Press Release
Golden A' Design Award in Furniture Design Goes to Accordion Modular Sofa by Yuqi Wang
The international grand jury of the 2024 - 2025 A' Design Award & Competition recognizes Yuqi Wang of Kuka Home for furniture design
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
COMO, Italy, April 19, 2025 /DesignNewswire/ Accordion Modular Sofa by Yuqi Wang of Kuka Home, designed for Jason Furniture (Hangzhou) Co.,Ltd., has been granted the Golden A' Design Award in the Furniture Design category, A' Design Award & Competition has announced. The result belongs to the 2024 - 2025 A' Design Award & Competition and was decided 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 Golden A' Design Award Means
The Gold A' Design Award is granted to designs that demonstrate a high level of innovation and a significant impact on their intended audience. Recognized as a major achievement by the A' Design Awards, these designs are characterized by their visionary approach and the exceptional skill of their creators. Winners of the Gold A' Design Award are noted for their ability to push the envelope in art, science, design, and technology, delivering solutions that not only meet but exceed expectations. These designs serve as benchmarks for excellence, encouraging further innovation and inspiring future generations of designers.
About Accordion Modular Sofa
Accordion is a modular sofa built from a single base module. The base module changes size and shape through compression, similar to the bellows of an accordion. Many sofa configurations can be created from one module to suit different spaces. The body is made of high resilience compressible foam, and the wooden side panels are joined by strong ropes and adjustable knobs. Turning the knobs tightens the ropes and compresses the sofa. The sofa can also be compressed for flat pack packaging, which lowers packaging, storage and transport costs.
About Kuka Home
KUKA HOME, a globally renowned home furnishing brand, is committed to providing healthy, comfortable, and environmentally friendly home furnishing solutions for families worldwide. Founded in 1982, KUKA HOME has remained true to its original intention and
Award Record
With this recognition, Yuqi Wang of Kuka Home is a winner of 2 A' Design Awards. The awards were granted between the 2023 - 2024 and the 2024 - 2025 editions of the A' Design Award & Competition.
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://dezigners.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://dezigners.org/170311
- A' Design Award Page: https://competition.adesignaward.com/170311
- Media Showcase: https://www.designnewsroom.com/!170311
- Laureate Profile: https://dezigners.org/d/350382
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
- Accordion Modular Sofa
- Function
- Modular Sofa
- Category
- Furniture Design
- Discipline
- Industrial Design
- Industry
- Furniture & Home
- Colors
- Rosy Brown, Wheat, Tan, Saddle Brown and Sienna
- Images
- 5
- Client
- Jason Furniture (Hangzhou) Co.,Ltd.
The Recognition
- Laureate
- Yuqi Wang
- Country
- China
- Brand
- Kuka Home
- Recognition
- Golden A' Design Award
- Edition
- 2024 - 2025
- Design ID
- #170311
Design Details
- Unique Properties
- This is a modular sofa. What sets it apart from most modular sofas is that it uses a single base module capable of changing size and shape to create endless sofa configurations. Additionally, it can be compressed for flat-pack packaging, making it easy to carry while also reducing packaging, storage, and transportation costs.
- Inspiration
- The design of the accordion sofa is inspired by the dynamic changes of the bellows during an accordion performance. This gave me an idea: if a sofa's base module could be compressed to change its shape, just like an accordion bellows, then this transformable module could be combined into endless sofa configurations. This would minimize the number of sofa specifications needed.
- Research
- Our research is aimed at the furniture market, and we hope to get an innovative sofa product through our project. We Collected information through our e-commerce department, including user’s evaluation, Logistics distribution evaluation and other multi-angle information. We have identified several issues with many current sofa products, such as excessive specifications, difficulty in selection, large size, transportation challenges, and the inability to adapt to various spatial layouts. To address these market problems, we designed this sofa.
- Challenge
- The most challenging part of this project was designing a simple mechanism to adjust the sofa's shape. There are almost no sofas on the market that can change their form through compression, leaving us with no existing examples to reference. As a result, we researched compression structures across various fields and ultimately found inspiration for the sofa's compression mechanism in industrial machinery. We then created a simple prototype to verify its feasibility.
- Realization and Technology
- The sofa is made of high-resilience compressible foam, and the wooden side panels on both sides are connected by durable climbing ropes and adjustable knobs. By rotating the knobs we can pull the internal ropes tight, the side panels can compress the sofa and achieve shape changes and size changes.
- Operation and Interaction
- The three knobs on the side of the sofa are located at the top of the backrest, the bottom of the backrest, and the front of the seat cushion. Rotating the different knobs tightens the durable outdoor ropes inside the sofa at those positions, pulling the side wooden panels closer together. As the panels compress the sofa, different shapes are achieved. The knob design features clear and intuitive patterns, making it very easy to operate. Two sofas can be connected using the knobs and the wooden holes on the opposite side, much like Lego bricks.
- Project Duration and Location
- The project started in December 2024 in Hangzhou and it is scheduled to be completed by July 2025,and available for sale in October 2025.
- Specifications
- The sofa dimensions are W890*D1150*H700mm.Since the main body of the sofa is made of high-resilience compressible foam, it is volume can be significantly reduced through mechanical compression during packaging. The flat dimensions of the sofa are W230*D1150*H700mm. It’s only 2/5 of the sofa.This reduction lowers the costs associated with packaging, warehousing, and logistics. It also can be easily placed in a shopping cart or carried on the back.
- Keywords
- Modular sofa, Transformable sofa, Flat-packing, Portable sofa, Playful sofa, Tool-free assembly, Sofa for all spaces, Sofa for all spaces
