The SIT Furniture Design Award has named its 2026 winners: Furniture Design of the Year goes to Ignacio Merino for the Mezza Chair, a three-legged beech dining chair that the award describes as distilling an 18th-century Alpine seat typology into something quietly radical. The winners were announced on June 3, 2026, from 420 entries out of 46 countries.
What is the Mezza Chair?
According to the award's winners announcement, Merino's chair reinterprets an 18th-century Alpine chair style, stripped down to a surprisingly minimal form. The piece is built from eight interlocking beech-wood parts joined by a T-junction hidden beneath the seat, and it is made entirely from legally harvested European beech. The award's text emphasizes that the chair matches strict structural stability with a light, purposeful form where no component is redundant.
For a dining room, the appeal is double: a three-legged chair is forgiving on uneven floors, and a documented timber source answers a question more buyers now ask. That a student of historical seating won the top furniture title, rather than a studio with a marketing budget, is the quieter news inside the announcement.
Who else won at the SIT Award in 2026?
The full winners list records three special titles alongside the professional and student categories. Interior Design of the Year went to A Work of Substance for House of Shinsegae, the transformation of the Shinsegae Gangnam flagship in Seoul by lead designers Maxime Dautresme and Seoyoon Kwon. Emerging Furniture Designer of the Year went to Allyssa Kim of Japan for Pitta, a folding chair that holds its presence whether open or closed.
| Winner | Project | 2026 title |
|---|---|---|
| Ignacio Merino | Mezza Chair | Furniture Design of the Year |
| A Work of Substance | House of Shinsegae, Seoul | Interior Design of the Year |
| Allyssa Kim | Pitta | Emerging Furniture Designer of the Year |
Beyond the special titles, the professional winners read like a catalog of the year's seating conversation: Thuma's Signature Sofa in the sofa category, Humanscale's Diffrient Lounge among lounge chairs, and Messana O'Rorke's Chelsea Gardens Apartment No 2 in residential interiors, alongside dozens of student entries from folding stools to garden seating.
Why does a furniture award matter for a home?
Awards of this kind are a filtering device for readers: they compress hundreds of entries into a shortlist with documented materials and named designers. The 2026 result leans toward reduction, historical typologies rebuilt in certified timber, and flexible pieces for small homes, which is a usable shopping brief even for readers who never buy an award winner. The Mezza Chair's beech construction and Alpine lineage, in particular, slot neatly into the warm-wood direction running through current interiors.
