Press Release
Saltatur Furniture by Masoud Akbarzadeh Receives the Silver A' Design Award in Furniture Design
Masoud Akbarzadeh recognized for furniture design by the international grand jury of the 2019 - 2020 A' Design Award & Competition
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
COMO, Italy, April 23, 2020 /DesignNewswire/ Saltatur Furniture by Masoud Akbarzadeh, designed for Polyhedral Structure Laboratory, has been granted the Silver A' Design Award in the Furniture Design category, A' Design Award & Competition has announced. The result belongs to the 2019 - 2020 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 scored anonymized entries against predetermined criteria.
The Silver A' Design Award Explained
The Silver A' Design Award celebrates top-tier designs that embody excellence and innovation. This award acknowledges creations that are not only aesthetically pleasing but also highly functional, reflecting the designer's deep understanding and skill. Silver A' Design Award recipients are recognized for their contribution to raising industry standards and advancing the practice of design. Their work often incorporates original innovations and elicits a strong emotional response, making a notable impact on the improvement of everyday life.
More About Saltatur Furniture
Saltatur is a long-span table designed as a prefabricated composite structure. The table combines a compression-only concrete body, post-tensioning steel rods and an ultra-thin glass top. The glass top is shaped as a funicular three-hinged arch spanning 3.75 meters. The structural form was developed with three-dimensional graphic statics, so the concrete body is held in compression by tension ties at the top and bottom. The discrete spatial system reduces the volume of concrete and the carbon footprint while preserving the mass needed for structural performance.
About Masoud Akbarzadeh
Masoud Akbarzadeh is a designer with a unique academic background and experience in architectural design, computation, and structural engineering. He is an Assistant Professor of Architecture in Structures and Advanced Technologies and the Director of the Polyhedral Structures Laboratory (PSL). He holds a D.Sc. from the Institute of Technology in Architecture, ETH Zurich, where he was a Research Assistant in the Block Research Group. He holds two degrees from MIT: a Master of Science in Architecture Studies (Computation) and a MArch, the thesis for which earned him the renowned SOM award.
Award Record
Masoud Akbarzadeh is a winner of 1 A' Design Award, including this recognition.
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/99680
- A' Design Award Page: https://competition.adesignaward.com/99680
- Media Showcase: https://www.designnewsroom.com/!99680
- Laureate Profile: https://dezigners.org/d/271841
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
- Saltatur Furniture
- Function
- Furniture
- Category
- Furniture Design
- Discipline
- Industrial Design
- Industry
- Furniture & Home
- Colors
- Dark Slate Gray, Black, Dim Gray, Gray and Dark Gray
- Images
- 5
- Client
- Polyhedral Structure Laboratory
The Recognition
- Laureate
- Masoud Akbarzadeh
- Country
- United States of America
- Recognition
- Silver A' Design Award
- Edition
- 2019 - 2020
- Design ID
- #99680
Credits
- Team
- Masoud Akbarzadeh, Ali Tabatabaei Ghomi, Mohammad Bolhassani, Mostafa Akbari, Alireza Seyedahmadian, Konstantinos Papalexiou, Jingchu Sun, Hanqing Yao.
- Image Credits
- Copyright: Polyhedral Structures Laboratory Image credit: Polyhedral Structures Laboratory
Design Details
- Unique Properties
- The Saltatur demonstrates innovative research in the design and fabrication of a prefab, discrete, spatial composite structure consisting of a spatial, compression-only concrete body, post-tensioning steel rods, and an ultra-thin glass structure on its top in the form of long-span furniture. Using discrete spatial systems would minimize the volume of concrete and the carbon footprint while preserving the necessary mass for structural performance and specific architectural detailing.
- Inspiration
- The project has been inspired by the works of Gaudi and extends his works to a three-dimensional compression and tension combined system of forces in the form of a long span table. The structural form has been inspired by the Greco-Roman wrestling technique, Salto, which includes lifting, returning, and taking down an opponent to the mat. The geometry of the table lifts the glass top, rotates, and transfers the loads to the ground. The word 'salto' means 'to dance' in Latin. The name of our structure is Saltatur, which means 'a dancer' in Latin.
- Research
- The structural form of the furniture was designed using a newly developed method of 3D Graphic Statics, which is the extension of the existing 2D methods proposed in 1864. A node-based assembly was considered as a method of construction. An innovative detailing was developed that allowed fixing the members in their exact locations in the structure to avoid the possible spatial collision of the branches of the nodes during the assembly. The ultra-thin glass structure on the top was formed into a funicular geometry as a three-hinged discrete arch spanning 3.75 meters.
- Challenge
- Challenges include the concrete casting of complex 3d nodes, detail development that can allow for easy assembly and disassembly, ultra thin (4mm) glass top spanning 3 meters to support the applied loads and its self-weight.
- Realization and Technology
- There are multiple design innovations in various phases of the realization of this project, from conceptual structural design to fabrication. The structural form of the project was developed using 3D/polyhedral graphic statics with a very particular control over the magnitude of the horizontal forces in the system. As a result, the entire concrete body of the structure is held in compression by the tension ties at the top and bottom of the structure with no horizontal reactions at the supports.
- Operation and Interaction
- The Saltator is an ensemble of compression and tension forces held in a twisted configuration of equilibrium. The geometry of the structure was inspired by the Greco-Roman wrestling technique, Salto. The word 'salto' means 'to dance' in Latin, which also inspired the name of the furniture, Saltatur, 'a dancer' in Latin. The form was designed using the geometry-based method of 3D graphic statics. The structure shows how we can minimize the volume of construction materials and reduce the carbon footprint of a structure while preserving the necessary mass for structural performance.
- Project Duration and Location
- 2 years, Weitzman School of Design, University of Pennsylvania
- Specifications
- 195 cm (W) x 308 cm (L) x 90 cm (H)
- Keywords
- composite, ultra thin spatial concrete, design for reassembly, funicular structures
