Dado, a Tool-Free Flat-Pack Range, Wins Dezeen Readers' Furniture Prize

Dezeen readers have voted Dado the furniture design of the year in the Dezeen Awards public vote. The winner is a flat-pack range of tables and shelves from Allen Kaufmann Architekten, a studio based in Berlin, Germany.

Flat-pack furniture is sold in pieces that the buyer assembles at home. Dado goes a step further: it can be put together with no tools at all.

The tables and shelves use no glue, screws, brackets or other fasteners. Instead, the solid-timber parts are held together by dado joints. A dado joint, also called a housing joint, is a narrow trench cut across one piece of wood so that another piece slots into it.

The studio's patented version cuts these trenches at a 45-degree angle, which is halfway between flat and upright. According to Dezeen, a single joint locks a vertical piece, a horizontal piece and two diagonal braces together at one point. The braces are the angled supports that stop a frame from wobbling side to side.

So far the system has produced a table and a modular shelving system. Every standard component is cut by CNC milling, a computer-guided machine that cuts wood to exact measurements. Justin Allen is a co-founder of Allen Kaufmann Architekten.

The Dado Series, designed by Allen Kaufmann Objects, was the entry that took the furniture prize in the public vote. It had also made the shortlist in the furniture category of the Dezeen Awards 2026. Dezeen's awards include a public vote, in which readers choose winners from shortlists across design categories.

Design Milk, a design website, wrote in June that the company's DADO system lets people build their own small structures inside the home. The same system is at the centre of this year's win, with its solid wood and tool-free assembly.

For anyone who has wrestled with a flat-pack bookcase, the appeal is easy to see. The parts go together by sliding into place, and nothing needs to be tightened.