Tag Archives: A’ Design Award and Competition

This “Beanbag With A Spine” Offers A More Comfortable, Classy Alternative to its Boring Predecessor

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The beanbag is almost an icon of the bachelor household. It’s cheap, comfortable, and adapts to any scenario. However, this has also tarnished the beanbag’s reputation as a furniture that just can’t be taken seriously. It isn’t classy, given that you won’t find it in the classiest of households… however Elena Prokhorova’s reinterpretation of the humble beanbag makes it the perfect addition to any swank coffee table. The Brace Lounge Chair is like a beanbag with an exoskeleton. Designed to give the otherwise ‘limp’ bag some structure, the Brace comes with a metal armature that wraps around the bag’s base and back, with harness straps holding the beanbag in place. The result is a lounge chair that’s the best of all worlds. It’s comfortable and adapts to your body, just the way you want… but at the same time, it has a unique blob-like structure that gives it a distinct silhouette, making it a perfect addition to any living room.

Designer: Elena Prokhorova

Drawing inspiration from the effortless style of the urban dweller, the Brace armchair effortlessly combines form and function to create a truly captivating seating experience. The soft seat is attached to the metal frame with the help of a belt-like accessory. To operate the chair, the user simply sits down on the soft seat and pulls the belt around the back of the frame, securing it in place with a carabiner.

The soft part of the Brace is made of foam with fabric upholstery, marking a slight deviation from the styrofoam-ball-filled beanbag. The base is made of a metal tube colored with a powder coating, while the strap that tethers the Brace into place comes made from leather, with eyelets and hooks that attach to the metal frame. The choice of fabric makes all the difference with the Brace’s aesthetic, and one could easily alter its appearance by switching between leather or velvet, or canvas, or even by alternating/swapping colors to create unique color schemes.

The Brace Lounge Chair is a Gold Winner of the A’ Design Award for the year 2023.

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This compact, flat-packed table lamp can fit inside a single envelope

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The Flora Mushroom Yard Light is slim enough to fit entirely into an envelope that can slide underneath your door – barring the lightbulb, of course.

Designed using flat pieces of plastic that fit into one another to attain a 3-dimensional form, the Flora Mushroom Yard Light was designed to add a bit of pop to your front or backyard. Running on solar power, the light comes with its own solar panel, which charges the battery-powered LED bulb inside the light. A remote control lets you activate or deactivate the lamp, while the entire lighting fixture is designed to be waterproof, allowing it to bare the elements in the outdoors.

Designer: Haile Wu

The lamp’s oddly appealing design features a bulbous base upon which rests the folded plastic sheet lampshade, looking like a toadstool out in your garden. The lamp comprises multiple thick streets of plastic, laser cut into their respective shapes. The shapes plug into two disc-shaped modules, creating the lamp’s base, while the upper lampshade is a single piece of polypropylene plastic too, with crease-lines already punched in, so you can simply fold the shade into its form and lock it by tucking the tabs into their slots.

The lamp draws power directly via solar energy, requiring no other form of energy input. Solar panels placed out on the yard take energy during the day, and the lamp switches on at night, running on a battery unit built within the bulb. The only real concern with the Flora Mushroom Yard Light is the fact that there’s a significant danger of it getting knocked over by wind. However, if you can find a way to fix it into the ground, you’re absolutely good to go!

The Flora Mushroom is a Bronze Winner of the A’ Design Award for the year 2023.

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Transparent sofa made from polycarbonate sheet belongs in a sci-fi billionaire’s duplex

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Looking at the Spark Sofa, you’re hit with a wave of feelings. It looks incredibly eye-catching, like a brilliant gem… but there’s something un-furniture-like about it. It looks hard, although the curved design gives the impression of comfort. You want to try sitting on it, but you’re also scared of breaking it. The Spark Sofa, however, comes crafted from a thick polycarbonate sheet (the same material used in riot shields), so you can rest assured that even though it looks fragile, it’s far from it. However, if there ever was a sofa worthy of being called a true ‘accent piece’, this would easily be it.

Designer: Wang Jun

Even though the sofa is made from a hard material, the Spark benefits from its soft forms that create this interesting contrast that makes it such an eye-grabber. While most sofas boast of bulky forms that occupy a lot of visual real estate, the Spark Sofa is entirely see-through, making it an interesting addition to a room. It doesn’t add weight to your space, but still dominates it, making it perfect for minimalist interiors. The transparent, gem-like design definitely sets it apart as a premium piece of furniture too – hence the reference to the billionaire bachelor pad. The fact that it’s made from plastic makes it perfect for both indoor as well as outdoor placement.

The Spark Sofa comes with a two-piece design. The base, which consists of a horseshoe-shaped curved piece of plastic, and the seat, which nests within a cutout in the base. The polycarbonate material can take on a significant amount of load without really showing signs of stress, although you may want to avoid wearing too much metal so as to prevent scratching the sofa. Any minor scratches or scuffs could easily be buffed out, though.

The Spark Sofa is a Gold Winner of the A’ Design Award for the year 2023.

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Is wood strong enough to make a bicycle frame? This award-winning 2-wheeler says yes

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If wood is strong enough for buildings and furniture, why not use it for bicycles too? That’s pretty much the thought process that led Masateru Yasuda to design the Moccle, a bicycle that relies on the flexible yet sturdy properties of bent plywood sheets. Traditional Japanese buildings have taken advantage of wood’s flexibility and vibration-absorption properties to build structures that have survived earthquakes, Yasuda points out. “I wondered if I could make a bicycle that takes advantage of the characteristics of this wood,” he adds.

The Moccle is a fun bicycle with a unique aesthetic that puts the enjoyment of riding front and center. It doesn’t come with gears, a dashboard, or even shock absorbers (funnily enough, there’s no bell on it too), but rather, uses a bent-wood frame to achieve shock absorption. Held in place using metal fixtures, the bent plywood frame flexes in response to pressure, helping absorb any sort of stress by undulating surfaces or bad terrain… just the way traditional buildings in Japan would weather earthquakes by absorbing tectonic stress.

Designer: Masateru Yasuda

Yasuda makes a rather interesting point about how wood is basically carbon-fiber, but occurs naturally. Trees, like all living organisms, are carbon-based… which makes wood more similar to carbon fiber than you’d think. To make the frame, Yasuda first created his plywood, sandwiching thin sheets of carbon fiber between sheets of wood just to make the frame age-proof and resistant to shrinkage or cracking. The final ply was then cut into its desired profiles, before being bent into shape using steam. Finally, the wooden frame was plugged into its metal holders, giving you a bicycle that’s sturdy yet flexible, and designed to last long.

“Moccle is a bicycle that you can easily ride in casual clothes. A simple design that anyone can ride without a complicated transmission,” Yasuda says. “Just pedaling with your usual sneakers, you can spend a relaxing time at your favorite cafe. The bike’s simple design highlights its use case perfectly. It isn’t made for performance, or for terrain. The Moccle is a purely recreational two-wheeler designed to just enjoy life. The project started in 1999 and the 1st wooden bicycle was made in Osaka, Japan. The 2nd model was made in Nagano and named Moccle in 2012. The 3rd model wooden bicycle started production in 2019 and was exhibited at the Wood Collection Show in Tokyo in January 2023.

The Moccle is a Gold Winner of the A’ Design Award for the year 2023.

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These wooden WFH accessories help declutter your desk while giving it a personality

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Carved presumably from rosewood, the Forest Tidy is a set of neat containers and stands that bring a level of organization to your workspace while tying into the wooden nature of the furniture around your house. By splitting your workspace belongings into different categories, the Forest Tidy organizational kit gives you space for stationery, tech, EDC, cables, and even a dedicated stand for your monitor along with a stowaway space for your keyboard and mouse.

Designers: Yibo Dai, Bo Le, Yu Liu, and Qi Ping

The containers come in a variety of shapes and sizes, tailor-made to your tabletop belongings. Smaller bowls are perfect for clips, pins, SD cards, and other small items, while elongated containers let you put pens, pencils, scissors, and other items. The monitor stand comes with two semicircular holding areas on each side, and a long slot for a pencil on the front. There’s even a dedicated phone stand that lets you dock your phone either in portrait or landscape. Unfortunately, the phone stand doesn’t come with a channel for a cable pass-through, which means it won’t function as a charging stand. However, you can plug your phone in when kept in landscape mode.

When spread out, the Forest Tidy gives you a comprehensive collection of trays and bowls to keep your items, although if you’re more minimally inclined, the objects can stack one upon another to consolidate your belongings without the added clutter. For added flair, the rosewood containers are also accented with golden details like labels and leg-pegs, giving them a wonderful aesthetic that’s well-suited for any WFH setup (or even an office one!)

The Forest Tidy is a Bronze Winner of the A’ Design Award for the year 2022.

The post These wooden WFH accessories help declutter your desk while giving it a personality first appeared on Yanko Design.

Magnetic Piggy Bank reassembles itself after being broken, becoming a circular fidget-toy in the process

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Built on the ideals of Kintsugi (or the art of repairing pottery with gold to help cherish your belongings instead of discarding them), Penny is a playful little piggy bank that can break apart and come together. Using a series of magnetically-bonding pieces, the piggy bank comes with an all-white design that reveals its cracked surface rather than concealing it. Add the coins in as you would, and when you want to take them out, simply break open the bank by either striking against it or dropping it to the floor. The piggy bank shatters just like its ceramic counterpart would, but in a predictable set of pieces that can be put back once again. The joy of retrieving the money from inside Penny is only accentuated by the joy of getting to build her back again, piece by piece!

Designer: Dario Narvaez

“After seeing the loss and hardship suffered by millions of people during the pandemic, Penny is a representation of what is lost and broken, can also be recovered in unique and unexpected ways,” says designer Dario Narvaez. Even though the interaction of breaking and reassembling Penny is a fun, engaging activity, it has a broader meaning too. Built on the idea of resilience, Penny is all about how life can be rebuilt even after the effects of a hard fall.

The Penny piggy bank is made of 12 PVC injection-molded parts with neodymium magnetic inserts built in. The matte-finish PVC material used in Penny provides a wide range of benefits relative to its use: high resistance to impact, and the ability to conceal scratches, scuffs, and marks caused by the repetitive breaking of the piggy bank. The unique construction of the piggy bank allows it to be reassembled in thousands of different ways by rearranging or rotating certain pieces. The ears, face, and legs stay constant, while the other parts can be swapped with one another, or rotated in a variety of manners, creating a new instance of Penny every time!

The Penny Piggy Bank is a winner of the A’ Design Award for the year 2022.

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This Cone-shaped Chair amplifies the sounds of the river in front of it to help you calm down

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The chair’s unique design works the same way cupping your hands around your ear helps you hear better. Dubbed the Amplification Of The Senses Chair, this unique piece of public furniture can be found placed along the banks of the Han River in Seoul. Designed to be a place where citizens can go for a moment of reflection, relaxation, and tranquility, the chair’s unique design gathers sounds from around the river and channels them toward your ears, creating a unique ASMR experience that helps relax and rejuvenate you. “This river is one of the few places to feel nature in this polluted city,” said designer Eun Whan Cho, who was commissioned to make the chairs by the Seoul Metropolitan Government. “When we sit on these chairs, the sounds of trees and rivers are amplified,” he adds. The megaphone-shaped backrest of the chair not only heightens your sense of hearing but also blocks out your peripheral vision, allowing you to completely focus on what’s in front of you and helping your mind drown out any distracting thoughts and emotions.

Designer: Eun Whan Cho (Mootaa)

The chair’s clever design turns sitting into a much more intense activity by enhancing your hearing in a way that makes you concentrate on the tranquility of nature. Doing a much better job at boosting your focus and reducing your stress than any lo-fi playlist on YouTube possibly ever could, the bench acts as a place where you go to give your mind a break. You’re surrounded by nature, fresh air, the smell of grass, and the sounds of water rippling, birds chirping, and tree branches rustling in the wind.

The chair’s focus on nature is dual-fold. Not only does it physically help you connect with nature, it’s entirely made from recycled plastic waste too. Waste around Seoul is gathered, cleaned, and pulverized into tiny chips of colored plastic that are then bound with a resin and applied on large molds. Once the resin cures, the massive pieces are de-molded and assembled to form the chairs. Each chair removes a significant amount of plastic from entering landfills or becoming ‘nature’s problem’. In a way, the chair’s purpose, as well as its construction both, have a cleansing effect. The chair’s design cleanses the environment of plastic, and sitting on it helps cleanse the human’s mind of any distracting thoughts!

Each bench is meticulously hand-cast by applying a resin-suspended composite of recycled plastic chips onto large molds.

Plastic waste for the chairs began being collected in 2018, and the Seoul Metropolitan Government plans to manufacture and install the chairs on the promenade around the Han River by 2026.

The Amplification Of The Senses Chair is a Silver Winner of the A’ Design Award for the year 2022.

The materials that make up the bench are obtained by crushing plastic waste in Seoul.

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The sales building for this business conglomerate looks like it was designed by AI

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With interiors that look like fluids frozen in time, the sales office for the CIFI Group located in the Nansha district feels like a set from a movie, or better still, like something an AI like Midjourney would create. The building’s fluidic design takes inspiration from its immediate surroundings. Built on an international finance island, the CIFI Group’s office finds itself surrounded by waves that roll back and forth through the day. The building’s design reflects that dynamic fluidity with its unique design that directly pays homage to the water it’s surrounded by. The floor of the entrance is decorated with ripples that disappear as they move out, and large bronze hanging drops from the ceiling give you a sense of time being frozen as water drops downwards into the floor. Meanwhile, an asymmetrical rest bench takes its form from a dolphin’s playful splash. “Each part is artistically related to the element, water”, say the designers.

Designer: 10 Degrees Design

The entrance to the building feels iconic and unreal at the same time. Your eyes first see the desk right in front, but immediately migrate to the two large drops that suspend from the ceiling on the left and the right. As your eyes move lower, you notice that the drops are hovering right above the floor instead of touching it. Where you’d expect them to make contact, happens to be the epicenter of a series of ripples right in the flooring. Once you make your way to the main desk, your eyes see a large spiral hanging installation. Designed to represent how the ocean is calm before breaking out into waves as soon as it approaches the shore, the spiral is relatively straightforward, turning wavy as it reaches the end. The designer extracted elements from these stunning sights around the island and transformed them into interior decorations and sculptures which are interspersed at every corner. “It is hoped that guests can enjoy leisure time in the space where the atmosphere of cities and nature coexist harmoniously,” say the architects at 10 Degrees Design.

This project began in Guangzhou, China in January 2021 and was finished by June of the same year. It was then made available to the public in June 2021.

The CIFI Nansha Sales Office is a winner of the A’ Design Award for the year 2022.

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The Audemars Piguet Museum immerses visitors into the world of intricate luxury watchmaking

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Designed by Atelier Brueckner, the Musee Atelier Audemars Piguet gives patrons and visitors a unique perspective into the company’s reverential approach to timekeeping and watchmaking, while guiding them through the entire process to help them understand exactly why the company is regarded as one of the most renowned watchmakers on the planet. Located in Le Brassus, the same historic village where the company was first founded, the museum guides people through the past, present, and future of Audemars Piguet.

Designer: Atelier Brueckner

“The scenography offers a diverse experience of watchmaking with crescendos, high points, and contemplative moments”, the architects mention. “Various sculptures, automata, and kinetic installations give rhythm to the exhibition, which is optically linked to the surrounding landscape. In the heart of the spiral, visitors approach the Complications. They are demonstrated by mechanical installations and give visitors a feeling about the complexity of the watch mechanisms. Eight watches with Grande Complications are placed around the Universelle, the most complicated watch that Audemars Piguet has ever created.”

The museum carefully captures the sheer brilliance and intricacy of AP’s watches with its viewer experience. Not only is the museum planned out in stunning detail with the liberal use of gold accenting to evoke a sense of luxury, it’s equally painstaking in how minutely each detail is incorporated. Every aspect of the architecture, from the floors, to walls, to ceilings, to even the lights, plays a small role in the grander scheme, just like a small cogwheel serves a larger purpose in a watch’s complication. Eventually, the journey through the museum feels like a journey through space and time.

The Musee Atelier Audemars Piguet is a winner of the A’ Design Award for the year 2022.

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This rotating charging dock for your smartphone also has a built-in Bluetooth speaker

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Although it looks like an unassuming puck on your work table or bedside table, the Rotator has the fun ability to shapeshift between being a charging mat, and a vertical stand for your smartphone. Its cylindrical design with an angular cut running through gives it its unique point of interaction. In its normal state, the Rotator sits flat like a cylinder on your table. Rotate the upper half of the cylinder using the angular cut as a reference, and it flips over at a 60° angle, giving you a neat diagonal stand for your smartphone that also allows you to wirelessly charge it. Additionally, the puck-shaped Rotator also has an array of audio drivers within it that let it double as a Bluetooth smart speaker! “Existing phone holders are often lacking in functionality, only folding or charging. I want to maximize the functions of the mobile phone holder, and realize the combination of mobile phone holder, Bluetooth speaker, charging, screen brightness and sound control, so as to provide maximum convenience for users”, said designer Tianyang Yuan.

Designer: Tianyang Yuan

The Rotator’s design is interesting, in the fact that even though it looks rather plain, it’s filled with a bunch of surprises. For starters, the cylindrical puck isn’t static, but has the ability to lean over and become an angled stand. The place where you rest your phone houses a wireless charging coil under it that detects your phone and begins charging its battery instantly… however, the area around the coil has audio drivers built-in that allow the Rotator to function as a Bluetooth speaker. The upper surface also has two metallic studs that support your phone when you’re resting it on the angled surface… but look closer and those metal studs are, in fact, rotary knobs that let you control your phone’s brightness and your speaker’s volume.

The Rotator is a winner of the A’ Design Award for the year 2022.

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