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
