Rooi Design and Research studio has designed 410 sets of plywood tables and chairs from Furniture Pavilion S at Comprehensive Cultural Service Center in Fuqing, Fujian Province, China. It’s a great approach took by the studio to recycle the entire exhibition space and build a sustainable solution in the most affordable way for rural communities.
‘We believe a design concept cannot be separated from its original context,’ says Rooi’s biography, a sentiment that drives Furniture Pavilion S as a project that’s sustainably and thoughtfully made for past, present and future shared experiences.
The idea came to Rooi after contemplating about the unnecessary accumulation of the waste generated from temporary exhibition spaces which further becomes the cause of pollution. The architect used- plywood, which is one of the most familiar materials in furniture manufacturing for constructing the pavilion that was developed at the Shanghai International Furniture Fair 2019 for a furniture exhibitor last year. Later the construction materials have been recycled into wonderful pieces of furniture.
The construction materials for the structure was formed from 821 pieces of market standard size 1.22m×1.22m plywood. The best part of this design is – its simple fabrication and assembling. It can be assembled within 48 hours, which radically minimizes the cost and the time taken during the construction. Each plywood is flawlessly modified into 3 rectangle chairs and a perfect hexagonal table.
The speciality of Pavilion S is that it is not just a furniture showroom, but a place where one can comfortably sit and rest during the exhibition. There are 2 different cubes in the exterior of the structure, whereas 4 facades have become windows to showcase the furniture. It is constructed in this way to allow people to get different views of the furniture from various angles.
There is one more striking feature - the entire structure does not contain any column. This has been done to leave all the complexities in the design and technique of the building to give the viewers an impression of the simple, clear, bright and environment-friendly structure. The edifice is a mix of wood and steel where steel is used in the roof and the rest part of it.
The studio has designed this structure to increase the interpersonal relations of the community- ‘design the furniture which can be combined into different forms to increase the interactivity and fun, at the same time enrich the community activities.’
Rooi Design and Research studio mainly specializes in cultural architecture.Founded in Cape town in 2018, the studio has its offices in Beijing and Shenzhen