Birdcage Chair by Masuo Fujimura is a highly esteemed winner of the very prestigious 2026 Golden A' Design Award in Furniture Design Competition Category.
GoldFurniture· 2026
Birdcage Chair
Client: Fujimura Design Studio
Golden A' Design Award Winner in Furniture Category
Verified Award Winner
Verify Award Status for #179528The Design
About Birdcage Chair
Inspired by Suruga bamboo filigree, a traditional craft from Shizuoka Prefecture, this chair captures its timeless beauty in a contemporary design. The slender yet robust structure of steel allows the supple form to gently envelop the body, eliminating the coldness inherent in steel and creating an impression reminiscent of lace. Furthermore, the mirror-finished seat reflects a different world, enhancing the chair's presence. Steel is also an environmentally friendly material with a nearly 100% recycled content rate. This product is crafted using such materials by highly skilled artisans.
The Recognition
About the Golden A' Design Award
Birdcage 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. Birdcage 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. Birdcage 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?
My design inspiration comes from harmony with Japanese tradition.
What has been your main focus in designing this work? Especially what did you want to achieve?
We aimed to incorporate traditional Japanese aesthetics into contemporary lifestyles, striving for harmony between the past and present, technology and innovation.
What are your future plans for this award winning design?
I’m planning a new project derived from this concept. I’d love to develop it into a full product series, including items like tables and stools.
Grand Interview
The Birdcage Chair has captivated the design world with its extraordinary ability to translate Suruga bamboo filigree, a centuries-old craft tradition from Shizuoka Prefecture, into a contemporary steel furniture piece that feels both ancient and entirely new, and is there a particular detail within the Birdcage Chair that you feel most precisely embodies this cross-material dialogue between tradition and modernity, and what aspect of achieving that translation are you most proud to share with the wider design community?
Suruga Takesensuji Zaiku, a traditional craft from Shizuoka, Japan, is known for its delicate beauty, characterized by the elegant arrangement of thin bamboo strips. The Birdcage Chair captures this essence, translating it into a modern form by carefully welding steel pipes together.
The Birdcage Chair arrives at a moment when designers and consumers alike are wrestling with the tension between industrial production and cultural heritage preservation, so how does the Birdcage Chair offer a replicable model for other designers who are seeking to revitalize regional craft traditions without reducing them to mere decoration or nostalgic reference?
We recognize that for the future of local communities, it is important not only to preserve regional traditional crafts as historical objects, but also to pass their spirit down to new products.
The Birdcage Chair's use of steel with a nearly 100% recyclable content rate places it at a fascinating intersection of industrial sustainability and artisanal craftsmanship, and how did the decision to work exclusively with this material not only serve the environmental objectives embedded in the Birdcage Chair but also open up aesthetic and structural possibilities that other materials simply could not have provided?
The slender yet strong structure, achievable only with steel, is not merely thin. By narrowing the pitch toward the back, the center of gravity shifts rearward, creating a structurally sound design. Furthermore, the inherent flexibility of steel gently envelops the sitter.
Behind the Design
Press Kit
Credits, team members and technical details provided by the designer.
- Unique Properties
- Inspired by Suruga bamboo filigree, a traditional craft of Shizuoka Prefecture, we have translated its timeless beauty into a modern chair. It achieves a slender yet robust structure unique to steel, its suppleness gently enveloping the body. Furthermore, the mirror-finished seat reflects another world, making this chair's presence truly memorable. Moreover, steel is an environmentally friendly material with a recycling rate of nearly 100%.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- W778mm, D593mm, H732mm, SH430mm
- Tags
- chair, furniture, steal, Birdcage
- Production Technology
- 10mmPhi Steel pipe, melamine baked coating.
- Design Challenge
- We spent a lot of time thinking about the manufacturing process, such as the technique for bending lightweight steel pipes without deforming them and how to weld them beautifully.
- Research
- This furniture was developed in collaboration with a metal manufacturer in Shizuoka, and all processes are carried out in Shizuoka to revitalize the local industry. All materials are steel, making it 100% recyclable. The design motifs are inspired by traditional Shizuoka crafts.
- Inspiration
- The aim of this project is to develop products in collaboration with local manufacturers in order to revitalize industry in Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan.
The design was inspired by Suruga Bamboo Work, a traditional Shizuoka craft. - Project Duration
- The project will begin in Shizuoka in July 2025 and be unveiled in Tokyo in February 2026.
- Operation Flow
- This furniture has been carefully crafted by a metal processing manufacturer using their own techniques. Taking advantage of the flexibility and strength of steel, we have designed furniture that is delicate yet strong.
- Patents
- Masuo Fujimura
- Image Credits
- Photography by LOCASTUDIO CO.,LTD.
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