Profile: Cheer Manlekha – Only Natural Design Competitions

Cheer Manlekha

Central Saint Martins

“To be part of the arts is to create. I see myself as an artist, architect, industrial designer, maker, illustrator, photographer, and writer using each of these roles to express my thoughts and emotions, to be vulnerable, to be true to myself. Together, they shape who I am and how I continue to grow.” Based in London, Multidisciplinary artist, Cheer Kirata Manlekha is originally from Thailand, yet shaped by many places she calls home with the belief that the Earth is ours to share. Through familiar, mundane everyday objects, drawings, photography, and writings, she explores themes of memory, impermanence, and personal human experience. Cheer studied Industrial design at Central Saint Martins School of Art where she developed her material led approach involving natural elements such as wild flowers, plants and wood that has already been cut or fallen, sourced locally, allowing its life cycle to guide the process while minimising human intervention to reflect cycles of growth, decay, and transformation of all living things. Her ongoing pursuit is the desire to bring us closer to nature and to reflect on our place within this vast blue and green planet, where we are, where we came from, and where we may be headed.

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Sati Chair (สติ) : Design research and development on a chair of Existentialism and Fears of Death

Category: Furniture

Competitions: Home Competition 2026

How often do you think about your inevitable end? Sati (สติ), a Thai word meaning “to remember”, “to recollect”, or “to bear in mind”, is a wooden chair that profoundly embodies existentialism and the fears of death. The design comes from my appreciation of everyday objects with their mundane beauty, especially the chair. Influenced by the practice of “just sitting”, this piece is not only a chair but also a place for rest and reflection, offering a pause for those who feel lost or simply need a moment to breathe before they go on with their day. The uneven legs require the user to utilize their own legs for balance, giving them control over stability while serving as a reminder to be present, aware, and being fully present in the moment, both body and mind. Made from a fallen tree in London, this chair carries with it a memory of the time spent here in this city. Just as we grow old, the chair also ages over time, gaining scars and marks that reflect a life lived, lessons learned, and the beauty of being alive. When our path reaches its end, whether buried in soil or scattered to ash, we will return to the ground and become part of what is remembered, not what remains. Yet, in this letting go, there is reassurance: nothing is ever truly lost from the face of Earth. We simply rejoin the ‘cycle of life’, to be transformed and begin again in a new form.