Stool Tower by 1Y Architects at Foshan Cultural and Creative Week

1Y Architects stacks red plastic stools into an 8.2-metre urban tower in Foshan

For the 2026 Foshan International Cultural & Creative Week, 1Y Architects transformed one of the most ordinary objects of Cantonese daily life into a temporary urban landmark. Stool Tower is built from red plastic stools, a familiar presence in restaurants, village feasts and neighbourhood gatherings across Guangdong.

Affordable, robust and stackable, the stools are deeply embedded in the region’s everyday culture. The architects used the stool itself as the project’s unit module, allowing an object associated with ordinary communal life to become the material of a large-scale public installation.

Front view of Stool Tower by 1Y Architects in Foshan — Photography by Yifan Chen.

The resulting tower rises 8.2 metres and is organised as a dual-colour double spiral. As visitors move around it, the overlapping layers of stools shift in relation to one another, producing a changing silhouette that the design team compares to a giant revolving lantern.

Side view of the 8.2 metre Stool Tower in Foshan — Photography by Yifan Chen.

Plaza beneath the Stool Tower installation in Foshan — Photography by Yifan Chen.

The tower also creates a small public room beneath its elevated mass. Visitors can pass through, pause in the shade or look upward through the dense field of stools, turning what might otherwise be read as a sculptural object into an inhabitable piece of urban furniture.

People resting beneath Stool Tower by 1Y Architects — Photography by Yifan Chen.

To preserve the informal character associated with the stools, the team avoided industrial prefabrication. The installation was assembled by hand over five days using a steel scaffolding framework, with each stool individually fastened by craftsmen and architects. No welding or wet connections were used.

Handcrafted construction process of Stool Tower using steel scaffolding and plastic stools — Construction process. Courtesy of 1Y Architects.

According to the project team, up to 90 per cent of the materials can be recycled or returned to use after dismantling. The temporary work therefore changes the scale and perception of an everyday object without erasing its familiarity.

Double spiral facade of Stool Tower by 1Y Architects — Photography by Yifan Chen.

Stool Tower illuminated at night during Foshan Cultural and Creative Week — Photography by Yifan Chen.

Project Credits

Project: Stool Tower
Project Type: Art Installation
Design: 1Y Architects
Lead Designer & Team: Fan Chang, Antoine Aubert, Zhang Tao, Zhao Yujie
Location: Wenhua Park, Foshan, Guangdong, China
Gross Built Area: 36 m²
Design: June–July 2026
Completion: July 2026
Construction Partner: N-Design
Client: SMART Cultural and Creative Co., Ltd
Material: Red plastic stools, steel scaffolding
Photography: Yifan Chen