"Freezing rain" is a fun furniture design experiment and a design that learns from nature.This furniture design received attention due to the invitation to “Touch”, the exhibition of Shenzhen Creative Design Week.Interestingly, this design has no design objects and functional requirements.The only requirement is to design under the theme of "Touch".Designs without explicit objects and requirements are even more difficult for designers.Designers need to find their own design starting point.So we look for the idea about a more fundamental level .

From the theme of “Touch” we thought of heavy rain and came up with a few keywords: translucent, fuzzy, linear, flowing and changeable.If a space can create imagination, then can we design furniture to create imagination and present it in a simple form? Like the cloud falling raindrops, this became the concept for this design.

Stainless steel is cold, reflect the surrounding environment, and the material is flexible and easy to model.These features to make stainless steel a great choice of us  materialize the rainy scene.The "line" cut out of the steel plate can serve as a structural support.And the rule of cutting is with the distribution of the force of the furniture. Different stress distributions result from a change in the density of the “line”, thus created a visual effect like “falling rain”.

“Freezing rain” includes a chaise lounge, a small table and a screen.These furnitures can be used alone or combined like a small resting space.The mirror reflection of the stainless steel allows the furniture to integrate and respond to all kinds of space environment.This set of furniture can be used as outdoor furniture in the courtyard, or as interior furniture, with a detachable cushion to make the chair more comfortable.Stainless steel furniture has unexpected diversity.Varied mirror effects will cause curiosity, that many people in the exhibition stopped in front of the screen and watch themselves in the screen.

Project Name: FREEZING RAIN
Product Design: Usual Studio
Team：Lin Jingrui, Shen Jiajun, Wen Hsin
Location：Hangzhou，China
Project Year：August 2017
Photo Credit：Usual Studio