Dezeen Magazine

Buzao at Shanghai Design Week

Buzao launches Null and Hot collections at Design Shanghai

Blue-tinted glass and iridescent stainless steel feature in Chinese design studio Buzao's latest furniture collections, which were launched at Design Shanghai this week.

The Null collection features blue-toned, transparent glass, intended to evoke "stability, calmness and rationality", while the Hot collection has an iridescent and "violently psychedelic" colour palette.

Buzao at Shanghai Design Week
The items in the Hot collection are made of electroplated stainless steel

Presented at this year's Design Shanghai, which takes place between 6 and 9 March, both furniture collections aim to draw on the "existing beauty of the materials", as well as their "natural imperfections and irregularity".

"What matters most is the artistic properties of uncertainty or abnormality within a substance," Peng Zeng, the brand's director, told Dezeen.

Buzao at Shanghai Design Week
The Hot collection has an iridescent and "violently psychedelic" colour palette

The Hot collection, which features a side table, an upright column, a tea table, a table and two benches, uses electroplated stainless steel to create an "uncontrollable" and changing rainbow-hued pattern.

"Unpredictable electroplating is the result of uneven distribution of positive and negative electrons. This uncontrollable quality is the life of the product," said Zeng.

Buzao's Null series at Shanghai Design Week
The Null collection is made of blue-tinted, transparent glass

Each piece in the collection is made of a series of rectangular beams, inspired by the wooden pallets commonly used on construction sites.

"The extremely dazzling illusional colours contrast with the rough humble forms, producing psychedelic, jumping and surreal dramatic feelings," explained Buzao.

Buzao's Null series at Shanghai Design Week
The Null collection is meant to evoke "stability, calmness and rationality"

The Null collection is also designed to generate unpredictable and changing outcomes.

Featuring a bench, a side table, a table lamp, a pendant lamp and a wardrobe, the furniture items appear to be made from thick blocks of blue-tinted glass that create a gradient effect when illuminated by light.

"The design as a whole presents a transparent body with a thickness. The overlay of visible materials and the sense of its volume strengthen the existence of the glass in space," said Zeng.

Buzao's Null series at Shanghai Design Week
The items in the Null collection feature geometric forms such as rectangles and circles

Like the Hot collection, the furniture items in the Null collection consist of geometric forms such as rectangles and circles.

Buzao was first launched in 2017 as an offshoot of design studio Bentu, whose projects include a series of terrazzo furniture made from recycled ceramic waste and a collection of furniture made from crushed ceramic shards.