Press Release
Fater Saadat Niaki Receives the Bronze A' Design Award for Khayyam Lounge Chair in Furniture Design
Fater Saadat Niaki recognized for furniture design by the international grand jury of the 2019 - 2020 A' Design Award & Competition
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
COMO, Italy, April 23, 2020 /DesignNewswire/ A' Design Award & Competition has confirmed the Bronze A' Design Award in the Furniture Design category for Khayyam Lounge Chair by Fater Saadat Niaki, designed for Behman Design. The award was conferred within the 2019 - 2020 A' Design Award & Competition and was reached through blind peer review by an international grand jury panel of established academics, design professionals and press members, who assessed anonymized entries against predetermined criteria.
What the Bronze A' Design Award Means
The Bronze A' Design Award is given to outstanding designs that showcase a high degree of creativity and practicality. It recognizes the dedication and skill of designers who produce work that stands out for its thoughtful development and innovative use of materials and technology. These designs are acknowledged for their professional execution and potential to influence industry standards positively. Winning this award highlights the designer's ability to blend form and function effectively, offering solutions that enhance people's lives and wellbeing.
More About Khayyam Lounge Chair
Khayyam lounge chair is a design effort to put back the utility in using recycled hand-woven rugs by employing the unique qualities of them, namely the strength and weight-bearing versus body shape conformity. This all made possible by a designed structure inspired by late Iranian modernist architect's work,Hooshang Seyhoun, for the mausoleum of Omar Khayyam, the medeival Iranian polymath. The lounge chair uses incline arches of Seyhoun's work with detachable brackets, creating a Baltic birch plywood seating loom for attaching the carpet and meanwhile making a flat-pack design.
About Fater Saadat Niaki
While it is often quoted "Design is intelligence made visible..."(Alina Wheeler), I think real intelligence is to make design accessible to all senses in a way that makes our differences understood as intelligible nuances that are subject to changes of perspectives. I set out my journey in the design world on a mission to help people understand each other and their environment better. I think this is what the world needs now: more empathy and less egocentric consumption... and Yes! I am an idealist that takes pride in being one!
Award Record
Fater Saadat Niaki is a winner of 1 A' Design Award, including this recognition.
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. The competition 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. Entries typically include chairs, tables, sofas, beds, cabinets and shelves. Awarded furniture designs are published at https://designers.org/design-category/furniture
About A' Design Award & Competition
A' Design Award & Competition is an international, juried design accolade organized annually since 2008. The competition is open to entries from all countries. The A' Design Award has a philanthropic mission 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. Entries are peer reviewed and anonymously evaluated 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. The A' Design Prize granted to eligible laureates 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, the upload of a work and the 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. Further information is available at https://competition.adesignaward.com
Press Resources
- Winner Page: https://designers.org/91775
- A' Design Award Page: https://competition.adesignaward.com/91775
- Media Showcase: https://www.designnewsroom.com/!91775
- Laureate Profile: https://designers.org/d/259158
- Further Information from the Laureate: http://www.behmandesign.com
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
- Khayyam Lounge Chair
- Function
- Lounge Chair
- Category
- Furniture Design
- Discipline
- Industrial Design
- Industry
- Furniture & Home
- Colors
- Silver, Rosy Brown, Dark Slate Gray, Dim Gray and Sienna
- Images
- 5
- Client
- Behman Design
The Recognition
- Laureate
- Fater Saadat Niaki
- Country
- Iran
- Recognition
- Bronze A' Design Award
- Edition
- 2019 - 2020
- Design ID
- #91775
Credits
- Team
- Atefeh Saghafian and Sara Khorsandi
Design Details
- Unique Properties
- For many centuries, carpets and rugs has been used as floor insulator that keeps the ambient temperature of a room regulated by not allowing any heat transfer to the ground and vice versa, while serving as a secondary function of decorative element. But, in modern times, the utilitarian functionality of a carpet has lost its stance to more modern building materials and insulation, making it only a decorative item. The inherent handmade fabrication method makes carpet weaving extremely labor-intensive and daunting to such extent that makes it economically unavailable for middle-class households.
- Inspiration
- The frame design is essentially deconstruction and reconstruction of a famous Iranian architects work: Hooshang Seyhoun, for the mausoleum of Omar Khayyam;The medieval Persian mathematician, astronomer and poet. Seyhoun used quadratic arches with a ten degree tilt from perpendicular angle and repeated it ten times around an axis, thus creating an intricate structure of crisscrossing arches had been created. Similarly the same replication of quadratic arcs has been envisaged with Khayyam's quartains in mind as the source of inspiration. Each two pairs are angled to create seating and backrest structure while still being interconnected.
- Research
- As the main challenge for this design was to determine how strong the Carpet fabric should be to withstand the dynamic loading of the 95th percentile users, an extensive search among the strongest known designs from all corners of the Iranian carpet weaving centers has been conducted and since one of the team members has a family heritage of carpet weaving in Tabriz, the inherited know-how has been put to best use in determining the best quality-strength for the chosen carpets.
- Challenge
- This project started as a tribute to medieval Iranian polymath and poet Omar Khayyam. The most difficult part was to find a tangible source of inspiration that both symbolizes the thoughts and life of this figure while creating a quintessentially modern Iranian design that echoes the glory of the past in present time. While shaping the structure handily utilized the work of Hooshang Seyhoun in Khayyam’s mausoleum, the challenge was to finding out a method that uses wood joinery techniques to replicate the general feeling of an architectural monument and achieve this by cutting the medium only in two dimensions for more economic viability and reduce machining time.
- Realization and Technology
- The frame is cut by a CNC router from a 1220*2440 mm international standard 18 mm baltic birch plywood. Various digital joinery techniques including mortise and tenon, half-lap joint and screw and insert nut fasteners is used to create glue free structure that could be easily stored. The seating surface is made by reused carpets, hand-woven rugs, that are cut with an specific template, stitched and woven to the frame.
- Operation and Interaction
- The product comes with an already attached carpet fitted in a square box, once unpacked the four arches are interlocked to each other on specified mortise and tenon and edge half-lap joint and reinforce with right angled gussets that are fastened with socket screws and insert nuts. The half assembled frame is turned upside down and the base ring and accompanying wedge gussets are inserted in specified grooves and secured with long countersunk socket screws that are fastened to the wood insert nuts.
- Project Duration and Location
- The project started in June 2017 in Tehran and finalized in November 2017 after a number of iterations. Three series of nuts have been tested on various types of rugs to choose the best combination for frame attachment. Technique with a strongest final result to be chosen.
- Specifications
- Assembled Product Dimensions: width: 820mm × depth: 1020mm × height: 830mm flat packed in box: width 1140mm X length 1140mm X height 120mm
- Keywords
- birch plywood, upcycling, hand-woven rug, flat-pack design, DIY assembly
