Season Stool by Wenhan Zhang is a highly esteemed winner of the very prestigious 2022 Silver A' Design Award in Furniture Design Competition Category.
SilverFurniture· 2022
Season Stool
by Wenhan Zhang
Client: Jiangxi Sanyou Furniture Co.,LTD
Silver A' Design Award Winner in Furniture Category
Verified Award Winner
Verify Award Status for #134333The Design
About Season Stool
Season is a multifunctional seat designed for small rented homes. Removing the top cushion turns Season into a side table that can hold a laptop or small items. The table surface can also be lifted to reveal hidden storage for a phone charger, pens and notes. A wooden support under the base helps the piece move easily between rooms and protects the lower materials from abrasion. The inner structure is solid wood from certified sustainable forestry, with a perforated top of low formaldehyde microparticles. Several colours and finishes are offered.
The Recognition
About the Silver A' Design Award
Season Stool is a Silver A' Design Award winner, an extraordinarily prestigious recognition granted to top-of-the-line, gorgeous, and impressive designs. Silver winners are tremendously brilliant and exceedingly creative works that illustrate the outstanding expertise, talent, and acuity of their designers. Season Stool is expected to be a wonderful, showpiece work that is remarkably professional and profoundly innovative. This Silver A' Design Award-winning design is a highly notable, admired invention that benefits and advances the boundaries of art, science, design, and technology. Season Stool is a vastly envied creation that evokes desires, introduces positive feelings, and sparks amazement and wonderment.
Where to Get It
Contemporary Furniture Design Services
We specialize in creating multifunctional furniture solutions for modern living. Our award-winning designs focus on flexibility, portability, and smart storage solutions that resonate with younger generations and urban dwellers. With expertise in sustainable materials and human-centered design, we transform client briefs into innovative furniture pieces.
Discuss Your ProjectInterviews
Grand Interview
Your innovative approach to multifunctional furniture in the Season Stool, particularly its hidden storage feature, reflects modern urban living needs - could you elaborate on how your understanding of millennial lifestyle patterns shaped these specific design choices?
The Season Stool was designed while I was living in Chicago, a city with high rent, especially for recent graduates and young professionals with only a few years of work experience. With a limited budget, it can be challenging to afford spacious apartments in urban areas, so maximizing the use of smaller spaces becomes essential. Living where every square foot matters makes multifunctional furniture indispensable. The Season Stool addresses this need by providing storage in a way that keeps living spaces uncluttered and visually cohesive.In my opinion, millennials tend to value minimalist, clean aesthetics with a strong emphasis on sustainability and practicality.
The Season Stool's transformation capability from seating to side table demonstrates remarkable versatility - what inspired you to incorporate this dual functionality, and how did you overcome the engineering challenges to maintain both aesthetic appeal and practical usability?
Harmony in design can sometimes be challenging to achieve, but the modular design approach helps address this issue. When I think about applying different functions to a single object, my first priority is to ensure visual consistency. Once that is established, balancing the different functions becomes more manageable. To maintain both aesthetic appeal and practical usability, I had to carefully balance structural integrity with form.
As sustainability becomes increasingly crucial in furniture design, how does the Season Stool's use of certified sustainable forestry sources and low-formaldehyde materials align with your broader vision for environmentally conscious design?
By sourcing materials from certified sustainable forestry, I ensure that the wood used in the stool comes from responsibly managed forests that prioritize biodiversity and reduce deforestation. Additionally, using low-formaldehyde materials helps to create a healthier indoor environment by reducing harmful emissions, contributing to both the well-being of the users and the planet. It’s a holistic approach to sustainability—considering not only the environmental impact during production but also the long-term effects on the user and the space it inhabits.For me, environmentally conscious design goes beyond choosing sustainable materials; it’s about integrating durability, recyclability, and health-consciousness into every piece.
Behind the Design
Press Kit
Credits, team members and technical details provided by the designer.
- Unique Properties
- The Season Stool serves many purposes. Underneath the base there is a hidden support that helps facilitate movement allowing it to be easily moved from room to room. Then, by simply removing the top cushion, Season transforms into a side table and can be used as a work surface for a laptop or to place small items. The surface of the table can be removed to reveal hidden storage within the stool.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- Seat Dia 300 mm x Base Dia 400 mm x Height 510 mm
- Tags
- residential, multifunction, flexible, contemporary, furniture
- Production Technology
- The interior structure is made of solid wood and perforated top of microparticles low in formaldehyde. The piece uses wood from certified sustainable forestry sources.Strap or belt produced in high-resistance technical fabric. Wooden support at its base to facilitate its movement and prevent bottom materials from abrasion.
- Design Challenge
- The biggest challenge and the obstacles during the development of design was to avoid homogenization of stool design. Even stools never are a large portion of the interior furniture selection, but most products on the market look very similar. Some of them are stylized and some are mediocre. For the Season stool, the goal is integrated into any residential environment. It should be like one piece of furniture. There is a leather pull on the top for pulling up the top cushion, instead of making the top cushion an accent color indicated below as a storage.
- Research
- Since corporate partner with Jiangxi Sanyou Furniture Company, we share the geographic information,
consumption data and service feedback. The design of the Season stool is human centered design that concentrates on how to improve life quality of the younger generation and city tenants. Especially during the Covid-19, people spent more time indoors rather than outdoors. People pay more and more attention to the quality of furniture. - Inspiration
- The Season stool was inspired by the living habits of younger generations. For those who are moving to a big city, renting an apartment is very common. Younger consumers prefer to buy simple, multifunctional and portable furniture that provides them with more flexibility and freedom no matter where they live. The Season stool is also available in multiple colors and finishes that easily infuse a variety of different interior styles.
- Project Duration
- The project started in September 2021 in China and finished in December 2021 in China. The production will probably start in May 2022.
- Operation Flow
- The Season stool with a simple and contemporary design. It is ideal for residential indoor settings and its particular shape is suitable for both storage and events. The storage of stool can fit phone charge, pen, note sticker and other daily life items. The stool is suitable for contemporary places.
- Team Members
- Wenhan Zhang
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