After studying architecture at Texas Tech, designer pals Cade Hayes and Jesus Robles did respective stints for innovative Tucson, Arizona, architect Rick Joy and Sebastian Mariscal’s San Diego–based design-build firm. In 2007, the pair struck out on their own, founding Dust, their own one-stop design shop in Tucson. With one stunning house to their credit—and some architectural hardware and one-off jewelry pieces—Hayes and Robles have trained their considerable design acumen and maker’s know-how toward furniture, particularly a line of steel chairs. Made of U.S. steel, with leather and fiber backing, Dust’s chairs are heavy and low, earthbound seats with muscular frames.

Hayes and Robles make them with occasional help from Hayes’s father, Woody, a welder—a detail that hits Hayes on a gut level: “Objects can hold some part of the person that created them,” he reflects. “There is richness in knowing someone made something by hand.” And, as architects, they see the relatively quick developmental period for each chair as a boon. Says Hayes, “The instant gratification of taking an idea into three-dimensional form in such a short time is very satisfying.”

“We think of Dust as not only a design-build firm,” says Hayes, “but also as a multidisciplinary studio: architecture, construction, furniture, jewelry, interiors. Our ethos is rooted in the ideas of the old master builder, the architect-craftsman.”