Winner — SIT Furniture Design Award 2026Stool Category · Professional · The only stool honoured
The Ishi Stool has been named Winner in the Stool category of the 2026 SIT Furniture Design Award — the international award recognising excellence across furniture, seating, lighting, and objects. Of every stool submitted to the professional category this year, Ishi was the one selected.
We are an architecture studio first. Furniture is the smallest thing we draw — which is exactly why the recognition matters to us. The same discipline we bring to a building, we brought to a single object that has to earn its place in a room without saying a word.
The thinking behind it
The Ishi began with a question rather than a brief: what is the minimum number of decisions required to make a seat? Strip away the joints, the seams, the separation of parts. What remains is a single continuous form in solid North American oak, painted charcoal black — one volume that refuses to declare what it is.
There is no visible assembly. Every edge is dissolved until the surface never breaks. The curves are too complex for veneer; they can only exist in solid timber, finished by hand over weeks of sanding and sealing. A cushion rests on top — the tension between rigid form and textile comfort is intentional. The stool is not softened; it is completed.
In Japanese thought, an object holds no fixed meaning — it becomes what the person in front of it decides it is. A stone in a garden is a seat, a table, a sculpture, or nothing at all. The meaning lives in the encounter, not the object.
The name Ishi means "stone." At 430mm it sits naturally beside a sofa or a chair. Set it beside raw stone and the wood holds its own. Flip it, and the seat becomes a surface for a book or a glass. You decide what it is. The Ishi simply waits.
Why an award, and not just a review
For a young studio, third-party judgment carries a weight that our own words cannot. Press tells you a piece is interesting. An award tells you a jury of professionals evaluated it against the field — and chose it. Alongside our feature in Dezeen Showroom, the SIT win is independent confirmation that the thinking behind ENWA holds up under scrutiny.
The Ishi is the entry point to the ENWA collection — eight pieces in solid oak, each designed by practising architects, made to order in Japan, and shipped DDP with duties included to 34 countries. If a single stool can win an international award, it tells you what the rest of the collection is built to.
Ishi Stool · Mililab Co., Ltd. · Designed by Livert Lim Tjun Ike with Mengfei Wu, Djordje Cebic, Xingwang Xiong · Tokyo, Japan · 2026. Winner, SIT Furniture Design Award 2026 — Stool category. Photography by Xingwang Xiong.