---
title: "Two cabinets on two wheels, with almost no drawer slides in sight"
locale: "en"
url: "https://irz.fr/en/articles/ashizawa-mobile-drawers-en"
markdown_url: "https://irz.fr/en/articles/ashizawa-mobile-drawers-en.md"
category: "creative"
tags: ["industrial design", "furniture", "Japan", "prototyping", "mechanics"]
published_at: "2026-08-25T09:31:00.000Z"
author: "Léa Perrin"
translation: "https://irz.fr/fr/articles/ashizawa-tiroirs-mobiles-fr.md"
---

# Two cabinets on two wheels, with almost no drawer slides in sight

SLYBOX and Bon Drawer use nearly the same ingredients but put the guiding function in different places. Two prototypes make a useful question visible: what does a drawer actually need to keep?

Modern drawer cabinets are very good at hiding their mechanics: clean fronts conceal metal slides, while casters can turn the whole cabinet into a cart. Keiji Ashizawa approached the same problem differently in two prototypes made two years apart, **SLYBOX** in 2010 and **Bon Drawer** in 2012.[1](https://www.keijidesign.com/works/slybox/)[2](https://www.keijidesign.com/works/bon-drawer/)

Both use wooden boxes, a thin steel skeleton and only two small wheels, but the guiding function lives in different places. SLYBOX asks the drawer itself to participate in the slide, whereas Bon Drawer makes the support more explicit so the drawer can leave the furniture altogether and remain useful as a tray; that construction detail, rather than the styling, makes the pair unusually useful to compare.

## Two wheels

Neither prototype behaves like a workshop cabinet permanently sitting on four casters. The documentation shows two small rear wheels and a frame that also provides the grip for moving the unit.[2](https://www.keijidesign.com/works/bon-drawer/)[3](https://architecturephoto.net/25007/)[5](https://www.core77.com/posts/145151/Two-Experimental-Mobile-Drawer-Designs) Mobility therefore appears only when the cabinet needs to move instead of making the entire piece live on rollers all the time, an arrangement that resembles a tiny hand truck more than a trolley. This is an IRZ reading of the documented geometry rather than a measured ergonomic claim, since no force or stability data is published, but it helps explain why the wheels can remain small and why a crossbar can serve as a handle without adding another component.

> Illustration: Keiji Ashizawa's SLYBOX, a tall cabinet with five graduated wooden boxes in a thin steel frame. SLYBOX, 2010. The boxes rest directly on a round-steel skeleton, keeping the structure visually and mechanically sparse. Credit: [Keiji Ashizawa Design / Yosuke Owashi](https://www.keijidesign.com/works/slybox/).

From that common starting point, the two designs diverge.

## SLYBOX

SLYBOX uses **9 mm round steel bar** for its framework, with five boxes of different sizes cut with semicircular slots that sit directly on the skeleton. Project text published by architecturephoto.net also describes small wheels repurposed from door rollers and the frame itself being used as the grip for moving the cabinet,[3](https://architecturephoto.net/25007/) while Ashizawa's own page identifies oak-veneered plywood boxes, a simple frame with no additional mechanical parts and a top drawer whose hidden lid becomes a small shelf surface when closed.[1](https://www.keijidesign.com/works/slybox/)

The more interesting point is the groove: by cutting the guide into the box, **the drawer carries part of its own sliding interface**. The steel no longer needs to imitate a telescopic slide made from several profiles and bearings because it only has to support and guide the groove. This proves neither lower friction nor better durability, and no load or wear tests were found; the prototype simply redistributes the mechanical work between box and frame.

## Bon Drawer

Two years later, Bon Drawer nearly reverses the experiment. Ashizawa begins with veneered-oak trays, stacks them in a minimal frame and keeps their processing limited enough that they still function as trays once removed.[2](https://www.keijidesign.com/works/bon-drawer/) The guide is no longer hidden inside a semicircular groove: the official description calls it a **simple flat bar cantilevered from the main frame**, with each tray sliding onto that support, stops keeping the trays in place while the unit moves and wheels fitted to the frame.[2](https://www.keijidesign.com/works/bon-drawer/)

> Illustration: Detail of Bon Drawer showing a wooden tray and the thin metal bars supporting it. In Bon Drawer, the guiding structure clearly belongs to the frame: a flat bar is enough to carry the tray. Credit: [Keiji Ashizawa Design / Yosuke Owashi](https://www.keijidesign.com/works/bon-drawer/).

That move gives Bon Drawer something SLYBOX does not have, because the drawer can leave the system without becoming a box missing part of its mechanism: it can be picked up, carry its contents and work as a tray.[2](https://www.keijidesign.com/works/bon-drawer/)[6](https://www.designboom.com/design/keiji-ashizawa-bon-drawer/) Guidance stays with the furniture while use travels with the drawer.

## Same problem

The comparison works because the prototypes look related. Both prototypes stay deliberately low-tech. Ashizawa is testing two allocations of responsibility with similar ingredients and the same appetite for reducing structure. SLYBOX cuts the mechanical relationship into the wood, while Bon Drawer leaves the wooden tray more autonomous and shifts that relationship onto the frame; in both, the “drawer slide” stops looking like an obvious purchased subsystem and becomes a simple interface between two shapes.

Core77 resurfaced both projects in August 2026, focusing on their minimal steel skeletons and experimental status.[5](https://www.core77.com/posts/145151/Two-Experimental-Mobile-Drawer-Designs) The comparison feels especially legible now, when a standard drawer can arrive as a complete subsystem with telescopic rails, soft-close hardware and adjustments. Here there is just enough mechanism left to understand what it is doing.

## After prototype

The studio pages identify Tanseisha as prototype maker and list no client for either SLYBOX or Bon Drawer,[1](https://www.keijidesign.com/works/slybox/)[2](https://www.keijidesign.com/works/bon-drawer/) while Core77 notes that neither design entered production.[5](https://www.core77.com/posts/145151/Two-Experimental-Mobile-Drawer-Designs) SLYBOX was not a dead end, however.

In a 2020 interview, Ashizawa recalled Sebastian Wrong, then associated with British furniture company Established & Sons, visiting his office and asking how SLYBOX might become a product. Their discussion turned to the **volume** of furniture and how its size influences where people are willing to place and value it.[4](https://mag.tecture.jp/feature/20200829-interview-with-keiji-ashizawa-01/)

Ashizawa says he carried that observation into the next project. SUTOA became more voluminous and sculptural, conceived for a large living room; FRAMA subsequently produced it, and Ashizawa says it became a successful product.[4](https://mag.tecture.jp/feature/20200829-interview-with-keiji-ashizawa-01/) SLYBOX therefore did useful work without reaching series production itself: it made a concrete problem visible enough to alter the next experiment.

## Where function lives

These cabinets do not prove that industrial drawer slides should disappear, and they provide no evidence about fifty thousand opening cycles, rated load or what happens after dust accumulates. Those are questions a prototype image cannot answer, but the projects do show something more transferable: **a function does not have to live in the component where convention usually puts it**. SLYBOX gives part of guidance to the box, Bon Drawer gives it back to the frame so the tray can leave, and both add mobility with similar restraint.

The furniture becomes less a shape to admire than a map of responsibilities, showing what carries the load, what keeps the drawer on course, what should travel with the contents and what can stay behind. Two wheels and a few steel bars are enough to make those choices visible.

## References

1. [Keiji Ashizawa Design, SLYBOX, 2010](https://www.keijidesign.com/works/slybox/)
2. [Keiji Ashizawa Design, Bon Drawer, 2012](https://www.keijidesign.com/works/bon-drawer/)
3. [architecturephoto.net, Keiji Ashizawa's SLYBOX, 2010](https://architecturephoto.net/25007/)
4. [TECTURE MAG, interview with Keiji Ashizawa, 29 August 2020](https://mag.tecture.jp/feature/20200829-interview-with-keiji-ashizawa-01/)
5. [Core77, “Two Experimental Mobile Drawer Designs”, 24 August 2026](https://www.core77.com/posts/145151/Two-Experimental-Mobile-Drawer-Designs)
6. [designboom, “keiji ashizawa: bon drawer”, 12 September 2012](https://www.designboom.com/design/keiji-ashizawa-bon-drawer/)