Tag Archives: A’ Design 2021

Furniture designs from A’ Design Award 2021 that are so good, they’re impossible to resist!

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Let’s take a minute to just soak in the creativity that’s filled in this roundup of award-winning furniture designs from last year’s A’ Design Award and Competition. Now the purpose of this roundup is twofold. If you’re a fan of furniture design (either as a design lover, or as a furniture designer yourself), go ahead and bookmark this page for inspiration, or add these images to your Pinterest by clicking the Pin button at the top left of any image. The second purpose is to spark your imagination and get those creative juices flowing so that one day, you too could design something worthy of a design award.

Now if you DO have a design that’s relatively new or just sitting patiently in your portfolio, leveraging its creative appeal to win a design award can actually do wonders for your career. You’re in time to send your work over to the A’ Design Awards, with the deadline for early submissions being June 30th. The multidisciplinary design award program spans a whole variety of categories, ranging from the traditional design disciplines like furniture, interiors, architecture, lighting, consumer tech, to more niche areas like social design, differently-abled design, education design, and even jewelry design. The international award program is hosted every year, with a grand interdisciplinary jury of 211 experts from different fields for its current 2021-2022 edition! So if you’ve got yourself a great design with a whole lot of potential, go ahead and let it boost your career and brand. If not, don’t worry! This showcase should provide enough creative fodder to motivate and inspire you!

Register to participate in the A’ Design Awards now. Hurry! Deadline for early submissions end June 30th, 2021

Shelter Desk by Joao Teixeira

The Shelter desk is a project that came to life because the designer was on a quest for the perfect desk. If you are someone who loves to have a clean, organized, clutter-free desk then this is the one for you! It was designed keeping in mind all the devices, wires, and accessories that live on our workstations, however, Shelter still remains minimal while maximizing the value of a desk. There are three slim drawers on the front side that are big enough to store your gadgets, like tablets or laptops. The back drawer was designed for you to hide all your cables and chargers. But the beauty of this desk lies in the curved drawers that give this desk its fluidity while retaining the functionality of the design. “This is a personal project I wanted to develop for a long time, I’ve designed it with a minimal approach and dynamic lines aligning the angles of each component for better fluidity,” says designer Joao Teixeira.

Hourglass Multifunctional Shelf by Yu Ren

The hourglass shelf takes inspiration from the passage of time, and the functionality of the shelf changes throughout the day. Starting as a coat rack in the early mornings that holds your outdoor wear, the product’s main functionality becomes that of a shelf – to keep your knick-knacks in place. Finally, as the sun goes down, the design works as a detachable lamp, giving light and completing its cycle across the day. “The hourglass is the symbol of time, and the charm of time affects the tide-ups and downs, years change. The change of different roles reminds people to follow the direction of time, perceive the years and harvest exquisite life”, mentions designer Yu Ren.

Tango Multifunctional Pouf by Ryszard Manczak

Designed as a response to an increasing need for modular furniture for smaller apartments, the Tango Multifunctional Pouf transforms into practically anything you need, from a set of benches to a couch, a lounging sofa, and even a mattress. The award-winning poufs are shaped like triangular extrusions that are attached together by a layer of fabric (sort of like a cushion-version of a Toblerone bar). This connecting fabric acts as a hinge, allowing the triangular poufs to be folded and rearranged. The name Tango stems from the phrase ‘it takes two to tango’, hinting at how two pouf sets can come together in a variety of ways. The poufs are made using soft recycled foam on the inside covered with a layer of coconut fibers. Finally, they’re clad in a layer of wool fabric, giving them their soft, fuzzy, and warm exterior. Together, two sets/strips of these triangular pouf modules make up a wide range of furniture-types, giving you a design solution that’s versatile, interactive, and incredibly fun to look at!

Qwork Pod Office Furniture by Mohamed Mostafa Radwan

The Qwork Pod is an air-tight pod system that wants to make working in offices safe while we figure out long-term solutions. It protects the employees and can make it easy to monitor how many employees are in per square meter of the space – it also makes contact tracing convenient in larger offices. Its hexagonal shape lets companies arrange it in any format to suit their physical office – it is like assembling a beehive to keep all the bees healthy and happy! It can be customized to fit right-angled corners and can be elongated as per the needs. This conceptual work pod features an automatic handle-free acrylic door that is controlled by facial recognition. It also includes ventilation fans and air purifiers to keep a continuous flow of air that is safe to breathe. The designer envisions the Qworkntine pod to be made from hygienic, non-porous materials that will be easy to clean and disinfect. The skylight makes it better for those who may not enjoy tight spaces.

Fluid Interior Cabinet by Elena Kornilova

There’s something very nontraditional about the Fluid Interior Cabinet, and it’s apparent the second you open one of the cabinet doors. Designed to look like an abstract piece of art inspired by Chinoiserie (or European mimicry of Oriental art) when closed, the Fluid cabinet completely surprises you when you realize that its doors have fluid edges too! It’s definitely a statement piece, and really has no functional edge over a standard cabinet, but its element of shock-and-awe certainly warrants winning an award, no? The cabinet comes with a rather unusual cork outer paneling (which gives it an even more unique appearance), and is capped off by the strangest, most hypnotic asymmetrical bronze handles!

Lu Chair by Edoardo Accordi

Folding chairs are designed as space-saving tools, made to be opened out only when they’re needed. The Lu Chair by Edoardo Accordi, however, was designed for travel! Designed to fold into the format of a backpack, the Lu Chair is furniture you can carry around with you, assembling where you want or need! It’s still a space-saving tool, but it’s much more limitless, in the sense that it doesn’t sit in the corner of a large hall, waiting to be opened out… instead, it’s your own personal chair that you can carry on your back and flip open whenever you want. Designer Edoardo Accordi explains, “Many times we find ourselves having to put away objects, perhaps to make room, perhaps to clean the house and sometimes even to take them with us, but above all for furniture of a certain level it is always very difficult. This is where Lu chair was born, a dining chair suitable for different types of target, from the most elegant and sophisticated with an eye to detail but also to a younger, fashion-conscious audience. The design is innovative and elegant at the same time and the name “Lu” derives precisely from “luggage” because of its ease of being resealable and transportable wherever you want.”

Elytra Space Saver Coffee Table by Radhika Dhumal

In an unusually beautiful case of nature-inspired design, the Elytra table by Radhika Dhumal expands in size by ‘spreading its wings’! The table comes inspired by beetles and the way their wings nest perfectly around their body. The table itself comes with perfectly natural bug-like proportions that fit in well as garden decor, and uses two ‘wings’ to expand in surface, much like the beetle. Elytra’s design is dominated by rounded forms that give it a friendly, pet-like demeanor and its four legs are positioned in a way that gives the Elytra its unique, animal-like stance. The table’s surfaces are split into four broad parts, including a wooden ‘head’ and ‘body’ as well as two glass-inlay wings that can be opened out to expand the table’s surface to store an extra few cups of tea, a planter or two, and perhaps a notebook to doodle your ideas on!

Grille Bookcase by Wei Huang

With the intricate appeal of the grill you’d expect to seen on a window or an ornate fence, the Grille Bookcase is a wonderfully geometric piece of furniture that’s designed to look great with or without books kept inside it! The incredible part is its ability to look ornate even when empty, so it doesn’t really strike you as an empty bookshelf but rather as an eye-catching piece of furniture. Its oddly geometric shelves aren’t designed to efficiently hold most books, but then again, that’s the beauty of the Grille – it has an ability to create breathing spaces with its nonconforming design. Instead of letting you dump objects into it, the Grille Bookcase invites you to make your own collage of books, trinkets, and other personal artifacts… plus, the shelf is modular too, made from individually nesting wooden boxes that can either be rearranged or even taken out and used as stools!

Bubble Chair by Grigorii Gorkovenko

Can you make metal appear soft and inviting? Sure, some cars like the VW Beetle look softer than most, and if you’ve ever seen any of Jeff Koons’ work, he sure knows how to make objects look soft despite their metallic polished finish. However, these aren’t objects you necessarily sit on. You sit inside the VW Beetle, not on its metal exterior, so that softness is purely visual and doesn’t necessarily translate to a tactile experience. The Bubble Chair, however, makes ‘metallic softness’ a multisensorial experience. A Silver Winner of the 2021 A’ Design Award, the chair explores dichotomies. It’s soft on appearance and hard to touch, looks playful but is equally sombre with its grey finish, and since it’s made from metal, it remains cold in cooler atmospheres, and becomes hot in warmer temperatures. Like designer Grigorii Gorkovenko says, “what can be said about BUBBLE for sure – is that nobody can call it boring.”

Balance Desk and Work Manager by Hernan Gregorio and Julia Stabio

Styled to almost look like a modern-day iMac, the Balance work manager is a large screen for your workspace, giving you an organized, whiteboard-esque experience that focuses all your productivity-tools in one spot. Designed to be used with a laptop (because a desktop monitor would just obscure everything), the Balance has its own notepad, calendar, whiteboard, clock, lamp, and a mini-shelf for stationery and other items. It takes your plain-jane workdesk and turns it into a much more productivity-inducing one. Sort of like widgets on a desktop screen that let you keep track of your work and your day, the Balance is the offline version of just that, giving you all the tools you need to stay on top of your work without necessarily having a cluttered desk, because everything is so neatly mounted on its vertical surface!

Register to participate in the A’ Design Awards now. Hurry! Deadline for early submissions ends June 30th, 2021

The ‘Pad’ transforms from a simple flat wooden slab to a complete folding chair!

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Pad Folding Chair Shaohan Yang

The Pad Chair transforms from a benign wooden mat into a neat chair with a backrest! Made from multiple wooden strips joined together in a rather unique way, the Pad Chair possesses the ability to transform from a flat, 2D shape into a neat, comfortable 3D chair. I’m sure there’s a locking system in place that allows the chair to lock in either closed or open positions, but for now, the Pad Chair provides a radical alternative to those ugly metal foldable chairs (the kind you’d see in wrestling matches). What the Pad Chair offers as an alternative looks incredibly classy, in both its closed as well as open versions!

Pad Folding Chair Shaohan Yang

The chair’s ingenuity lies in its simple, minimalist compact design. It isn’t made to look utilitarian when closed (like most foldable chairs do), but rather, assumes the avatar of a flat, wooden plank or slab when closed (quite like the Ollie Chair from RockPaperRobot). In its closed form, the Pad Chair occupies 1/11th of the space as it would when opened, allowing you to easily store multiple chairs together in your compact apartment, saving up on space.

The Pad Chair is a winner of the A’ Design Award for the year 2021.

Designer: Shaohan Yang

Pad Folding Chair Shaohan Yang

Pad Folding Chair Shaohan Yang

Pad Folding Chair Shaohan Yang

Similar Innovations

The Ollie Chair by RockPaperRobot opens with a ‘swish and a flick’!

This clever set of modular poufs can transform into any kind of furniture for your small apartment

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Tango Modular Multifunctional Pouf Furniture

Designed as a response to an increasing need for modular furniture for smaller apartments, the Tango Multifunctional Pouf transforms into practically anything you need, from a set of benches to a couch, a lounging sofa, and even a mattress. The award-winning poufs are shaped like triangular extrusions that are attached together by a layer of fabric (sort of like a cushion-version of a Toblerone bar). This connecting fabric acts as a hinge, allowing the triangular poufs to be folded and rearranged. Together, two sets/strips of these triangular pouf modules make up a wide range of furniture-types, giving you a design solution that’s versatile, interactive, and incredibly fun to look at!

Tango Modular Multifunctional Pouf Furniture

The Tango Multifunctional Poufs were designed by Polish designer Ryszard Manczak and were even presented in prototype form at an exhibition at the Temporary Museum for New Design in Milan, as well as the NYCxDESIGN event in New York. The name Tango stems from the phrase ‘it takes two to tango’, hinting at how two pouf sets can come together in a variety of ways. The poufs are made using soft recycled foam on the inside covered with a layer of coconut fibers. Finally, they’re clad in a layer of wool fabric, giving them their soft, fuzzy, and warm exterior. Their foldable nature makes them easy to store and transport (thanks to their smaller footprint), however, once they’re in their desired location, they fold out into a variety of fun possibilities, helping turn your small apartment into an a-party-ment!

The Tango Multifunctional Poufs are a Silver Winner of the A’ Design Award for the year 2021.

Designer: Ryszard Manczak

Tango Modular Multifunctional Pouf Furniture

Tango Modular Multifunctional Pouf Furniture

Tango Modular Multifunctional Pouf Furniture

Tango Modular Multifunctional Pouf Furniture

Make bad posture a thing of the past with this modular workstation + rocking chair that keeps you active!

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Bad posture and constantly sitting in front of the computer screen can have their downsides. In the long run, it can lead to chronic back problems, while in the usual day-to-day running causes muscular atrophy. The long-term back ailment leads to lack of focus, discomfort all day long, and most of all, low quality of life. The problem exaggerated in the last year with the COVID-19 pandemic forcing us to the confines of our homes.

Young Brazilian designers Gustavo Alves Miranda and Silas Stempcoski want to address this problem with their modular workstation furniture primarily tailored for home working setups. The designers’ goal is to optimize the home office workplace with form and function that encourages healthy postural habits. According to Gustavo, his furniture design named Mode, “brings joy and comfort within a furniture for those who work alone.” The minimalistic furniture design comprises a table, seat, and kneeling module – all working in different ways as per the requirement. It has a compact mode which turns it into an elegant side table – ideal beside the bed or sofa. Then there is the customary table and chair module for professional working hours.

The most interesting is the kneeling mode that brings the function of a rocking chair for more comfortable working. This mode is triggered by pressing the lower button and pulling the extendable base support for back and forth motion. That’s not all, you can also remove the tabletop section for times when you are sitting down on the floor in a cross-legged position. Mode modular workstation maintains its practical aspect to the core while staying aesthetically pleasing – one thing every homeowner desires. No doubt it is the A’ Design Award and Competition 2021 winner (A’ Design Iron Winner) in the furniture category.

Designer: Gustavo Alves Miranda and Silas Stempcoski

Kinetic chandelier “blossoms” open like a pine-cone to fill your room with beams of light

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Chandeliers, unlike lamps, serve an important dual purpose. Their job isn’t just to fill a room with light, it’s to form a mesmeric illuminated art-piece often located in the center of a hall for people to admire. The Core chandelier by Hsin Lee does it pretty well, with a design inspired by the appearance and the ‘maturing’ of a pine cone. Multiple copper leaves on the Core chandelier are connected to a central mechanism that gets the chandelier to open up, filling the room with soft beams of light that dance around as the Core opens and shuts. The shimmering copper leaves create their own shimmering reflections too, turning the chandelier into an instant attraction that is difficult to take your eyes off of.

The Core currently sits in Kawabata Intcraft, an 84-year-old Japanese-style art club. It hangs on a high ceiling directly above the spiral staircase, prompting the viewer to look at it as they climb up. Its gradual opening and closing action also brings the space to life, making it look as if it’s breathing.

The kinetic sculpture relies on multiple moving parts assembled together. Designed to be just about as intricate as an umbrella, the Core’s insides sit within its copper shell, and aren’t immediately visible to the viewer. They work almost in the background as the copper petals sit around them like an exoskeleton, and the moving petals cast a kaleidoscope of light beams and fragments, keeping the eye occupied. Core is made out of 87 unique brass pieces, relying heavily on precise mechanical engineering. Each part is detailed crafted in collaboration with a self-made CNC machine to bring the experience to life.

“The purpose of this project is to study the relationship between artistic sculpture and historical building”, says designer Hsin Lee. After learning that instead of demolishing the 84-year old Kawabata Intcraft building (which was previously a police station), it was in fact, being preserved as an art club, Lee “hoped to bring it back to life in an artistic way. The concept and name Core was born accordingly, in the shape of a pine cone to resembles eternity”.

The Core kinetic chandelier is a Bronze Winner of the A’ Design Award for the year 2021.

Designer: Hsin Lee

The award-winning Memoria Chair uses fabric in a radical new way by magically suspending it in place

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Looking like a piece of cloth draped on a chair (without the chair), the MEMORIA is a groundbreaking, avant-garde chair proposal based on brutalist design principles, that uses a concrete fabric to realize its unique, gravity-defying design. The material, generally referred to as Concrete Canvas, is a flexible fabric impregnated with concrete, which hardens when hydrated and forms a thin, durable, waterproof, and fire-resistant layer. The prototyping technique ensures each chair is unique in the way the chair looks and the fabric folds, along with a bespoke brutalist concrete texture on its surface.

“By creating an aura that evokes mystery, questionability, and reflection on the object beyond its pure functionality, Memoria plays with the senses, confusing at first the user and, in turn, showing different interpretations, narratives and stories depending on the circumstance and context of the user”, says designer Sergio Sesmero.

The use of Concrete Canvas is rather unusual in furniture and can generally be spotted in civil constructions due to its high durability, resistance, and sustainability. The production of the chair first starts with a 3D-printed mold made from recyclable bio-degradable PLA filament. The Concrete Canvas is then laid on the base frame and hardens over a period of 24 hours. After the canvas has set, a final round of epoxy coating is applied to the chair, allowing it to fill in any pores and air gaps in the canvas. The result is an incredibly unique and expressive chair that can last for as long as 50 years!

The Memoria Chair is a Gold Winner of the A’ Design Award for the year 2021, and a winner in the Emerging Furniture Design of the Year category at the SIT Furniture Design Award for the year 2021.

Designer: Sergio Sesmero

The Una Corda is an award-winning ‘nude’ upright piano that shows you the magic underneath the hood

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Unlike most upright pianos that use a robust wooden casing to create acoustic reverberation, the Una Corda ditches it all for an exposed design that results in a much softer-sounding note that’s gentle to the ears. “In the course of researching piano acoustics, I decided to strip the piano from any and all unnecessary features, invent a new, softer soundboard, and to build a piano by the strict principle of form follows function“, says David Klavins, who was commissioned to create the Una Corda piano for renowned pianist and composer, Nils Frahm.

The piano’s name Una Corda translates to “One Cord” from the piano’s one-string-per-note construction. The outer frame for the Una Corda is made from stainless steel, within which sits its exposed double-layer soundboard. The playing experience is far from just auditory and tactile, it’s incredibly visual too, as you literally see how the hammers hit the strings when you press any of the 88 keys. Instead of the aggressive ‘twang’ of an upright piano, the Una Corda has a gentler, sweeter sound that can be made even softer thanks to the presence of modular felt panels that can be added between the hammers and strings to dampen the sound even further.

The result is an instrument that’s a piano in theory, but challenges the long-set notion of what a piano should look and sound like. Known for combining classical with electronic music, Frahm even added a combination of microphones and pick-ups to the piano, giving it much more flexibility and range than any normal upright or grand piano. Skip to the 4:30 mark in the video to hear the Una Corda in action. It really sounds less like your traditional piano and almost like a cross between an electronic piano and a celesta!

The Una Corda is a Silver Winner of the A’ Design Award for the year 2021.

Designer: David Klavins for Nils Frahm

This minimal fan’s stripped down design is crafted from sustainable materials to last for generations!

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It’s that time of year again– it’s getting hot and the fans are coming out. Finding the right fan for your living space means finding one that’s practical and blends in with the rest of your furniture and architecture. As consumers, we tend to make a lot of stylistic compromises for the sake of practicality, which leads to products getting discarded before they reach obsolescence. Inspired to create a standing fan that’s not white, plastic, and likely to end up on the sidewalk come September, design group Ttato built Aura.

Minimal by conscious design, Aura’s build was stripped down to its bare components: cage, propeller, base, and motor. Built to be a home appliance that can be used throughout the year, Aura was specifically built for optimal functionality. Constructed with materials that were selected for their sustainability, durability, and beauty, Aura exudes a sophisticated air and follows that through with detailed functionality.

Aura’s rotor blades, for instance, were formed from the overlaying and bending of birch and ash veneers, lengthening the rotor blades’ lifespan while celebrating the craft of woodworkers. Then, the aluminum frame is coated with powder and designed to be lightweight and easy to assemble. The three legs of Aura are carved from solid ash wood and can be easily dislodged so that Aura can be transported anywhere. Designed to outlast and redefine our relationships with household furniture, Aura is in it even for the long winter.

Named after the mythical deity that represents ‘the gentle breeze in the early morning,’ Aura was built to move large quantities of air at low speeds. Aura’s built-in controller allows users to choose from five different speeds and outfitted with a swivel and tilt function, users can adjust the direction of airflow as well. During the winter, Aura can be used to move the cooler air from the floor to the ceiling by tilting the fan upwards so the rotor can draw in cool air and the blades can propel the warmer air back down towards the floor.

Designer: Ttato Design

Aura’s minimalist design merges a slim build with a wide area for an elegant addition to any living space.

Aura’s powder-coated aluminum frame is lightweight and durable.

Coming in an array of different colors, Aura has the right look for your space.

By turning the fan upwards, the rotor draws in the cool air and propels the warmer air to the ground.

The 5-speed controller comes with summer and winter modes.

Aura’s 5-speed controller allows users to adjust the strength and mode of the fan’s airflow.

Nanosensors in this bionic plant can instantly detect impurities and toxins within water

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Inspired by the Flint Water Crisis, the Argus is a bionic plant that can instantly detect irregularities in water quality, catching them long before they become a problem for residents in the neighborhood or district. Argus is the brainchild of MIT Media Lab-graduate Harpreet Sareen, who realized that plants have the ability to play a pivotal role in helping us know more about our environment. Sareen realized that plants are constantly sampling water, and if there are any impurities in the water around us, plants end up absorbing them too – making them perfect for helping catch any toxins and impurities in water years before they end up having irreversible effects on the humans and animals living in the area.

Sareen developed a special concoction of nano-sensing materials (DNA-based biosensors and carbon nanotubes) which he then injected into the plant. These nano-sensing materials inside the plant produce or turn off fluorescent light when they encounter any impurities, effectively turning the plant into an electricity-free water monitoring system. An inexpensive camera setup can detect these fluorescent signals, showing results in 15 minutes to 2 hours, offering a cost-effective and time-sensitive way to detect hard-metal toxins and chemicals in a given area’s water supply.

Argus is a Silver Winner of the A’ Design Award for the year 2021.

Designer: Harpreet Singh Sareen

LED door handle can light up to help people evacuate in an emergency, and can self-sanitize too

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Razeto and Casareto have been designing and manufacturing locks and door accessories since 1920. To mark 100 years in the industry, the company set out to usher in a revolution in the world of door handles and developed the Ossh, a door handle that does more than just open doors – it communicates with you too. Relying on a patented cable-free power system, the Ossh door handles have LEDs inside them that illuminate to act as ‘signage’ of sorts. Just simply by looking at a handle, you can tell if the door is locked or open, and the LED’s different colors can even transform into a wayfinding system, allowing you to color-code doors to let people know what’s on the other side or even help them during emergencies. Moreover, the handles are also capable of self-sanitizing, using a combination of purple LEDs and Esi – a permanent antimicrobial anodic protection coating.

Ossh is a multifunctional door handle system featuring a variety of safety and management applications. Lighting up in critical conditions Ossh can even help direct people to safe escape routes. Ossh is available in kits: Stand Alone, for privacy; Wired, for fire doors; and Wi-fi for domestic and commercial setups. Ossh even features Esi – an antivirus, antibacterial, and antifungal technology that uses silver ions for sanitation. Tested and certified to kill coronavirus, the combination of Esi and the ultraviolet LEDs help sanitize the environment and the hand while opening the door.

The Ossh multifunctional door handle is a Silver Winner of the A’ Design Award for the year 2021.

Designer: F.lli Razeto & Casareto SpA