ROCKSTONE's 'KONOHANA SAKUYA ISU' Wins the Highest Honor 'Best of the Best' at the Red Dot Design Award 2026

ROCKSTONE's KONOHANA SAKUYA ISU [Konohana Sakuya Isu] has received the "Best of the Best" award, the highest honor, at the Red Dot Design Award 2026. This means that KONOHANA SAKUYA ISU has now been selected for the highest awards at both the "iF Design Award" and the "Red Dot Design Award," both known as the pinnacle of global design, demonstrating high acclaim from international design juries.

▷ Red Dot Design Award
One of the "World's Three Major Design Awards," which began in 1955 in Germany, the birthplace of modern design represented by Bauhaus. It boasts the world's highest authority and recognition, particularly in the field of product design, where excellent designs are evaluated based on criteria such as innovation, functionality, and aesthetics. Among these, the "Best of the Best" is the highest award given to only less than 1% of the approximately 20,000 entries that gather from around the world each year for the Red Dot Design Award.

[Konohana Sakuya Isu / sakuya side chair]
A chair that nurtures Japanese forests and embodies Japanese aesthetics. Believing that increasing the ratio of domestic hardwoods leads to biodiversity in this climate, water source conservation capabilities, and reduction of transportation costs and CO2 through local production for local consumption, thereby shaping a pure Japanese lifestyle, ROCKSTONE has been working on sustainable furniture making using domestic hardwoods in recent years to increase the use and demand for domestic hardwoods.

The focus this time was on "Yamazakura" (Wild Cherry), a species native to Japan. As a material for furniture, it is thin and cannot be secured in large quantities, so it is not considered a very suitable material. Therefore, we took the "Sukiya-zukuri" style of traditional Japanese architecture as a model and envisioned its spirit in a chair. A structural design that thins and refines the components to the limit where functionality and strength are not compromised. We took advantage of the inherent qualities of natural hardwood, which combines hardness and flexibility.

At first glance, it appears to be a simple chair, but various detailed commitments that color life are hidden throughout. The three-dimensional curved backrest is designed to provide a gentle sitting comfort that softly follows the body. It is an easy-to-use design where sitting down naturally straightens the spine and allows for a seated posture that does not put an unnecessary burden on the body.

Furthermore, we put our heart into the fact that all materials constituting this chair "return to the earth." The commitment to natural materials such as linseed oil, natural rubber foam, and leather rattan, as well as traditional techniques like Sanada-himo and Kokura-ori, gives it a charm that makes one feel not just the sitting comfort but the inherent warmth of the materials and the thoughts of the creators.

"Yamazakura" is a species native to Japan since ancient times, and because it blooms beautiful flowers, it has been familiarized and written about in poems and songs. Borrowing the name of the beautiful princess "Konohanasakuya-hime" who appears in mythology and is the origin of the tree's name, we named it "Konohana Sakuya Isu (KONOHANA SAKUYA ISU)." It is a chair that incorporates good old Japanese aesthetics while being thoroughly committed to being all-domestic and made of natural materials.

Designer: Akio Iwakura
An interior designer who quietly instills Japanese aesthetics into furniture. Representative of the Eiri Iwakura Modeling Development Research Institute and Senior Managing Director of ROCKSTONE Co., Ltd. His sophisticated designs based on the "aesthetics of subtraction" harbor a sense of quiet satisfaction. He has won domestic and international design awards such as the iF Design Award, Red Dot Design Award, and Good Design Award.

About ROCKSTONE
A Japanese designer furniture brand established in 1981 by Eiri Iwakura. While valuing Japanese aesthetics and sensibilities, the brand designs a beautiful lifestyle. In recent years, it has been exploring sustainable furniture making using domestic hardwoods. By incorporating materials grown in this climate that are familiar to the Japanese body and the sense of craftsmen that has lived on since ancient times, the brand aims for a world that is comfortable for both people and the environment.