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