Picto-Furniture · Flower Stool
A modular seating concept for workshop and exhibition settings, developed around Shanghai’s Tilanqiao context and the forms of Chinese characters.
- Context
- Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University · Picto-Furniture
- My contribution
- Individual furniture concept · Flower Stool
A character becomes a place to gather.
Flower Stool translates a cultural starting point into a set of simple wooden modules. The project draws on Tilanqiao, Chinese character forms and the symbolism of flowers to explore furniture that can be rearranged for different encounters.
Designed for workshops at the Tilanqiao Prison Museum, the concept uses three basic module types. Flower Stool was included in XJTLU’s Picto-Furniture presentation at Milan Design Week 2023, documented in the university’s Industrial Design yearbook.
From cultural context to furniture
Picto-Furniture explores the translation of Chinese pictograms from flat forms into three-dimensional furniture. Within this wider collection, Flower Stool draws on the idea of flowers as carriers of memory, emotion and renewal.
The design brief places the stool in a museum workshop setting in Tilanqiao. Its modular structure allows the cultural reference to remain part of a useful, reconfigurable object.
Three modules, different arrangements
Three basic module types can be arranged as individual seats or grouped for workshops and displays. The drawings connect the overall composition with the dimensions of the individual pieces.
Milan Design Week 2023
Flower Stool appeared as part of XJTLU’s Picto-Furniture exhibition in the Milan Design Week Parallel Program. The photographs show the wider collection and exhibition setting, including work by several designers.
The 2022–2023 Industrial Design yearbook documents the exhibition on printed pages 133–136 and includes Kang Lu in the exhibiting designers’ credits. It describes the collection as prototypes for possible indoor and outdoor furniture.
