Press Release
Golden A' Design Award in Furniture Design Goes to Zense Table Chair Set by Louis Wai Yin Hung
The international grand jury of the 2024 - 2025 A' Design Award & Competition recognizes Louis Wai Yin Hung for furniture design
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
COMO, Italy, April 19, 2025 /DesignNewswire/ A' Design Award & Competition has confirmed the Golden A' Design Award in the Furniture Design category for Zense Table Chair Set by Louis Wai Yin Hung, designed for Iterative Studio. The award was conferred within the 2024 - 2025 A' Design Award & Competition and was determined through blind peer review by an international grand jury panel of established academics, design professionals and press members, who evaluated anonymized entries against predetermined criteria.
About the Golden A' Design Award
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 Zense Table Chair Set
Zense is a transformative table that merges traditional Chinese craftsmanship with contemporary functionality. Its design takes the process of transformation into a ritualistic act, engaging the user's all 5 senses to seamlessly shift between calligraphy surface and tea ceremony platform. The piece is hand-crafted, pursuing unprecedented wood thinness through masterful artisan techniques, relying on traditional wooden joinery techniques alone, without any metal components.
About Louis Wai Yin Hung
Louis Hung Wai Yin is a Hong Kong-based architect, researcher, and educator operating at the nexus of spatial design and socio-cultural discourse. Hung’s award-winning works span across all scales - from architecture, interior, to installation and furniture - recognised and showcased internationally across Asia and Europe, including Milan, Belgium, Seoul, Hong Kong, and Shenzhen etc.
Award Record
This recognition makes Louis Wai Yin Hung a winner of 1 A' Design Award.
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://dezigners.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://dezigners.org/171037
- A' Design Award Page: https://competition.adesignaward.com/171037
- Media Showcase: https://www.designnewsroom.com/!171037
- Laureate Profile: https://dezigners.org/d/366454
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
- Zense Table Chair Set
- Function
- Table Chair Set
- Category
- Furniture Design
- Discipline
- Industrial Design
- Industry
- Furniture & Home
- Colors
- Dark Gray, Gainsboro, Light Slate Gray, Dark Slate Gray and Light Gray
- Images
- 5
- Client
- Iterative Studio
The Recognition
- Laureate
- Louis Wai Yin Hung
- Country
- Hong Kong (China)
- Recognition
- Golden A' Design Award
- Edition
- 2024 - 2025
- Design ID
- #171037
Design Details
- Unique Properties
- Zense is both a furniture to ritual instrument. Its transforming structure—crafted from impossibly slender wood members—orchestrates tea ceremony and calligraphy while inscribing cultural memory into space. Every operational motion (wood sliding, joinery clicking) becomes ceremonial act of all 5 senses from touch, to sound; every use converts rooms into heritage vessels. The exoskeleton's artisanal precision enforces ritual deliberation, making tradition tactile through:
- Inspiration
- Zense transforms Asian heritage into lived experience. This kinetic table merges tea ceremony and calligraphy through masterful woodcraft—its slender exoskeleton achieving structural elegance while enforcing ritual deliberation. Every interaction engages the senses, making tradition tactile rather than symbolic. Through material intelligence and embodied use, Zense bridges past and future, turning cultural memory into tangible, sensory encounters.
- Research
- This project pursued the minimal threshold dimensions of wooden members while retaining structural integrity, guided solely by craftsmen who discern strength through fingertips. Each slender element was refined not by engineering calculations, but through generations of tactile material intelligence. Practitioners tested these components, their ceremonial movements revealing where rigidity needed to yield to grace.
- Challenge
- This project faced the dual challenge of reviving ancient Chinese joinery while pushing wood’s structural limits to unprecedented thinness—all without modern engineering aids. nternally, we grappled with fading craftsmanship traditions. Material constraints demanded upcycled wood with unpredictable grain behavior, while the absence of metal fasteners required perfect joinery precision. Production hinged on master artisans capable of such handwork that relied on sensory intuition alone.
- Realization and Technology
- Handcrafted by master artisans using traditional Chinese joinery, the furniture set is composed of 553 upcycled timber components, each meticulously shaped to optimize weight distribution—resulting in a slender yet perfectly balanced structure. Analog iterations refined proportions without digital intervention, ensuring harmony between form and function. Magnets were discreetly chiseled into wooden housings, as the assembly relies entirely on wood-on-wood joinery, eliminating metal fasteners. Even its construction embodies ritual, merging vernacular craftsmanship with intentional, meditative precision.
- Operation and Interaction
- Zense begins as a serene writing surface, but with a simple lift, its wooden top rises and locks into place, transforming into a tea ceremony platform. There are no buttons or complicated mechanisms; just smooth, deliberate motions that mirror the care of traditional rituals themselves. This motion forces mindfulness, and addresses all 5 sense of the body. Every interaction—the weight of the moving parts, the satisfying click of alignment is designed to make the past feel present and purposeful.
- Project Duration and Location
- The project started in 2018 and was exhibited most notably DesignInspire 2019 and SUPERDESIGN SHOW (Superstudio Pi - Via Tortona 27 - Milan) in 2022, amongst other venues in Hong Kong and China across 2022-2025.
- Specifications
- 1300mm x 550mm x 720mm. Fully handcrafted with (screwless) traditional wooden joinery techniques. Weight distribution of structures optimised to minimise profile of structural members into 30mmx30mm solid wood.
- Keywords
- Handcrafted, table, chair, set, upcycled, wood, traditional, joinery, asian, culture
