Akhalteke Lounge Chair by Amin Mohammadyari is a highly esteemed winner of the very prestigious 2025 Bronze A' Design Award in Furniture Design Competition Category.
BronzeFurniture· 2025
Akhalteke Lounge Chair
Bronze A' Design Award Winner in Furniture Category
Verified Award Winner
Verify Award Status for #170027The Design
About Akhalteke Lounge Chair
Akhalteke offers a unique sitting experience, evoking the sensation of riding a horse for the first time. Inspired by the designer's childhood horseback riding experiences and fascination with equine anatomy, the design establishes a two way interaction between the user and their experience. Drawing from the saddle, one of humanity's earliest seating forms, Akhalteke blends the comfort of a lounge chair with the essence of riding. The name comes from the Akhalteke, a breed of Turkmen horses, reflecting the design’s inspiration and dynamic form.
The Recognition
About the Bronze A' Design Award
Akhalteke Lounge Chair is a Bronze A' Design Award winner, a highly prestigious recognition granted to outstanding designs distinguished by creativity, ingenuity, and astuteness. Bronze winners are amply skillful and strikingly creative artifacts that authenticate the vast experience, imagination, and resourcefulness of their designers. Akhalteke Lounge Chair is expected to be a highly regarded, admired, and cherished object that is notably professional and innovative. This Bronze A' Design Award-winning design incorporates best practices in art, science, design, and technology, and is excellent for its attention to detail. Akhalteke Lounge Chair splendidly satisfies needs, touches desires, charms feelings, and appeals to curiosity.
Where to Get It
Innovative Furniture Design Services
We create innovative furniture that transforms everyday experiences. Drawing from engineering precision and artistic vision, our designs challenge conventional seating concepts while maintaining functionality. Each piece tells a unique story, connecting users with deeper experiences. International award winner.
Discuss Your ProjectInterviews
Grand Interview
Your innovative approach to blending equine anatomy with contemporary furniture design in the Akhalteke Lounge Chair has earned recognition with a Bronze A' Design Award - could you elaborate on how your childhood experiences with horseback riding shaped the fundamental design principles of this unique piece?
First of all, I just want to say how happy I am that the life of Akhalteke has started and keeps growing, bringing along lovely conversations and real friendships that mean a lot to me.I’ve always wondered: why do certain specific ways of sitting become the “standard”? Why don’t we treat sitting, like any other human behavior, as something with many possibilities? This thought got me digging into my own memories of how I’ve sat in different moments of life. And the one that stood out the most was sitting in full contact and rhythm with a living, breathing creature, the horse. That deep, instinctive connection was unlike anything else. It was the seed that eventually grew into the Akhalteke.
The Akhalteke Lounge Chair transforms passive sitting into an active experience - what inspired you to challenge traditional seating paradigms and how did you achieve this dynamic interaction between user and furniture?
As I mentioned, in the design of Akhalteke, sitting is approached as an experience, not as a simple act.For me, experience is a continuous and dialectical interaction between the user and the environment (everything that is not the user).It is within this dynamic that each user forms a unique relationship with the object, and new postures of sitting emerge, postures that are directly shaped by this interaction with the object. Ultimately, a new experience is created.
The sustainable materials chosen for the Akhalteke Lounge Chair, particularly the bio-composites from hemp or flax fibers with PLA bio-resin, represent an environmentally conscious choice - how did these materials influence the final form and functionality of your design?
I believe a designer’s honesty is most clearly reflected in their choice of materials.In the case of Akhalteke, without this specific type of material, a significant part of its identity would be compromised, for very clear, tangible reasons. That’s wh, the object itself demands the use of these materials as an essential part of what defines it.
Behind the Design
Press Kit
Credits, team members and technical details provided by the designer.
- Unique Properties
- In the design of Akhal-Teke, my goal was to create a unique sitting experience, one that evokes the feeling we all had the first time we rode a horse. Akhal-Teke establishes a two-way interaction with the user and their experience, offering a distinctive way of sitting that the user willingly embraces.
This eagerness to experience and accept is inspired by the Form of Akhal-Teke. - Dimensions & Packaging
- Width 770mm x Depth 855mm x Height 720mm.
- Tags
- Conceptual, Lounge Chair, Lounge, Chair, Horse, Saddle
- Production Technology
- For the construction of Akhal-Teke, bio-composites made from hemp or flax fibers and PLA bio-resin were considered. This combination enabled the creation of a high-quality final form with desirable finishes while offering a sustainable alternative to traditional composites like fiberglass and carbon fiber.
At the same time, these materials not only promote environmental responsibility but also reinforce a natural connection to their inspiration. - Design Challenge
- The primary challenge in the design process was to create a two-way experience in the act of sitting, such that the object (seat) and the subject (user) engage in a dialectical interaction with one another, transforming sitting from a passive state into an active one and allowing for a fresh understanding of the sitting experience.
The next significant challenge was to achieve a form that simultaneously incorporates both aesthetics and functionality. The design was not intended to directly reference the anatomy of a horse. Rather, the goal was to establish a subtle connection to the experience of sitting, enabling users to intuitively connect with it without relying on direct or obvious visual cues. - Research
- The horse, one of the first domesticated animals by humans, has a deep-rooted history with mankind. Our ancestors spent a significant amount of time riding, and thus, the way of sitting on a horse became one of the most common sitting postures. In the design of Akhal-Teke, the aim is to revive this sitting posture and bring it into everyday human life; a way of sitting that is likely embedded in our historical memory and DNA.
On the other hand, in considering materials for Akhal-Teke, thorough research was conducted to ensure that sustainable and environmentally friendly options were taken into account. In this regard, the material identity chosen for Akhal-Teke is aligned with the core identity of its design. - Inspiration
- The design is inspired by my childhood experiences of horseback riding and my fascination with equine anatomy.
As a design student, I was drawn to the idea that saddles represent some of humanity's earliest forms of seating, dating back to the domestication of horses.
Through this design, I sought to capture the feel of both a lounge chair and the riding experience, creating a form that evokes those dual inspirations.
The name Akhal-Teke is derived from a breed of Turkmen horses. - Project Duration
- the project started in September 2023 in Tehran and finished in September 2024.
- Operation Flow
- The Akhal-Teke is inspired by the elegance of the anatomy of the Akhal-Teke breed of Turkmen horses, striving to go beyond its purely functional concept and becoming an object with identity in space, much like a noble horse.
As a chair, Akhal-Teke offers a unique sitting experience, evoking the feeling of riding a horse for the first time. Its form creates a two-way interaction with the user, encouraging a distinctive way of sitting that is eagerly embraced.
This eagerness stems from the form of the Akhal-Teke.
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