AN UNFUSSY and downright brutish, midcentury vintage chair design has been muscling its way into even the most traditional of homes lately. Though no cozy La-Z-Boy, the seat is getting high marks for a wabi-sabi style that celebrates imperfections, thanks to exposed bolts, obvious joints, plain-Jane planks and unpolished wood. Some look like little more than two pieces of wood attached to legs, but keyhole details or sculpted backs can make them sweeter. Designers and dealers are calling the increasingly in-demand seats, which hail primarily from Scandinavia and Europe, brutalist. At online marketplace 1stDibs, searches for “brutalist chair” are up 115% year over year.

“These mid- to late-century chairs are raw, organic and almost harsh,” said Maureen Ursino, an interior designer in Colts Neck, N.J., who’s been buying them for clients because they add “a contemporary element in not too intense of a way.” Recently she placed a single Danish pinewood chair, likely a survivor of the 1970s, in the bathroom of a Larchmont, N.Y., home. “I used it as a decorative accent, as though it were a piece of art,” she said.

Heidi Caillier planted an oak example from Germany in a child’s bedroom in San Francisco. The Seattle-based designer welcomes “the sense of patina” the seats bring to a project: “Like maybe this chair has been in this family for years and keeps being passed down but also is not too precious.”

Though this simple wood chair is unquestionably trending, skeptics take issue with its equally buzzy “brutalist” label. Florence de Dampierre, author of “Chairs: A History” decries that description as sloppy. “Brutalism refers to an architectural style from the ’60s, of concrete,” she said. “The term for this kind of modern chair might more appropriately be handicraft.” Meanwhile, Los Angeles interior designer Martha Mulholland traces its influences to the rustic modern Scandinavian simplicity of Axel Einhar Hjorth and 18th-century Tyrolean furniture. (The Future Perfect, a retailer of collectible pieces, labels its examples above as such.) “The beauty of the design is in the simplicity of seeing the wood grain and joinery detail,” said Ms. Mulholland. She prefers to classify the seats as European Primitive Modern: “I would say the chair is more primitive than brutal, but it’s a matter of semantics.”

At Chairish, a reseller of vintage design where interest in the terms “brutalist” and “wabi-sabi” are building, Noel Fahden Briceño, vice president of merchandising, says European dealers first applied the term. Although the name is being used loosely, she said, “when dealers started titling these chairs ‘brutalist,’ I said, OK, I can see that.”

Whatever you want to call the seats, designers are embracing the little brutes because they are unexpected. “I like that they feel unrecognisable,” said Ms. Caillier. “So many chairs have become trendy and overused, but it’s hard to find the same one of these chairs more than once.”

The design is also proving quite versatile. “There is a boldness and sharp sculptural quality to them, and they can hold their own in any room because they are simple,” said Ms. Mulholland. “They can cover a lot of ground aesthetically.” She recently used a couple of primitive three-legged walnut chairs underneath the living room windows of a home in Los Angeles’s Lafayette Square. The historic Craftsman home boasts its original unpainted mahogany woodwork. “I was playing into that masculinity,” she said, “but I also liked the contrast of putting the chair up against a pink velvet drape.”

The chairs’ roughness tends to clash intriguingly with softer, more feminine elements like that. This visual dissonance has helped fuel their popularity. “You can use one chair as an accent piece, even if the rest of the room is refined,” said Ms. Fahden Briceño.

Ms. Ursino says these chairs are not known for their coziness and may need a little help—she upholstered the seats of brutalist chairs she set around a game table to boost their comfort. Other designers are stationing them around meal tables, however. Los Angeles interior designer Lauren Piscione placed eight barrel-backed examples in a dining room, their rugged homeyness contributing to the calm of the space.

In a Tudor revival by Seattle interior designer Lisa Staton, a family of five pulls up oak versions made in the Netherlands in the 1970s. A depression in the seat makes them quite comfortable, said Akash Niranjan, the father in the household. “We work from home three days a week and often find ourselves sitting at the dining room table for long stretches and have not had any issues,” he said. “Our three young kids like them as well.”

When building his Sonoma, Calif., home, Mukesh Patel had a request: He wanted a simple way to enjoy farm-to-table meals. He meant it literally.

Mr. Patel had purchased a 100-acre lot with his wife, Harsha Patel, 59, for $5.7 million in 2016 that included a small fruit and vegetable farm. He then worked with architect Christie Tyreus to construct a 2,100-square-foot, two-bedroom home for $3 million.

The home features a glass-enclosed kitchen-dining room with exterior pocket doors that open up on two sides to make it easy to walk from the terrace to pick fresh food: tomatoes, avocados, lettuce. The other side of the dining area leads to the living room. “You pick, you cook, then you eat—it’s a smooth transition,” says Mr. Patel, 64, a technology executive. The two moved into the new house from Pleasanton in 2020 but kept their Pleasanton house as a secondary home.

Homeowners are rethinking their indoor dining setups, replacing formal, enclosed rooms with elaborate spaces that give the feel of dining al fresco, with the option to be protected from the elements.

The interior designs also offer greater access to the kitchen, by direct proximity or by combining the cooking and dining areas in an open plan. At the same time, architects are being asked to make the most of killer views, installing automated glass doors and screens to create a seamless transition with the exterior.

“This is as close to dining outside you can get without being outside,” says Paul Masi, principal of Bates Masi + Architects, an East Hampton, N.Y., architecture firm.

Recently, a dining area Mr. Masi designed included two dining-room tables next to each other, with one indoors and the other outdoors. When the homeowners entertain in good weather, they can open the pocket doors to double the room space. Insect screens make it comfortable to eat even at dusk. Wide-plank Ipe wood floors outside mimic the wood floors indoors, and an oak wood ceiling stretches between the indoor and outdoor spaces to create a uniform look.

Another project includes a dining area that opens directly to the outside via two sides of glass doors, with pocket doors separating the space from the kitchen.

“There is nothing abrupt that changes from the interior to the exterior,” says Mr. Masi. Creating these hybrid dining spaces means there are fewer requests for separate outdoor kitchen and eating areas, especially in colder climates, he adds.

After purchasing a Manhattan Beach, Calif., home for $8.5 million in 2019, Michael Mothner, 41, wanted a dining room the family was “actually going to use.”

During a 2½-year renovation, Mr. Mothner created a formal dining space that borders an upstairs living room and kitchen, and opens up to a private terrace with a view over the family pool and the ocean. The indoor-outdoor setup makes it easier to host family dinners that are casual but not like a picnic. “We wanted something that doesn’t feel super formal and is going to be functional,” says the digital-marketing agency founder.

Wendy Word, an interior designer who worked with Mr. Mothner and his wife, Savanna Mothner, says she was able to extend meals from the dining room to the outside by making the table and the rug easy to position partially outdoors. Another dining table is outside on a covered terrace. “They want to be able to gather spontaneously and be able to use the outdoor footprint,” Ms. Word says.

With open floor plans, setting off the dining room while making it conveniently close to the kitchen is a challenge, says Ms. Tyreus, who worked with Mr. Patel.

Instead of creating a separate space, Ms. Tyreus added three kitchen islands. The island bordering the dining area has a decorative sintered stone facade, making the dining space more like a sleek bar area. Kitchen islands farther away include hidden refrigerator drawers and underneath storage. “When in the dining room, [the counter] looks like this beautiful stone block,” she says.

Los Angeles real-estate agent Rayni Williams says luxury homeowners pay a premium for dining rooms that blend into separate spaces. She sees dining areas that are separated by a wall of art, or another dividing element, from the main living area, providing easy access to the exterior and to the kitchen.

The idea is to create an eating area that gives priority to exterior views. “They know that’s the real money shot—that’s the way to maximise the dollar,” she adds.

Ms. Williams and her husband, Branden, are representing off market a $48 million home in Los Angeles that has nearly 7,000-square feet of outdoor space and a dining area with a large glass wall that can retract vertically to open to the exterior. The dining table inside the home is on wheels to make it easy to relocate throughout the area, including to a spot near an outdoor fireplace, she says.

Even in colder climates, homeowners are finding creative ways to craft scenic indoor-outdoor dining spots. After buying a vacation home for $765,000 in Hyde Park, N.Y., in 2021, Thorsten Hayer, 42, was thrilled to use what he calls a fancy garage as a dining area that opens to the exterior through two sets of barn doors. With a dining table and bar, the exterior room allows him to entertain while enjoying the outdoors.

The main home, built in 1876, has a formal dining area, but the family eats dinners mainly in the outside space. When the doors are open, it feels like they are dining in the garden. “It’s a nice progression from grilling a hot dog on the fire pit and going into a garage space,” he adds.

Noma, the Danish restaurant considered one of the best in the world, said Monday that it would close its doors next year and reopen as a test kitchen.

“To continue being noma, we must change,” Noma’s owner René Redzepi said on the restaurant’s website, without elaborating why the restaurant was closing to regular service in the winter of 2024.

Restaurants have struggled during the pandemic to cope with mounting food costs and diners staying home. Fine-dining establishments in particular have had trouble hawking expensive menus to patrons. At Noma, a meal currently costs at least $500 a person.

Mr. Redzepi said that starting in 2025, Noma would become a test kitchen and would sell products online. He said Noma would also have pop-ups around the world.

“Serving guests will always be a part of who we are, but being a restaurant will no longer define us,” he said.

He said on Instagram Monday that he and his team had planned the move for the last two years.

“It’s scary and weird but I also know it’s the right thing to do,” he said. “As soon as the pandemic hit I had this feeling in me that it was time for something different.”

He said he was on a plane bound for Kyoto, Japan, where Noma was set to open a pop-up restaurant for two months.

A representative for the restaurant said Mr. Redzepi wasn’t available for comment.

Mr. Redzepi opened Noma in Copenhagen in 2003 and eventually became the crown jewel in a booming food scene. He introduced Nordic food to new audiences and foraged through Danish shorelines and forests for ingredients like herbs and roots. As word spread about Noma’s experimental dishes, it became almost impossible to get a reservation.

After Noma was first named the world’s best restaurant in 2010 on Restaurant magazine’s influential list, it received about 100,000 reservation requests a month for its 40-seat dining space. It was named the world’s best restaurant again four more times. The restaurant has three Michelin stars.

Noma led Copenhagen’s reinvention as a fine-dining destination, drawing talented chefs and real-estate developers to Denmark’s capital. It also attracts diners who make pilgrimages from all around the world to try its multi-course menus. Noma has served dishes including pork neck with bulrushes and violets and king crab with leeks rolled in ashes.

Noma used to be based in an old warehouse on Copenhagen’s docks before closing in 2016 and reopening at a new location two years later.

Mr. Redzepi said in a 2015 blog post that he had been a bully and a terrible boss at times because he was under pressure. He said he would yell at employees over messing up dishes for journalists or overcooking fish. He said as a result that he had changed Noma’s culture to boost staff morale.

The first message, received while I was at the office one day last month, drowning in work, informed me that my daughter had lice. The second confirmed my son had it, too.

The third, which came as my deadline was approaching and I was feeling phantom itchiness on my scalp, announced that my son’s wonderful kindergarten teacher had quit the week before and was never coming back.

I felt like I’d been cast in an adult version of “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.” Everything—work, life, parasites—had collided. In addition to having no idea which crisis to tackle first, I questioned how I’d gotten there in the first place.

Sometimes there is a fine line between having it all and it’s all falling apart. After a stretch when many of us laboured to be Santa at home and year-end heroes at work, all while facing a tripledemic, we could stand to take a deep breath, shift our perspective and, when all else fails, laugh at the absurdity of it all.

“On your bad days, when nothing is going right, you go, ‘Oh, my God, I’m a horrible parent. I’m a horrible employee. I’m a horrible wife. I’m a horrible everything,’” says Lilian Tsi Stielstra, a mother of two grown children in Vancouver, Wash. The 58-year-old says she still remembers the morning years ago when she confidently marched into her office in her brand-new black power suit only to realise it was adorned with a blob of her one-year-old’s snot.

One lawyer and mother of four in Pennsylvania told me she’d once dropped her child off at soccer practice, then figured out, in the blur of juggling back-to-back calls, she’d dropped the wrong child. A nonprofit executive mistakenly threw the plastic bag containing his homemade lunch in the trash and commuted to the office cluelessly clutching a bag filled with cat poop. One tech leader recounted to me the time she received a text message while stationed in a glass conference room in her bustling office. It was her fiancé, breaking up with her.

Some tales of work-life clash are grisly, like presenting to a client in Chicago still bloodied from fresh dental work. Some are eventually funny, like when your child bursts into a research meeting of scientists to announce his pet lizards are having sex.

Navigating our different responsibilities and identities has never been easy. These days, it’s compounded by our current stew of illnesses, corporate chaos and the pressure on parents to make up for everything kids lost during the pandemic.

“It’s all colliding,” says Lisa Duerre, who spent a day last August dealing with an ailing sibling, an anxious child, a crucial client pitch and a dog who decided right then was a good time to get sick all over the carpet.

The chief executive of RLD Group, which advises tech companies on culture, Ms. Duerre recently had a coaching client kick off a session by placing her forehead down on the desk, overwhelmed by caring for a parent with dementia while dealing with a corporate reorganisation.

For those in the throes of acute work-life tensions, Ms. Duerre recommends first pausing. Take three deep breaths. Notice how you’re feeling—are you screaming “Just cancel everything!” in your head? Are your shoulders scrunched up near your ears? Tell yourself you’re just going to choose the next right action, and the next, one at a time. Ask yourself what’s most important to do right now, and then ask for help where you need it.

Go to a peer first if you can, she says, so you’re not constantly sounding alarms to your boss. When you do approach your manager with a problem, bring some possible solutions rather than plaintive queries. The paediatrician only has an appointment during the client meeting; would you prefer I call in from the parking lot there or send someone else to the meeting in my place?

Messy days, and tragic and scary moments too, are part of having a full life. Shouldering many roles, from dad to dog owner to team leader, makes us happier, says Yael Schonbrun, a clinical psychologist and assistant professor at Brown University, though it can also make some situations harder.

“When we have a life that has a lot of meaning and purpose, it’s often quite uncomfortable,” she says.

See if you can find the silver linings in your busy, complicated days. For example, limited time can force us to be more focused and present, says Dr. Schonbrun, the author of a book about how working parents can manage feeling overwhelmed. Stepping away from work to see our kids or tend to another responsibility can breed bursts of creativity.

When our lives are bigger, a loss or challenge in one area often doesn’t hit as hard.

“Even though I might run at a higher anxiety and higher stress, I don’t run lonely,” reasons Shelley Nelson, who juggles two kids and a job at a financial-technology company. She hit a run of bad luck starting in late 2021, breaking her hand right as she was starting a new job, leaving her with one for typing. Then came pinkeye, a flat tire that made her late for a meeting where she was to meet her new executives, Covid-19 infections for nearly the whole family and the death of her husband’s grandmother.

“I was, like, this is not who I am,” she says of all the accommodations she had to request from her new manager, from extra work-from-home days to time off.

She laughed to keep from crying. She wished she could do better, at everything. But she told herself she was managing as well as she could, and found the bad days built resilience.

I did, too. When the woman at the lice-treatment centre examined my hair and assured me that good moms get lice, I took the diagnosis as proof of my hands-on parenting. When my son came down with a mystery fever the following week, I cherished the extra cuddles on the couch. By the time my daughter was hit with a stomach bug on Christmas Eve, just as my editor was texting me about a column, I was less fazed by it all.

Nothing seemed to be going as planned, but it still felt like a privilege to have so many things I loved, constantly colliding with each other.

A year ago, investors were wildly optimistic about the potential of automotive technologies such as automated driving. They now risk swinging to the opposite extreme.

Anyone looking for an idea of the cars that might be on sale in five years’ time likely found the news from this year’s CES in Las Vegas more muted than usual. Stellantis showed off new concept electric vehicles on Thursday, including a highly anticipated Ram pickup truck, but in reality it is playing catch-up with peers such as Ford and General Motors. Sony unveiled a brand for its new automotive joint venture with Honda, Afeela, but didn’t give many details of the much-hyped EV they expect to start selling in North America in 2026.

As Stellantis Chief Executive Officer Carlos Tavares pointed out in his keynote speech, more than $1 trillion of market value was wiped off automotive technology stocks last year. This isn’t just about Tesla: Shares in early-stage companies that don’t make profits have been even worse hit. That makes car makers understandably reticent about putting too much weight on—or money behind—the gizmos CES is best known for. Autonomous vehicles, the focus of much futurism in the industry, have taken a public beating, particularly since Ford and Volkswagen in October pulled the plug on their driverless-taxi joint venture.

Investors shouldn’t mistake the cautious turn in communication and funding for a lack of technological progress, though. Driverless taxis run by Alphabet’s Waymo and GM’s Cruise continue to roam the streets of San Francisco and Phoenix, albeit very cautiously and with strict limitations. The problem with these projects is that they are hugely expensive, with no proven business model or clear route to commercial scale. Unless this changes, they could suffer in a tighter financial environment.

Two Western companies above all make meaningful profits from the automation of driving today: Tesla and Israeli supplier Mobileye.

The former now charges $15,000 for its so-called “full self-driving” software package that automates most mundane driving tasks but, crucially, requires drivers to keep their eyes on the road as a backup. Tesla said late last month that 285,000 Tesla owners in North America had bought what it refers to as FSD, though far from all of them will have paid the latest price.

Mobileye, which was spun out of chip giant Intel last year through an initial public offering, has a comparable “eyes-on, hands-off” offering it calls SuperVision, in addition to the more basic assisted-driving technology that generates most of today’s profit. In an update at CES on Thursday, co-founder and CEO Amnon Shashua said SuperVision had a cumulative revenue pipeline of $3.5 billion through 2030, based on the production estimates of car makers that have included the technology in coming models.

Mr. Shashua also gave a levelheaded account of how Mobileye would move into the more adventurous realm of extended “eyes-off” autonomy, at least on and between highways. By adding a second sensor suite and then testing the finished product in an eyes-on “shadow” mode, Mobileye expects to deliver in 2026 the kind of provably safe automated driving that would actually give consumers time back. It said it already had “line of sight” toward $1.5 billion in revenue from one vehicle program that will likely include the product.

It is frustrating that Mobileye can’t yet reveal which brands are backing its latest products, beyond its Chinese launch partner Zeekr, but the supplier’s technological path to a more useful self-driving future seems much clearer than Tesla’s. The car maker run by Elon Musk has no plan to include backup sensors and doesn’t publish data on how often its system requires the human driver’s intervention—an approach unlikely to win over regulators or the broad public.

But the real appeal of Mobileye for investors is that it doesn’t demand an all-in bet on full autonomy: SuperVision and basic driver-assistance packages should underpin profitable growth for years. A forward earnings multiple of 44 times is ahead of 33 times for Nvidia, arguably its closest peer, but Mobileye should grow faster. Plus, a small premium doesn’t seem a big stretch for a company that could, maybe, let you read a book on your future commute.

For the recurring series That’s Debatable, we take on a contentious issue of the day and present two spirited arguments—one in favor and the other emphatically opposed.

Are fractured mirrors cool or creepy? Stylish or sinister? We asked pros for their takes on this interior design trend. Plus, five picks for split mirrors worth considering.

No, their slices and shifts make them art objects

FOR KELLY WEARSTLER, mirrors with intentional slices or shifts in their glass offer uninterrupted pleasure. The interior designer hung Lee Broom’s “graphic and playful” Split Long Mirror in the dining room of her Beverly Hills home (left). Large chunks of its capsule shape slip out of line, and its simple black frame follows. Ms. Wearstler said she likes how the mirror refracts light and remixes the reflection of the room and its inhabitants: “Fracturing a mirror into segments immediately alters how you perceive yourself in it, shifting its basic function into an experience.”

Any object that breaks from its traditional form adds a “cool” element of interest and texture to a room, said Suki LaBarre, vice president of merchandising and e-commerce at New York-based ABC Carpet & Home, which sells similarly constructed looking glasses. “The style transforms what is typically a utilitarian object into a statement décor piece.”

Peter Spalding, an interior designer in Portland, Ore., and co-founder of design trade marketplace Daniel House Club, points to a celebrated precedent, the “glamorous” wall of alternating angled strips of mirror in British Art Deco designer Syrie Maugham’s 1930s London apartment. It’s an idea he’d gladly borrow. “A wall of fractured mirrors behind a banquette to define a dining area would be pretty dreamy,” he said, noting that such elements of surprise “elevate [design] from the mundane.”

Instagram and Pinterest have catalyzed interest in fragmented mirrors in recent years. As Los Angeles interior designer and social media influencer Dani Dazey points out, the mirrors “make for a great outfit selfie. The more unique the photo, the more your content is going to stand out.”

Yes, it’s creepy to look at your fractured self

THE SUPERSTITIOUS among us believe broken mirrors bring bad luck—or worse. “There are stories of fractured reflections capturing your soul in very early Roman history,” said Kara Phillips, an interior designer in Fort Worth, Texas, who prefers her mirrors retiring and intact. Ominous mythology aside, these designs create an unwelcome dark and edgy mood, said New York City designer Emma Beryl Kemper, who avoids the style because of the “hardness” and “sharpness” it brings to a space. Another detractor, Sydney interior designer Kate Nixon, agrees. “I seek to create homes that feel warm and inviting, not jarring or uncomfortable,” she said.

It’s this disturbing quality that turns off many naysayers. Think of the opening credits sequence of Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho,” where fragmented typography portends a psychotic break. While no one is suggesting such mirrors will lead you to over-identify with your mummified mother, “it’s creepy to look at your fragmented self,” objects Steffie Oehm, an interior designer in San Francisco. They irk Toronto designer Rivki Rabinowitz for different reasons. “For something as benign as a mirror, I am inexplicably irritated by them,” she said, adding that she can’t help but feel they’re “reminiscent of a closeout sale where rows and rows of overly gilded mirrors are featured alongside…literally fractured ones.”

Others reject the specificity of the design. Said Ms. Nixon, “They’re difficult to install in a sophisticated way and to mix-and-match with other styles and eras.” But for San Francisco designer Tay BeepBoop, the bottom-line is that such mirrors can’t even perform their core function: competently reflecting one’s image. “If I need a mirror, I don’t want to look into something wonky,” she said.

IMAGE SPLITTERS

Five more mirrors that break with tradition

Massimo Mirror, $1,250, ArteriorsHome.com

John Richard A Tale of Two Exotic Gold Mirror, $2,363, GraysonLiving.com

Seletti Double Sense Mirror, $699, Lightology.com

Hidden Mirror, $7,315, PoruStudio.com

Revne Mirror, $2,530, JohnRichard.com

The Wall Street Journal is not compensated by retailers listed in its articles as outlets for products. Listed retailers frequently are not the sole retail outlets.