With the living population within cities ever on the rise, an ever-increasing number of individuals are living in a studio or one-bedroom apartments. One of the most significant issues that these people face is the difficulty they have when trying to refresh the interior air! Introducing a conventional air purifier into the living space is a huge compromise on the valuable floor space, and for this reason, it is out of the question for some people!
Airea may just be the solution to the problem, as it disguises itself as a stunning side table! By combining the two objects the user doesn’t have to commit to giving up more floor space to the device! It carries a carefully considered design that features subtle surface detailing, an intuitive touch interface and it takes design cues from the ever-popular movement of Scandinavian Design.
Airea also holds a hidden feature… a top that’s capable of wireless charging your phone! Could this be the ideal side table?
Plastic straws take a staggering 500 years to fully decompose, which is a lot for saying they are only used for around ten minutes at a time! But arguably something that is far worse than them ending their life on a landfill, is the fact that many find their way into our oceans and become a significant risk to our fishy friends and their sea-dwelling companions!
A solution for this is of course to use reusable straws, but unfortunately a lot of people are put off these due to their fiddly cleaning process; this is the issue that designers Chu Hiu Ching and Cheung Wa identified, and their solution came in the form of the rather ingenious Icicle Straw.
Icicle can be split into two separate parts when it comes to cleaning time; the extrusions in the metal body allow the user to easily slide the two parts apart and clean inside, without the need for cleaning tools!! And when it’s time to enjoy another beverage, simply snap the two back together!
Hospitals are a daunting and unfamiliar environment that can be especially intimidating for young children. Having a product that makes the situation a little less unsettling is always going to be welcome, and that’s exactly what the Animal Ringer is intended to do!
The Animal Ringer is exactly what you think it is, an animal inspired ringer that’s aimed at pediatric patients. Not only do they make it more approachable and personal, but they also introduce a familiar form into the ward and add an element of much needed friendliness.
They also offer a benefit to the medical care personnel; their animal-motif form and unique colors make them conveniently identifiable, and the patient can quickly be associated with the animal!
The Animal Ringer is a winner of the Asia Design Prize for the year 2018.
Literally the size of a quarter, the Dab is an unobtrusive Holter ECG/EKG that rests comfortably on your chest, constantly reading your heart’s movements. Designed to be minimal, non-invasive, and simple, the Dab tries to bridge the gap between medical appliances and wearables. Its tiny yet classy design sits on your chest via a gel patch, while the electrodes capture your heart activity. The Dab’s dry-electrodes allow it to be used and reused, unlike disposable electrodes that lead to large amounts of medical waste. They constantly measure one’s heart activity (requiring periodic charging via their wireless charging hub), and keep logs of accurate readings, quietly sitting on your chest while you absolutely forget that they’re even there in the first place!
Add the Orbike to Musk’s Boring Company program and you’ve literally got a city that’s perfect for any commuter. Sitting half above and half below the surface of the road, the Orbike is a donut-shaped vending machine that allows people to rent bicycles and bike-related equipment. Designed to be efficient, but more to grab attention, the Orbike rotates inside its transparent shell, allowing you to literally cycle through products before choosing what to buy/rent.
Built with dedicated areas to take equipment out and put equipment in, the Orbike provides a rather unique vending experience. With 8 compartments (4 sitting below the surface), the Orbike can store not just different types of bikes but even rinding equipment. Strategically located across the city, the Orbike system can allow you to drive a bicycle from your home to work without actually having to own a bike. Through its system design and innovative user experience, the Orbike is created to encourage bike rentals. Moreover, wouldn’t it make a great landmark/meeting-point?!
Awards are expensive ordeals. I remember trying to push my work out as a design student and being absolutely shocked at the amount I was required to pay to just get my work into the preliminary judging round. Most students (and a few professional studios and brands too) shy away from award programmes because of the expenditure required to just register your work, but that expense is justified because most award programs have A. Large jury panels of design elite, B. Logistics and inventory managing expenses for designs where prints and product samples are sent over for judging, and C. The award ceremony which needless to say, is a monumental undertaking, involving venue bookings, decor, light, sound, personnel, logistics, travel, hospitality, etc. All these costs get covered by contestants who pay fees for registering their designs for the various judging rounds.
So the question begs to be asked… What if you stripped a design competition of everything unnecessary? A minimalist awards program, if you will. That’s what the Asia Design Prize was built to be. Online judging, an online exhibition, and digital certificates… the Asia Design Prize is probably the first cloud-based Design Award! Barring the one tangible trophy, the Asia Design Prize retains everything that’s absolutely necessary i.e., the judging, the award, and the showcase. As a result, the Asia Design Prize is the most student-friendly design award programme, with minimal incurred expenses. As a result, the awards program is absolutely free for students, with a zero entry fee for all participants, and a small Finalist Judging Fee for Design Professionals and Companies who clear the first round.
The ADP hosts a permanent online exhibition for all its winners, with works being featured in design magazines and blogs world over. Winners get trophies along with a certificate and the rights to use the ADP logo on their work, while the Grand, Gold, and Silver winners get cash prizes and framed plaques.
The Asia Design Prize is a brilliant way to get your work noticed as well as validated. Free for students, it’s your chance to get a critical evaluation of your work without breaking the bank, and if you do win an award, an award logo is a great addition to your résumé! People pay much closer attention to projects that win awards or gain accolades, and there’s a dramatic increase in your chances of getting featured on various portals across the world!
Head to the Asia Design Prize website to know more! They’ve just announced their 2017-18 winners. You can find our favorites below!
Oren Geva’s 2C3D camera for the blind is a beautiful, innovative product that takes 3D images, allowing the visually impaired to capture, record, and more importantly, feel their photographs!
The ORBIKE Vending Machine by LiuYeQuan and LiYanrong is sure to catch your eye even if you don’t ride bicycles! The donut-shaped machine rests half above and half below the surface, with rotating pods that dispense bikes and biking accessories to users/members, while also displaying its wares in a beautiful, eye-catching, and dynamic format. Loving it!
The Revolve Wheel took the internet absolutely by storm and is widely known as a design that has “reinvented the wheel”. Andrea Mocellin’s wheel redesign allows your traditional wheel to fold up into something 1/6th its original size, opening up a wide variety of possibilities, including making folding bikes and wheelchairs much more compact than before!
A personal favorite and also the winner of Evolo’s Skyscraper Competition, the New York Horizon by Yitan Sun & Jianshi Wu has a very Inception-ish way of making Central Park bigger, and removing those ugly skyscrapers from around it. Line the entire park with mirrors and you’ve got an infinity park that pushes the skyscrapers to a distance, making your skyline look cleaner, and the park look endless! Conceptual, for obvious reasons, the NY Horizon as an idea seems quite interesting and borderline sci-fi! I imagine it would confuse the hell out of the birds though.
Fan Shizhong’s Life Slide is a no-brainer award winner, honestly. Also bagging an A’ Design Award, James Dyson Award, and an iF Design Award, the Life Slide makes evacuations much easier to execute, by allowing people stuck at high altitudes to slide away from disaster. A much more feasible and safer option than an airlift, the Life Slide is MUCH faster than a ladder, which means the ability to save more people in less time!
“I want a house where I can feel the sky” sounds more like poetry than a design brief, but then again, the resulting product also feels like visual poetry rather a regular skylight. Built by Satoh Hirotaka Architects to let the sky paint the insides of your house, the Message From The Sky is an interactive skylight that changes with time and weather, turning your wall into a piece of art that’s seldom the same. Based on the season, time of the day, cloud cover, precipitation, and general color of the sky, the house’s wall looks completely different. Pair it with the moving slats that create mesmeric parallelogram patterns and you’ve got a room that’s beautifully decorated by sunlight! I can just see myself reaching for the Instagram icon!
The Torq rejects the idea that a powerful product can’t look elegant (ever seen an elegant drill machine?). The Torq explores a simple aesthetic with pleasant looking design details, and binds them together with a fun product experience.
Completely 3D printed from steel, the matte black Torq cracks walnuts with ease. Just place them in the concavity marked by the design detail and twist the key down. Like a vice grip, it slowly begins exerting pressure on the nut, finally cracking it (without bursting it open like other nutcrackers). What I find truly remarkable about the Torq is its production process. 3D printing isn’t the most ideal process for parts that withstand load or stress, but the Torq does so with ease. Its 3D printed nature also enables it to be thinner and lighter than a cast metal product… besides I see the 3D printed lines as a textural detail in themselves!
P.S. If you’ve seen an elegant drill machine, drop us a line!
What a remarkable product the 2C3D is (I’m in love with the name too!). This camera for the blind helps them get a tactile sense of visual data. Taking inspiration from pin art toys, the device is a depth-sensing camera that converts visual data into tactile data, representing forms like faces with a great deal of accuracy. Allowing the visually impaired to touch what they see without actually touching them, the 2C3D is a rather nifty tool to allow the visually impaired to recognize faces, objects, and even perform more nuanced functions like read expressions, lips, etc.
The 2C3D camera also allows the blind to capture images of subjects, saving visual data as a 3D file that can be felt again later, much like flicking through a photo album, but with the magic of depth! Such an incredible little device!
If you thought this single-leather-piece card-case was marvelous, wait till I introduce you to Octa. Made out of 3 pieces of corrugated cardboard, the Octa can become a rather sturdy stool capable of taking a grown human’s weight. In fact, it can even be height adjusted by simply determining the depth of the incision you make in the cardboard pieces. In that sense, you can literally have a table and stool assembled with 6 sheets of cardboard.
The structure employs 8 interlocked pyramids that help disperse weight along the edge of the corrugated cardboard sheet. It uses paper, ensuring that the product is recyclable, and can even be produced from recycled wood/paper. Since production of wooden goods emits less amount of carbon dioxide than that of metal or plastics, the Octa has a rather small carbon footprint. Plus, isn’t it fascinating, what you can make with just three pieces of paper?!
