2020 Red Dot Award - Fly Ash Chair

The winners of the 2020 Red Dot Award (Design Concept) have been announced after assessments by an international professional jury. The Red Dot Design Concept Award leads the global design trend, and every year the announcement of the Red Dot Concept Award arouses wide attention in various industries.

The fly ash chair is a remedy for the world's energy dependence on coal and fossil fuels. Turning LEED certified construction methods into product designs, this chair provides a powerful and elegant solution through recycled coal waste. The authenticity of the material results in a variety of colors and textures, depending on the chemical diversity in each ash sample, giving each chair a unique industrial character.

 Design by Eric Stine

The toxic nature of coal energy production goes beyond the levels of greenhouse gases and carbon dioxide, and it produces a less well known derivative, which is massive amounts of fly ash. Fly ash is usually stored in "ash ponds" and mixed with water, often leading to groundwater pollution and environmental damage. The large amount of fly ash and its compounds make it a suitable candidate material for concrete mixtures in buildings. To determine the composition of the soil polymer, fly ash triggers a chemical reaction in the concrete mixture that not only neutralizes toxicity, but also has an extremely high tensile strength. In addition to exceeding the structural capacity of cement, fly ash concrete is cheaper, which uses less water, solidifies faster, and has lower permeability and is more resistant to corrosion, while reducing the environmental consequences of cement production and greenhouse gas emissions.

Fly ash concrete is a kind of building material which is more and more common and has more and more application prospects. The development of new fly ash functions in the product design industry allows designers to indirectly recycle the by-product energy from the products we manufacture, creating physical objects from fossil fuels to power our lives. The amount of ash contained in each fly ash chair is equivalent to the amount of coal used to power a 100W light bulb for 115 consecutive days. Each chair is an extension of the coal life cycle, creating a sustainable, adaptable and optimistic solution for the furniture design industry.