Furniture Competition Winners Announced

Winner of both 1st place as well as the People's Choice Award, Logan Roth-Longe's "Salvaged Infrastructure Chair". This 300+ pound chair was built from salvaged materials collected over nearly a decade of engineering work- concrete cores cut from storm water installations and rebar remnants from some of VT's most complex and costly bridge projects.

2nd Place was awarded to Arthur Chukhman and Tanya Chen of Duncan Wisniewski Architecture for their “Mohawk Chair”, made of salvaged materials and reused elements of their firm's previous office, which they recently moved out of to a new studio space in Winooski

3rd Place was awarded to "Scarf Chair", by Peter Macia. Made from off-cuts of scarf joints used to build a traditional timber frame barn. The pieces were saved from the burn pile after the timbers were cut and dried in the sun. Assembled with as little change to the original pieces as possible to show that modern form can come from ancient craft.

AIAVT held its first furniture design competition this year, which culminated in a day-long exhibit and auction on Saturday, June 21st at the Historic Shelburne Town Hall.

Planned and organized by AIAVT Board Member, Chi Nguyen, the competition invited artists, designers, and makers to design and build unique pieces of furniture. Ultimately, 12 participants entered their finished furniture pieces into the competition, each responding to the brief to create a “single-occupant seating apparatus”, with the finished piece being a majority of reclaimed, reused, and recycled material.

A jury, made up of AIAVT Board member, Andres Gutierrez, AIAVT's ED Sarah O Donnell, and owner of Vermont Folk Rocker, Jim Geier, scored pieces on creativity, innovation, aesthetics, and functionality, and ultimately awarded the top three pieces, with first place going to Logan Roth-Longe of Engineering Ventures for “Salvaged Infrastructure Chair”, 2nd place going to Arthur Chukhman and Tanya Chen of Duncan Wisniewski Architecture for their “Mohawk Chair”, and 3rd place was awarded to Peter Macia for their “Scarf Chair.”

Visitors were invited to vote throughout the day for a People's Choice award winner, which also went to Logan Roth-Longe’s “Salvaged Infrastructure Chair”.

Several of the furniture pieces went to auction, with auction proceeds being split 50/50 with the submitting team or individual, and 50% of proceeds going toward AIAVT's many advocacy and educational programs. With a steady stream of visitors throughout the day, the goal of making design accessible to Vermonters was made possible, thanks to the central location of the display space being next door to the Pierson Library, and across the street from the Shelburne Farmers market.

The full list of participants included:

Taryn Barrett

Tom Bursey

Tanya Chen

Arthur Chukhman

Rolf Kielman

Brian Mac

Peter Macia

Michael Marciel

Jason Pappas

Logan Roth-Longe

Owen Smith