With a little help from our friends at the Red Dot Design Awards, we’re kicking off the Chinese New Year with 8 award-winning designs from Chinese designers curated from the past year’s Red Dot Awards. Wishing all our readers a wonderful and bountiful ‘year of the pig’, from the YD family to yours.
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01. Segway Ninebot Gokart Kit by Bowen Cai, Yongjie Li, Ji Lin
Imagine if you could take your hoverboard, add two more tires and a steering wheel to it and fashion a go-kart for yourself. Why that’s what the Segway Ninebot is. Designed as an attachment to the $499 Segway Mini Pro, the Ninebot turns a last-mile commutation device into a fun, electric go-kart that can be driven around practically anywhere! The company claims that the Segway-Ninebot electric gokart can accelerate from 0 to 12 mph (20 km/h) in under 2 seconds and can support riders of up to 220 lbs.
02. Build-Fender by Chen Chi-Shan
The Build Fender is part architectural marvel, part massive eco-system. Inspired by how biological cells work together to clean and sustain a system, the Build Fender skyscraper imagines different ‘cell components’ in a building that have different functions and effects. When combined, they create a building that works around-the-clock like a living ecosystem that minimizes its impact on the environment and actively purifies the air that passes through it on a massive scale.
03. Knitting Lounger by Liang Chen, Ma Qianli
Inspired by a type of Asian knitting handicraft that integrates aesthetics and functionality, the designers made full use of the merits of knitting and created this ergonomic outdoor furniture. The concept of knitting delivers a sense of interweaving and the ropes used for knitting are made from a water-proof material, requiring less maintenance and upkeep.
04. Forseti Axe by Tony Chui Pak Ho
Designed as a modern take on the axe, the Forseti relooks the axe’s basic construction of a handle and a blade. The new design looks much more integrated, but what’s interesting is how the blade is designed as a plug-in-plug-out module that fits almost flush into the metal handle, creating an almost monolithic product that can always be repaired/maintained by simply switching blade-pieces by discarding the old blade and plugging in a new one!
05. SHO by Pan Biwei
Practically a hallmark of simplicity and effectiveness, the Sho is made of literally two parts. A frame and a mattress. However, it can exist in three states. As a bed (with the mattress used as-is), as a comfortable chair, and as a reclining lounge chair. The SHO works well as instant furniture, be it in low-cost apartments, or at disaster relief sites. The metal framework is foldable, and when opened out, allows you to tuck the mattress into it, turning it either into a comfortable chair with a backrest, or into a lounging recline you can lean into. Independently, the mattress serves as a bed for one, allowing you to have three pieces of furniture that use just two simple objects.
06. Fu-Chair by Wei-Chen Chang, Pei-Chun Hsueh, Po-Wei Tsai, Zhen-Ling You
Fu-Chair’s brilliance is in its duality. Designed as two chairs stacked upside down on each other, the Fu-Chair can either be used as one single chair with armrests (and a storage space for books below the seat) or as two separate stools. Ingenious, eh?!
07. Cloud Cooker Hood by Jin Ze, Ye Tian, Zhang Haonan, Zhu Lingjie
Inspired by traditional Chinese paper-cutting art, the Cloud Cooker Hood uses undulating sheets to form a hood that looks flat when closed, and turns into an organic chimney/hood when open, allowing fumes to exit the kitchen while also adding a touch of aesthetics to the decor of the room.
08. Connect by Li Enxin, Miao Xinyi, Tao Zhixiang , Wang Fubing, Zhang Jing
Created for the kindergarten environment, the Connect is a fun table-setup that allows you to join or separate desks based on need. Connecting plates allow you to create different sort of patterns that immediately turn the kindergarten into a place of fun, allowing kids to experiment with forms and layouts, while also improving their dexterity and understanding of furniture and of puzzles. Having the Connect in any kindergarten will automatically make it a place of learning and a place of fun!
