DWR's annual Champagne Chair Contest™ has become so big that this year it drew nearly a thousand submissions from all over the world. But two of the three winners were local (meaning local to our balliwick, which is Bay Area + PNW), and the judges were all from San Francisco-based firms (DWR and Fuse Project).

The winning chair, Cantilever Block, and its maker, Adam Weisgerber, hail from Seattle. The popular vote chair (Chair Squared, by Edward Cristman) was sculpted in San Rafael.

The contest will continue to be something of a local affair when it starts its national tour March 8th-- at the DWR studio on Fillmore Street. (The tour schedule is here.)

We admire Cantilever Block's sleek, minimal design, but we think it's the form-over-function choice. Cork gives. Wouldn't you be reclined too far back once you settle your weight against the seat back? Or maybe that's the point of it, sort of like Stokke's mischevious Gravity Balans chair.

What do you folks think?