Zene 餐椅 by John G Williams is a highly esteemed winner of the very prestigious 2018 A' Design Award 铁奖 in 家具设计 Competition Category.

铁家具· 2018

Zene 餐椅

by John G Williams

Client: John G Williams

A' Design Award 铁奖 Winner in 家具 Category

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Verified Award Winner

Verify Award Status for #58495

View at A' Design Award Press Release Award Badge

Colors

The Design

About Zene 餐椅

Zene餐椅的灵感源自本土木材与丹麦现代主义设计。浅色白蜡木框架简洁而坚固，承托着硬木座面与靠背，令其仿佛悬浮于框架之上。座面与靠背的曲线造型并非通过弯曲木材实现，而是以实木硬木拼接并雕琢成形。作为一个系列，浅色白蜡木框架赋予整体统一性，而为座面与靠背精选的不同在地材料则带来丰富的趣味与地域关联性。

The Recognition

About the A' Design Award 铁奖

Zene 餐椅是 A' Design Award 铁奖得主，这是授予满足人们对设计精良的创作所期待的专业与工业要求的优良设计的声望认可。铁奖得主展现出其创作者的高超技艺、高度专业化、专家级的理解力和创造能力。预计Zene 餐椅将成为一件备受推崇、令人钦佩且被珍爱的创作，既实用又创新。这件赢得 A' Design Award 铁奖的设计整合了行业最佳实践，并拥有与专业知识和才华相结合的称职技术特性。Zene 餐椅因其严谨而受到尊重，旨在提供有助于让世界变得更美好的生活品质改善。

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