1.
New York
USA
Japanese-American artist and designer Isamu Noguchi created this coffee table in 1947 for Herman Miller. At the time, Noguchi was living in New York – and we think the jazzy curves of this piece echo the modernist spirit of the city perfectly.

2.
Milan
Italy
Plush, wildly popular and a little bit sexy, the 1970 Camaleonda sofa system by Mario Bellini is Milanese design at its best. Proudly Italian in its roots – as well as an international bestseller – the Camaleonda could only come out of Milan.

3.
Paris
France
This 1950s Nuage bookcase by Charlotte Perriand is decorative and complex, much like Paris. Imagine it in a Hausmannian apartment, displaying French literary classics and providing an elegant backdrop at Château Margaux-fuelled dinner parties.

4.
São Paulo
Brazil
This wooden stool by Italian-born Brazilian architect Lina Bo Bardi was produced in the 1980s for the SESC Pompéia in São Paulo, a vast sports-and-culture centre. Democratic in spirit and with a playful silhouette, this perch flies the flag for São Paulo.

5.
Copenhagen
Denmark
Copenhagen is a design capital in its own right and is best captured by a true icon from the mind of a Danish luminary. The PH5 pendant lamp by Poul Henningsen for light-manufacturing stalwart Louis Poulsen, first produced in 1958, fits the bill.

6.
Melbourne
Australia
Melburnian manufacturer Companion is behind this compact Round-A-Bout gas barbecue, originally from 1975, that consists of a hard-wearing metal shell on three legs. What could be more Australian than firing up the barbie on a scorching summer’s day?

7.
Dakar
Senegal
Designed in 2009 by Birsel+Seck, the Madame Dakar chair is handwoven from plastic threads by the studio’s founders, Paris-born Senegalese Bibi Seck and Ayse Birsel from Turkey. It is an ode to the fishing nets found across Senegal’s capital.

8.
Tokyo
Japan
Shiro Kuramata’s futuristic and sleek How High the Moon armchair from the late 1980s is on the same wavelength as Tokyo. Made from a perforated nickel-plated steel mesh, there is a cool, enigmatic quality to this chair that leaves us wanting more.

9.
Zürich
Switzerland
In the financial capital of Switzerland, time really is money. Since 1944 this Mondaine clock by Hans Hilfiker has been keeping Swiss trains (and residents) on time in the design-forward manner that we have come to associate with Zürich itself.

10.
Mexico City
Mexico
This chair and accompanying stool might be called Barcelona but the set is a resolutely Mexican take on Mies van der Rohe by local architect and designer Luis Barragán, who used it when furnishing Mexico City’s mid-century Casa Prieto López.