By The Fashion Editorial Team
For the first time since its founding in 2019, Brooklyn-based art collective MSCHF is opened its studio doors to the public. The occasion marks a bold collaboration with Mercedes-AMG, unveiled during NYCxDesign Week 2025. The exhibition, titled Not for Automotive Use, ran May 14–17 at MSCHF’s Greenpoint workshop and presents a collection of radical furniture pieces built from luxury vehicle components.
Transforming high-performance parts sourced directly from AMG vehicles, the objects on display challenge assumptions about utility, authorship, and the role of industrial design in domestic space. Ergonomic chairs, standing lights, and wastebaskets are among the sculptural works, each assembled from authentic AMG components and recontextualized with deliberate irreverence.
“The collection consists of sculptural, experimental design objects that repurpose components from AMG vehicles as part of MSCHF’s signature practice of ready-made appropriation, working within a longstanding tradition of radical design,” reads the official statement. The approach pays homage to Italy’s Radical Design counterculture of the 1960s, referencing a lineage of designers who blurred the line between function and provocation. Among its influences is Achille Castiglioni, the Milanese master who elevated industrial repurposing into an art form, famously integrating tractor and bicycle seats into his furniture.
The exhibition took place inside MSCHF’s street-level studio on Bayard Street, where the collective has quietly operated for six years. Campaign visuals feature Casey Neistat, photographed by Kyle Berger with video direction by Shadrinsky.
All pieces are made-to-order and available for a limited time, emphasizing their position as conceptual studies rather than mass-produced design. The collaboration also includes a merchandise capsule of wearables—t-shirts, sweatshirts, caps, work jackets, and trousers—all printed with high-resolution scans of AMG parts.
A standout accessory is a custom fragrance tree shaped like an apple tree, a subtle nod to Affalterbach, AMG’s birthplace. In old German, the town’s name translates to “apple tree on the brook,” an etymological gesture that mirrors the project’s ethos of drawing from legacy and reinterpreting it with wit.
What emerges is not simply a series of repurposed objects, but a pointed dialogue between American conceptual art and German automotive precision. Each piece occupies a space somewhere between luxury and absurdity, honoring its mechanical heritage while serving entirely new functions. As the collaborators put it succinctly: “MSCHF collaborated with AMG, a luxury sportscar company, so we made... a chair.”
More information and assets can be found at AMGxMSCHF.com.