Press Release
Soo No. 2 Chair by Sangin Park Wins the Silver A' Design Award in Furniture Design
Sangin Park acknowledged for furniture design by the international grand jury of the 2025 - 2026 A' Design Award & Competition
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
COMO, Italy, April 25, 2026 /DesignNewswire/ Soo No. 2 Chair by Sangin Park has been granted the Silver A' Design Award in the Furniture Design category, A' Design Award & Competition has announced. The result belongs to the 2025 - 2026 A' Design Award & Competition and was determined through blind peer review by an international grand jury panel of established academics, design professionals and press members, who evaluated anonymized entries against predetermined criteria.
The Silver A' Design Award Explained
The Silver A' Design Award celebrates top-tier designs that embody excellence and innovation. This award acknowledges creations that are not only aesthetically pleasing but also highly functional, reflecting the designer's deep understanding and skill. Silver A' Design Award recipients are recognized for their contribution to raising industry standards and advancing the practice of design. Their work often incorporates original innovations and elicits a strong emotional response, making a notable impact on the improvement of everyday life.
More About Soo No. 2 Chair
Soo No. 2 is a wooden chair designed for everyday seating. In most chairs the rear legs continue upward to support the backrest. In Soo No. 2 the rear legs and the backrest supports are separated into independent elements. The separation improves structural stability and creates a clear visual balance. The legs are cylindrical and the seat is woven with Danish cord. All structural joints use mortise and tenon joinery, and through joints form small diamond-shaped details along the sides of the frame. The armrests and backrest supports are fixed with discreet brass pins.
About Sangin Park
Sangin Park is a furniture designer and woodworker based in South Korea. His practice focuses on full-scale making as a method of design research, exploring the relationship between structure, proportion, and the human body. Working primarily with solid wood and traditional joinery, he develops chairs and small furniture through iterative prototyping and use-based testing. His work examines how everyday objects change through time, use, and cultural context, contributing to contemporary furniture design by bridging craft-based making with experiential design thinking.
Award Record
With this recognition, Sangin Park is a winner of 1 A' Design Award.
About the A' Furniture Design Award
The A' Furniture Design Award is an international furniture competition recognizing good furniture designs by best furniture designers worldwide. It is organized within the A' Design Award & Competition and is open to furniture designers, product designers, industrial design studios and furniture brands from all countries. Typical entries include chairs, tables, sofas, beds, cabinets and shelves. The awarded furniture designs are published at https://designers.org/design-category/furniture
About A' Design Award & Competition
Organized annually since 2008, A' Design Award & Competition is an international, juried design accolade. The competition is open to entries from all countries. The philanthropic mission of the A' Design Award is to advance society through good design, by recognizing and promoting superior products, projects and services that benefit society, and by creating a global awareness and appreciation for good design practices and principles. Nominations are peer reviewed and evaluated anonymously by an international grand jury panel of established academics, design professionals and press members against predetermined criteria such as functionality, ergonomics, engineering, presentation, innovation, usability, sustainability and technology, with score normalization applied to remove biases. Awards are conferred at Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze and Iron levels. Eligible laureates receive the A' Design Prize, which includes the award trophy, the certificate of design excellence, the hardcover yearbook, a lifetime license to use the A' Design Award winner logo, exhibition of awarded works, an invitation to the gala night and award ceremony in Italy, inclusion in the World Design Rankings and Designer Rankings, and public relations and publicity services. Registration, uploading a work and receiving a preliminary score are free of charge, and Professional and Digital Edition laureates are not contractually obliged to pay further fees to claim the A' Design Prize. More information is available at https://competition.adesignaward.com
Press Resources
- Winner Page: https://designers.org/179701
- A' Design Award Page: https://competition.adesignaward.com/179701
- Media Showcase: https://www.designnewsroom.com/!179701
- Laureate Profile: https://designers.org/d/378255
- Further Information from the Laureate: http://www.instagram.com/namac.anyware
Media Contact
Giulia Ferrari, Press Office
Designers.Org
Via Leone Leoni 32, 22100 Como, Italy
press@designers.org
+39 031 4491953
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Fact Sheet
The Work
- Project
- Soo No. 2 Chair
- Function
- Chair
- Category
- Furniture Design
- Discipline
- Industrial Design
- Industry
- Furniture & Home
- Colors
- Silver, Saddle Brown, Light Gray, Peru and Dim Gray
- Images
- 5
The Recognition
- Laureate
- Sangin Park
- Country
- Republic of Korea
- Recognition
- Silver A' Design Award
- Edition
- 2025 - 2026
- Design ID
- #179701
Design Details
- Unique Properties
- The most distinctive feature of this chair is the design of its rear legs. While conventional chairs extend the rear legs upward to support the backrest as two vertical columns, this approach was reconsidered in terms of structural stability. By separating the rear legs from the backrest support as independent elements, the design achieves both enhanced structural integrity and a clear sense of visual balance.
- Inspiration
- The chair was inspired by 12 months of building 12 different chairs, during which the relationship between the rear legs and the backrest support became a recurring concern. In conventional designs, rear leg placement that improves stability often compromises posture, while configurations that support proper seating increase the risk of tipping, with angled legs further distorting the overall form. These tensions led to the decision to separate the two functions into distinct structural elements
- Research
- Type of Research : Practice-based design research. Research Objective : To explore how visual stability and comfort interact in chair design. Methodology : Full-scale making and iterative adjustment of structure and angles. Data Collection and Research Tools Used : Physical prototypes, sitting tests, and dimensional comparison. Participants or Experiments : Separating rear legs from backrest support to resolve structural conflict. Results : Greater formal freedom and improved balance.
- Challenge
- Design is shaped by the social and cultural context in which it is produced. Working within the Korean cultural context, where floor-based living has historically shaped furniture traditions, forms such as chests and low tables developed more clearly than chairs. This absence can create uncertainty for contemporary woodworkers, who often reference traditional architecture when designing chairs. This project began by questioning whether traditional forms were created primarily for aesthetic expression or as practical responses to life and the human body. Rather than replicating inherited forms, the focus shifted toward designing a chair that responds to bodily experience and everyday use.
- Realization and Technology
- In realizing this chair, certain elements were intentionally kept traditional, including the cylindrical legs and a seat woven with Danish cord. Special attention was required where the squared frame members meet the round legs. All Structural joints are crafted using mortise and tenon joinery, with through mortise and tenon joints forming subtle diamond-shaped details along the frame sides. The armrests and back rest supports are fixed with discreet brass pins, preserving the clarity and simplicity of the overall shape.
- Operation and Interaction
- A chair is the piece of furniture that comes into closest contact with the human body. Beyond visual appeal, it must satisfy the highly subjective requirement of comfort. As the position and proportion of each element strongly shape the user’s experience, several dimensions were referenced from a classic chair by Hans J. Wegner, known for its balanced and familiar comfort. Interestingly, adopting only selected measurements leads to a distinctly new experience, revealing the unique and subtle nature of how a chair interacts with the human body.
- Project Duration and Location
- This chair is the final outcome of a personal project involving the creation of 12 different chairs over a 12 month period. The making of this chair itself, including the final wax finish, took approximately twenty days. However, the process of determining the appropriate shapes and compositions for each part took place almost a year. The chair was crafted in December 2025 in Go-yang City, on the outskirts of Seoul, South Korea.
- Specifications
- Width 580mm x Depth 640mm x Height 770mm
- Keywords
- chair, chair design, woodworking
