to create work that would engage with the public and noted that even just a few days after the installation she noticed people interacting and even carving into the work.

"The site itself is very important," she said. "The site inspired it and the colours were inspired directly from the buildings around it."

Bohinc, who was born in Slovenia, displayed pieces with similar forms but made with wool at Milan's design week in 2022. Utopia is among several large-scale installations on show during Miami art week 2023; we rounded up 10 of the most interesting here.

Miami art week takes place from 6 to 19 December in Miami, US. See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world.