Zene ダイニングチェア by John G Williams is a highly esteemed winner of the very prestigious 2018 A' Design Award 鉄賞 in 家具デザイン Competition Category.
鉄家具· 2018
Zene ダイニングチェア
Client: John G Williams
A' Design Award 鉄賞 Winner in 家具 Category
Verified Award Winner
Verify Award Status for #58495The Design
About Zene ダイニングチェア
Zeneダイニングチェアは、地域産の木材とデンマークモダンデザインからインスピレーションを得ています。軽やかなアッシュ材のフレームはシンプルかつ堅牢で、フレームの上に浮いているように見える硬木の座面と背もたれを支えています。座面と背もたれの曲線的なフォルムは、木材を曲げて作られたものではなく、無垢の硬木を接合し成形することで生み出されています。シリーズとして、軽やかなアッシュ材のフレームが統一感をもたらし、座面と背もたれに選ばれた多彩な地域の素材が、興味深さと意義を生み出しています。
The Recognition
About the A' Design Award 鉄賞
Zene ダイニングチェアは、よく設計された創造物に期待される専門的・産業的要件を満たす優れたデザインに授与される、権威ある評価である A' Design Award 鉄賞の受賞作品です。鉄賞の受賞作品は、制作者の高い技量、高度な専門性、専門家としての理解、創造的な能力を示しています。Zene ダイニングチェアは、高く評価され、称賛され、愛される、実用的で革新的な創造物であることが期待されます。この A' Design Award 鉄賞を受賞したデザインは、業界のベストプラクティスを統合し、ノウハウと才能に結びついた有能な技術的特性を備えています。Zene ダイニングチェアは、その徹底ぶりで尊敬され、世界をより良い場所にするための生活の質の向上をもたらすよう設計されています。
Behind the Design
Press Kit
Credits, team members and technical details provided by the designer.
- Unique Properties
- This series of dining chairs have American ash frames and showcase different hardwood timbers for the seat/backrest combinations.
The chairs draw on the ancient art of 'coopering' or how oak barrels are made for fermentation purposes. The curved forms of the seat/backrest are not formed by bending but rather by joining and shaping solid hardwood timber.
The chair strives to be very strong and beautiful. In short: Zene -
elegant, comfortable and dependable. - Dimensions & Packaging
- 515mm wide x 570mm deep x 890mm high
seat: 515mm wide x 390mm deep
back:515mm wide x 200mm high - Tags
- zene, dining chair, south africa, hardwood, curved, cooper, danish modern, minimalist
- Production Technology
- The Zene design evolved over a number of years. The starting point was probably a fascination with the art of coopering and how this has been applied to furniture design. Building the segmented seat and backrests took some practice to perfect, as did the development of custom modifications to standard workshop tools to shape and finish the smoothly shaped forms.
- Design Challenge
- Building the coopered seat/backrests was challenging as it required careful attention to the compression forces on the material and how best to achieve high compression without causing the seats to 'implode'.
Shaping the rough seats into finely finished and smooth curves required considerable re-working of the custom tooling to achieve the desired results - Research
- Danish modern designs were studied and absorbed to consider different ways of rendering the frame, and its relationship to the seat, and to think through the spatial relationship of the seat to the backrest.
Web search was used to think about typical dimensions for the seat but in the end prototyping proved most fun. - Inspiration
- The beauty grain and colour of indigenous African timber was a key aesthetic inspiration for this project. The more technical inspiration for the overall work, including the frame design came from iconic designers such as Hans J Wegner (for example the CH20 Elbow Chair). The coopering technique was inspired by Ontario furniture designer Adrian Ferrazzutti.
- Project Duration
- The first prototype was conceived in Johannesburg in 2007. It was slowly refined as background task over 10 years, and the first set of 6 chairs was produced in 2017
- Operation Flow
- Zene is designed mainly for use at the dining table and is designed for extended dining comfort.
- Patents
- no patents pending
- Team Members
- John G Williams: designer, craftsman
- Image Credits
- all images by the designer: John G Williams
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