Furniture Pavilion S is a sustainable furniture concept

Furniture made from Pavilion S — Furniture made with Furniture Pavilion S structure.

(Image credit: Ming Chen)

Rooi Design and Research studio has been busy thinking about how much waste is generated from temporary exhibition spaces. When planning for the Shanghai Furniture Fair last year, they took a considered approach for the design of display Furniture Pavilion S – a plywood structure that has now been given a new lease of life.

Founded Cape Town in 2018, with offices in Beijing and Shenzhen, Rooi took its ethos of creating ‘better and more “human-scale” environments for users’ when creating the angular and geometrical exhibition space for Side Furniture, a brand founded by Xin Huachen in 2018.

Keeping costs at a minimum was key, and so using plywood made sense for the modular structure, which consisted of 821 pieces of market standard size. Quick to assemble and dissemble, the edifice only used steel for the rest of the body and its roof, allowing the eco-conscious model to be seamless in its look and flooded with light in each display cove.

Furniture made from architectural pavilion

Today, Furniture Pavilion S has been made a comeback as 410 sets of hexagonal tables and rectangle chairs. Rooi was keen to ‘design the furniture which can be combined into different forms to increase the interactivity and fun, at the same time enrich the community activities.’ Installed at Comprehensive Cultural Service Center in a small town in Fuqing, Fujian Province, China, the furniture has a playful set up that can be added to, and pieced together for communal use.

‘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.

Furniture display system — The original Furniture Pavilion S structure on display at Shanghai Furniture Fair.

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Sujata Burman is a writer and editor based in London, specialising in design and culture. She was Digital Design Editor at Wallpaper* before moving to her current role of Head of Content at London Design Festival and London Design Biennale where she is expanding the content offering of the showcases. Over the past decade, Sujata has written for global design and culture publications, and has been a speaker, moderator and judge for institutions and brands including RIBA, D&AD, Design Museum and Design Miami/. In 2019, she co-authored her first book, An Opinionated Guide to London Architecture, published by Hoxton Mini Press, which was driven by her aim to make the fields of design and architecture accessible to wider audiences.