Grid Bench By Mario Tsai Studio

REdesign is an organisation that rethinks the materials and processes associated with design. In 2019, the REdesign project used wood-based panels, plywood, MDF and particleboard, as its theme. Mario Tsai Studio uses 5-millimetre thin plywood as its material, aiming to express the unique attributes of this often-overlooked material, such as thinness and toughness. The studio tries to make the most of every material, exploring its most valuable potential. Grid Bench. In image processing, a grid converts the instructions in an image into pixels; based on this, the designers pixelated the basic form of a bench, using 5-millimetre thin plywood sheets as the basic pixel unit. Horizontal and vertical sheets are vertically slotted into one another to form a stable structure. The hidden slotting makes the sheets appear unrelated, so that each one visually floats in a precarious, unstable state. The contrast between the light, transparent quality and the visual weight adds drama to the product. The green-gradient version of the Grid Bench is the designer's experiment in pixelating a colour range; the 19 sheets of the seat, each in a different green, are also a showcase of the high-quality spray-painting process of the collaborating factory. The project is a furniture piece by Mario Tsai Studio that treats thin plywood as pixels, assembling a bench from interlocking sheets. It is a demonstration of how a digital concept, the pixel grid, can be translated into a physical, almost floating object using a single industrial material. The result is a bench that is at once structurally rational and visually ethereal, with the green gradient version also celebrating the craft of industrial finishing.