Oruha Chair by Yuya Nakazawa is a highly esteemed winner of the very prestigious 2026 Golden A' Design Award in Furniture Design Competition Category.
GoldFurniture· 2026
Oruha Chair
Client: Yedit
Golden A' Design Award Winner in Furniture Category
Verified Award Winner
Verify Award Status for #178435The Design
About Oruha Chair
The design presents a seat conceived as a public secret base, offering personal refuge within shared environments. Its structure balances sculptural presence with functional comfort, supporting extended use and social interaction. Curved surfaces and carefully proportioned elements create a sense of enclosure while maintaining openness. Natural finishes enhance durability, ease of maintenance, and graceful aging, allowing the piece to integrate into everyday living spaces while preserving tactile warmth.
The Recognition
About the Golden A' Design Award
Oruha Chair is a Golden A' Design Award winner, an immensely prestigious recognition granted to first-rate, marvelous, and outstanding designs. Golden winners are exceedingly innovative, visionary, and glamorously dazzling creations that reflect the prodigy, wisdom, and prowess of their designers. Oruha Chair is expected to be a highly praised, trendsetting, and monumental invention that delivers unprecedented value. This Golden A' Design Award-winning design is a spectacular, respected project that highly benefits and advances the boundaries of art, science, design, and technology. Oruha Chair creates intense feelings of desire, evokes passion, encourages creativity, and fascinates us.
Interviews
Design Interview
What is the main principle, idea and inspiration behind your design?
ORUHA is built on the idea of eliminating contradictions between structure, usability, and perception.
I wanted the form to feel inevitable—something that could only exist in this exact configuration.
The inspiration came from accumulated experience, cultural context, and the tension between precision and intuition.
What has been your main focus in designing this work? Especially what did you want to achieve?
My focus was to create a chair that stands on its own without explanation.
I aimed for structural clarity, visual tension, and a form that influences how a person perceives and behaves in space.
What are your future plans for this award winning design?
I plan to expand ORUHA into a series and explore variations that deepen the relationship between structure and presence.
I also intend to exhibit it internationally to test how it behaves in different cultural contexts.
Grand Interview
The Oruha Chair presents a striking paradox that few furniture designs dare to explore: its exterior communicates visual sharpness and sculptural tension, while the act of sitting reveals an unexpectedly enveloping softness. What was the precise moment during the development of the Oruha Chair when you recognized that this intentional reversal between visual intensity and bodily comfort could become the defining emotional signature of the entire piece?
I realized that this paradox would become the emotional core of the Oruha Chair only after the piece was completed. During the making process, my mind was occupied with very simple intentions: to create something beautiful, and to create a chair that could be sat in comfortably for a long time. I was not consciously trying to create a contradiction.But when I finally sat in the completed chair, the sharp visual tension and the unexpectedly gentle embrace of the body reacted with each other—almost like a chemical reaction. Only then did I understand that this contrast was not an accident, but a defining emotional feature of the work.Looking back, I believe the seed of this paradox was already present in the clay model stage, working unconsciously. The coexistence of visual sharpness and tactile softness transforms the chair from an object into an experience. That realization came only after the making was over.
In an era when mass production dominates the furniture industry and consumers increasingly question the cultural value of handcrafted objects, the Oruha Chair stands as a thoughtful counterpoint, realized almost entirely through traditional Japanese hand tools and direct material dialogue. How do you believe the Oruha Chair contributes to a broader conversation about the place of analog craftsmanship within contemporary furniture design, and what message does its existence send to a generation of designers who have grown up working primarily with digital tools?
Oruha is carved almost entirely with hand tools. This is not simply a production method—it is a question posed to contemporary furniture design. In an era dominated by mass production, carving by hand appears inefficient. Yet the process of touching the material, responding to it, and searching for the form through physical negotiation creates a density of judgment that digital tools cannot replicate.Oruha suggests to the digital-native generation of designers thatform is not born only from calculation, but also from touch, intuition, and emotion.Analog craftsmanship is not a nostalgic technique; it is a sensory interface that reveals possibilities beyond digital logic.
The Oruha Chair introduces a genuinely compelling spatial proposition, that of a personal refuge existing within shared or public environments, effectively suggesting that a single piece of furniture can transform how a person relates emotionally to the space around them. In what ways do you envision this idea of a private sanctuary embedded within a publicly oriented object influencing how designers, architects, and interior planners might begin to rethink the emotional responsibilities of furniture in communal settings?
Oruha was conceived as a piece of furniture that creates a moment of personal rest within shared or public spaces. Public spaces are open by nature, yet this openness often leaves individual emotions unprotected. The enveloping comfort and sculptural presence of Oruha create a small boundary within the space—a temporary sanctuary of quiet.This idea encourages architects and interior designers to reconsider furniture not only as functional equipment but as something that can shape the emotional atmosphere of a space. A single chair can change how a person relates to their surroundings. Oruha is a proposal for that shift.
Behind the Design
Press Kit
Credits, team members and technical details provided by the designer.
- Unique Properties
- Oruha Chair proposes the idea of a private sanctuary within a public space.
While functioning as a sculptural object that shapes the surrounding environment, the chair transforms into an intimate personal zone when occupied.
The form could not have been achieved through linear or parametric design logic. Instead, it emerged through an iterative process of continuous adjustment between visual intensity and physical comfort. The armrests, which receive the most direct contact, maintain sharp visual edges while offering a gentle and secure tactile experience.
This balance allows the chair to exist simultaneously as spatial sculpture and functional furniture. - Dimensions & Packaging
- Width 740mm Depth 550mm Height 760mm Seated height 430mm
- Tags
- Chair, Furniture, Sculptural Design, Wood, Handmade, Emotional Design, Armchair, Spatial Object
- Production Technology
- Due to its complex organic geometry, Oruha Chair is extremely difficult to reproduce through industrial manufacturing or automated processes.
The chair was realized almost entirely by hand, using traditional Japanese planes and hand tools.
Rather than imposing a fixed form onto the material, the final shape emerged through direct dialogue with the wood, prioritizing tactile quality, structural integrity, and sculptural coherence. This process positions craftsmanship not as decoration, but as a design methodology. - Design Challenge
- After extensive sketching and the creation of five clay models, translating the form into wood presented a fundamental challenge. There was no established woodworking methodology capable of directly realizing the intended geometry.
Through repeated trial and error, two full-scale prototypes were abandoned before completing this third iteration.
Because of the organic form, conventional symmetry, reference points, and measurement systems proved ineffective. Ultimately, the process required trusting sensory judgment and material feedback over numerical precision. This approach became inseparable from the final outcome. - Research
- The designer’s background in video editing strongly influenced the conceptual framework of this project. Video editing is a practice of shaping emotional perception by controlling sequence, rhythm, and context.
Oruha Chair applies this editorial thinking to three-dimensional form.
Personal emotions and experiences were deconstructed and reassembled, not as narrative, but as physical tension, curvature, and spatial presence. The result is a chair that communicates emotionally through form rather than explanation. - Inspiration
- Oruha Chair was inspired by the concept of waves, representing continuous transitions between tension and release.
Rather than designing a chair solely from ergonomic data or predefined typologies, this project approaches seating as an emotional and spatial experience shaped by contrast.
The form was developed as a response to the designer’s belief that emotions, like waves, can be edited, reorganized, and translated into physical presence. These transitions were carved directly into solid wood as flowing yet controlled organic curves.
Although the chair presents an edgy, sculptural appearance, sitting in it reveals a smooth, enveloping comfort. This intentional reversal between visual tension and bodily softness defines the core experience of Oruha Chair. - Project Duration
- The project began in Kanagawa in January 2025 and ended in October 2025.
- Operation Flow
- Despite its expressive form, Oruha Chair provides stable and comfortable seating suitable for extended use.
Structural stability and load distribution were carefully examined through repeated physical testing, ensuring that the sculptural design does not compromise safety or usability.
Unlike many sculptural chairs that discourage everyday use, Oruha Chair is intended to be touched, sat on, and lived with. - Image Credits
- Photography: Photographer Mitsuaki Takahashi, 2025
Video credit: Video editor Yuya Nakazawa, 2025
Sound: Soundtrack Composer Heitaro Ashibe, 2025
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