Home decorating, interior design ideas, garden design - Homes and Gardens

Born in Israel in 1976, Shay Alkalay has an MA in product design from the Royal College of Art and has his own London-based design consultancy with fellow-graduate Yael Mer. Shay's winning design Stack is a radical revamp of the chest of drawers; he has liberated the drawers from the chest and its conventional confines of sides, back panels and individual runners. Using plywood, wood composite and steel, Shay has engineered a tower – or stack, as the name implies – of piled-up drawers without a frame.

Each drawer compartment can be pulled in or out without threatening the stability of the piece. The drawers, which subtly vary in size, can even be pulled out from behind so that Stack can sit quite happily in the middle of the room. With partly opened drawers, the piece has a sculptural charm all of its own: “I think chests of drawers always look more intriguing when the drawers are left partly open,” says Shay.

The piece of furniture has a lacquered finish in a choice of three colour groups: strong/bright greens and yellow (shown here); warmer reds, oranges and browns; or a quieter, more neutral combination of pastel green, blues and grey. These shades have been very carefully chosen. “I knew from the beginning that the drawers should be different colours,” says Shay, who initially worked with sheaves of paint cards from the paint shop next to his studio. “As you can see, I like green a lot.” Stack comes in two sizes – either eight or 13 drawers – and typifies the designer's aim of “animated products” that come to life through being used.