With his work “One or Three Chairs,” TKU Architecture major, senior student Zhen-yuan Huang won Excellent Work Award for the category of “Digital Creation” in the World Form-Z Joint Study Program in the U.S. The competition attracted many participants from more than 200 universities in more than 30 countries like Great Britain, Germany, Japan and Canada. They were divided in six categories including architectural design, municipal design, indoor design, industrial design, computer animation and digital creation.

Supervisor Associate Professor Zhen-cheng Chen revealed, “The inspiration of “One or Three Chairs” is derived from the series works of “One or Three Chair” by Joseph Kosuth.” Starting from “derivation,” making the wood joints turning freely, he could design a big chair that could be taken into parts and made into three small chairs. Prof. Chen explained, “I build a real chair according to the shadow of that chair, and then build another one according to the shadow of the two chairs and combine them together.” This design can let people decide the number of chairs and DIY.” Giving consideration to its practical usability, this design is quite original and innovating.

Speaking about winning the Award, Zhen-yuan Huang indicated that the judges had been quite interested in the turning function of the wood joints, which, he believed, was the key element of winning it.

It was pretty hard because cutting the wood took a lot of time; after cutting the wood into the primary shapes, he also had to polish the parts and assembly them. He smilingly said, “The whole process is like assembling the Transformers. I had to be extremely careful about every detail. If there was a small error, I had to start it again from the beginning.” Since winning the Award, Zhen-yuan Huang has had more expectations from himself. He said, “I am not quite mature in designing skills, and I hope to try harder in the same direction and create various better works.” For this, Prof. Zhen-cheng Chen said, “Zhen-yuan Huang is a very hard-working student with many ideas of his own. If he continues to further his studies, we naturally anticipate his future achievements.” ( ~Dean X. Wang )