Spring can mean different things for different people but in the design world it's all about the nominees and the winners of Designs Of The Year. Acting as the main event at the Design Museum until the 25th August, the seven different categories cover everything from runway glamour to the latest in revolutionary healthcare - as long as there is a clever and innovative design in it's fabric, it will make the prestigious list.
The seven winners of each category have just been announced but we will have to wait until the 30th June to learn who the overall winner is.
Architecture – Zaha Hadid and Patrik Schumacher: Heydar Aliyev Center, Baku Azerbajan
The building blurs the conventional distinctions between architectural object and urban landscape, building envelope and urban plaza, interior and exterior.
Judge Piers Gough of CZWG Architects LLP said: “‘An intoxicatingly beautiful building by the most brilliant architect at the height of her office’s powers... Without an ounce of awkward argumentative modernism in its bones. It rather reads like a sweet love letter to Zaha’s homelands.”
Digital – Dr Andrew Bastawrous, Stewart Jordan, Dr Mario Giardini, Dr Iain Livingstone: PEEK (Portable Eye Examination Kit)
A tool with the potential to revolutionise the prevention of blindness in low-income countries. Peek is a smartphone-based system for comprehensive eye examinations. It's easy to use, affordable and portable, meaning that it can bring eye care to even the most remote of settings.
Judge Ben Terrett said: "What’s great about PEEK is that being digital helps it do things that we couldn’t do before. It’s a portable optician – the camera can look at your eyes, the flash from the camera can hit the back of your eye and get a picture, you can use it as an eye test sight card, and you can then send the results to wherever you want in the world. It also feels like it can scale, you can get the kit to millions of people really quickly in one go – another advantage of digital.
“PEEK is enabling teachers in schools to test the eyes of kids without having to go to an optician and that feels like a really good use of digital technology.”
Fashion – Muccia Prada: PRADA S/S 14
Pop-art prints meet sporty details, structured shapes and vivid colours in this powerful collection. Vogue said of the show "By next Summer we'll wonder what we ever wore before."
Judge Frith Kerr said: “Prada’s SS14 collection loudly declares the joy of being a modern woman. It mixes colours, textures, and paintings to leapfrog over the world of tasteful bland fashion. This is serious clothing that doesn’t take itself seriously.”
Furniture – Konstantin Grcic: Pro Chair Family
The Pro chair which Konstantin Grcic has developed for Flötotto features state-of-the-art ergonomics and pioneering design. The construction of the
chair not only allows movement in all directions, but actively stimulates it thereby promoting healthier sitting.
Judge Kim Colin said: “No one on the jury had to argue the case for this exceptional chair – we just had to sit in it. Instantly its effect on the body is tangible and the mind can be satisfied with the balance struck between its material finesse, presence and purpose. It should absolutely shake up the educational sector and give students a truly happier experience in the classroom because it is seriously comfortable and joyous without risk of becoming a cartoon.”
Graphics – James Bridle/booktwo.org: Drone Shadows
The ominous looking Drone Shadows are a series of installations consisting of a 1:1 outline of a military unmanned aerial vehicle, or Drone. They have appeared in the UK, Turkey, the USA, Brazil and elsewhere.
Jury chair Ekow Eshun said: “It’s a provocative work, it’s a playful work, it’s also a political work that asks us to look at the world around us that we think we know and see something different there. We thought it was an important piece of work and we also thought it enabled graphics as a category to really expand, and to ask new questions in new ways.”
Product – Roland Lamb and Hong-Yeul Eom: The Seabord Grand
The Seaboard is a reinvention of the piano keyboard, reimagining the keys as soft waves that enable continuous and discrete real-time, tactile control
of sound through three-dimensional hand gestures. The design combines contemporary minimalism and traditional handcrafted quality.
Judge Kim Colin said: “This intriguing new digital instrument is the first I’ve seen that departs from an analogue piano typology and adds something new via its surface interface and design – lending some new musical freedom within a very controlled aesthetic. As a result of its design, the player knows the instrument can do the ‘something else’ that digital can uniquely provide, that an analogue piano doesn’t. Apparently it’s very intuitive for musicians and makes experimentation easy – I think we all enjoyed having a go.
Transport – Volkswagen: XL1 car
Jury chair Ekow Eshun said: "Here is a car that seems like it’s come out of a dream of the future, it’s refined, it’s elegant, it can go for miles and miles on a single tank of petrol and it looks beautiful, dangerous almost, in its dramatic shapes and lines.
“Nothing has gone to waste here – all of this is about going as far as you can on as little as possible. It succeeds as a concept for what a car could be, for almost what a car should be in the future, except it exists now.”
So there we have it - seven vastly different designs, all amazing in their own right. Pop down to the Design Museum to see them in the flesh and hedge your bets on the overall winner.
You can read more about Designs Of The Year here -
http://designmuseum.org/exhibitions/2014/designs-of-the-year-2014
