While the colder months are best spent by a fireplace, most people divert their attention to the blazing flames located inside. But Trueform Concrete’s Wabele Collection, which was designed in collaboration with Leyden Lewis, proves a fireplace’s surround can be equally eye-catching.
According to Lewis, the partnership bloomed from a shared ambition to think outside of the ordinary. “[We wanted to] elevate concrete beyond its purely functional roots and allow it to speak sculpturally,” the Brooklyn-based designer explains. “Our collaboration became a dialogue — sketch, to mold, to mock-up — refining gesture and scale until each piece became both functional and poetic.”
The idea first came to Lewis during the renovation of a 1920s Emery Roth–designed building in Brooklyn. The designer then reimagined the Art Deco structure through an “African-influenced, modernist” lens. “Trueform saw potential in pushing the boundaries of what a fireplace surround can be,” he shares.
Named after the fire-spitter masks of the Senufo people, used in ritual dances to drive out harmful spirits and invoke ancestral power, the Wabele Collection reimagines the brand’s signature glass-fiber-reinforced concrete into a light, undulating expression. “Trueform’s use of GFRC allows for thinner, more expressive profiles while retaining the strength necessary for architectural application,” Lewis says. “The material becomes a medium of movement rather than a rigid shell.”
The Wabele Collection features three styles, all of which are tailored to fit the size of a customer’s firebox and available in eight colors and three finishes. The Outward and Inward styles are symmetrical surrounds that sweep outward and inward, while (Un)Balanced relishes in organic, shape-shifting curves. Though each fireplace surround comprises multiple pieces, its minimal seams create an effortless, fluid form akin to a wave.
“I wanted the forms to feel as if they were in motion,” Lewis explains. “Because of the structural advantages of GFRC, the walls can be thinner without compromising strength — so the volume is less monolithic, more ethereal.” For Lewis, it’s not just about creating a cool shape: It’s a careful interplay of texture, light, and shadow.
Most recently, Lewis explored the versatility of the Wabele Collection by incorporating the (Un)Balanaced surround into his “listening lounge” for aspire’s The Art of Home showhouse in Upper Saddle River, New Jersey. “It frames the hearth but also becomes a sculptural piece,” he explains. “The surround transcends purely functional décor and becomes part of the spatial narrative, a gesture that shapes how one moves around and experiences the room.”
In doing so, he makes a case for transforming a hearth into a multi-sensory experience. “A fireplace surround doesn’t have to recede into the wall,” Lewis shares. “It can awaken it, animate it, become a visceral, living threshold between fire, space, and the human body.”
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