Bronze Furniture Design · 2026
Chifuyu Living Center Table
by Yuto Yamada
- A' Design Award 2026 Bronze Winner in Furniture Design
- Awarded April 15, 2026
- Estimated Number of Design Views: 7,359
- Verification code E1C3F1E16F · Verify this award
About Chifuyu Living Center Table
Chifuyu is a low center table designed for living rooms. The form was inspired by an image of two pieces of leather suspended in mid air. A single curving piece of leather shapes the surface and creates a sense of floating. Perforated metal supports the curve and made the complex three dimensional shaping possible. The table measures 950 millimetres in width, 950 millimetres in depth and 280 millimetres in height. The light and suspended appearance is intended to add an extraordinary note to everyday interiors.
Yuto Yamada's Chifuyu Living Center Table represents a sophisticated engagement with the enduring dialogue between organic form and geometric precision that has animated furniture design discourse since the mid-twentieth century, when pioneers of Scandinavian and organic modernism first challenged the rectilinear orthodoxies of earlier functionalist movements by introducing biomorphic curves, natural material celebration, and sculptural ambition into everyday domestic objects, transforming utilitarian furnishings into aesthetic statements that honor both practical necessity and visual poetry, and this design participates meaningfully in that tradition while addressing contemporary sensibilities regarding material restraint, spatial efficiency, and the integration of furniture as sculptural presence within residential environments, demonstrating how layered horizontal planes can create visual interest and functional versatility without vertical elaboration or volumetric excess, allowing the piece to maintain unobtrusive physical presence while offering complex formal rewards to sustained observation. The compositional achievement of the work resides substantially in its sophisticated manipulation of asymmetrical balance, wherein two overlapping organic platforms of similar tonal value but deliberately offset positioning create dynamic equilibrium through their strategic non-alignment, the lower plane extending more generously leftward and rearward while the upper surface projects rightward and forward, generating directional energy and visual movement that prevents the composition from settling into static centrality, while the wavelike undulation of the perimeter edges introduces rhythmic variation and softens the geometry without compromising structural clarity, these compound curves suggesting natural forms such as water ripples, windblown sand, or petal edges while remaining sufficiently abstract to avoid literal biomimicry, achieving that delicate calibration between naturalistic reference and geometric abstraction that characterizes successful organic design, and the cylindrical or conical base element provides necessary vertical counterpoint to the dominant horizontal emphasis while maintaining minimal visual interruption, allowing the upper planes to appear suspended and weightless despite their evident materiality and functional load-bearing requirements. The chromatic sophistication emerges through rigorous restraint rather than coloristic variety, the designer choosing to work within a compressed tonal range of warm neutrals that suggest natural wood species in their lighter manifestations, creating harmonious visual continuity across the primary furniture form while allowing selective accents, the circular marble or marble-effect tray with its subtle gray veining, the transparent glass vessels with their refractive qualities, and particularly the coral-pink orchid blossoms, to punctuate the composition with material and chromatic variety that reads as curatorial styling rather than intrinsic design feature, yet these accent elements effectively demonstrate the table's intended function as platform for domestic rituals of display, refreshment, and decoration, grounding the sculptural form within lived residential experience. The work invites contemplation of how furniture can transcend purely utilitarian function to become spatial sculpture that shapes the phenomenological experience of domestic space, how overlapping planes can create visual complexity from formal simplicity, how organic curves can soften architectural environments while maintaining contemporary aesthetic coherence, and how material restraint and chromatic quietude can themselves constitute a form of visual eloquence, suggesting that what is withheld can be as significant as what is expressed, a philosophical position consonant with minimalist and reductionist aesthetic traditions that find richness in limitation and expressive power in disciplined restraint, and one might consider while observing this design how the absence of ornament, the refinement of profile, and the careful calibration of proportion collectively create an object that seeks to serve without dominating, to enhance without demanding attention, to fulfill domestic needs while offering aesthetic satisfaction, embodying perhaps a particularly contemporary understanding of furniture as quiet participant in daily life rather than assertive protagonist, supporting human activity and spatial harmony through understated presence and functional grace.
Press Kit
- Unique Properties
- The curving single piece of leather creates a sense of floating.
This center table is almost gravity-beflying.
This table, as if suspended in mid-air, will bring a touch of the extraordinary to your everyday life. - Dimensions & Packaging
- w950 x d950 x h280mm
- Tags
- Table,low table,center table,Design,Unique
- Production Technology
- The shaping of the tertiary surface proved extremely difficult. It was achieved by employing perforated metal.
- Design Challenge
- Expressing the shape of a cubic surface and realising it while utilising the skills of engineers proved extremely difficult. Through repeated discussions, we continued to seek the correct solution until completion.
- Project Duration
- The project started in Apr. 2020 in Tokyo and finished in Jan. 2021 in Tokyo, and was exhibited in Salone del Mobile in June 2022.
- Operation Flow
- This table, as if suspended in mid-air, will bring a touch of the extraordinary to your everyday life.
- Inspiration
- While pondering how to create a new table, an image came to mind of two pieces of leather suspended in mid-air.
I contemplated how to realise this vision, and arrived at this form. - Image Credits
- Photographer / Takumi Ota
- Patents
- Copyrights belong to Yuto Yamada, 2025.