Tag Archives: Awards

The Acropolis of Athens among the multiple lighting design entries to win the 2021 LIT Design Awards

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Envisioned as the eminent award program for identifying and rewarding great lighting designs (while also supporting and nurturing the ever-growing lighting industry), the LIT Design Awards announced the winners for their 2021 edition. The underlying ethos of the awards program is that lighting is both an art and a science, and is one of the most important elements of design. Light is also one of the most important forms of energy, unlocking our ability to see, and playing a pivotal role in our visual sense. The LIT Design Awards were envisioned to celebrate creativity and innovation in the fields of lighting products and applications.

Held annually, the LIT Design Awards are the brain-child of the Farmani Group, who have also helped pioneer and organize other prestigious design awards and recognitions like the International Design Awards (IDA), Architecture Masterprize, DNA Paris Design Awards, London International Creative Awards, Prix de la Photographie in Paris, and the Annual Lucie Awards for Photography. With as many as 47 categories in Lighting Product Design and 31 categories in Lighting Design represented, LIT is one of the most comprehensive lighting design competitions, uniting creativity, and innovation. Winning entries are selected by an esteemed jury of designers and leaders in the lighting, interior design, and architectural fields, and receive the coveted LIT trophy, a cash prize of $1000 (for the Emerging Designer/Product), and extensive publicity showcasing their designs and products to an international audience.

Visit the LIT Design Award website to see all the winning designs for the year 2021.

A little while ago, the LIT Design Awards announced the winners of their 2021 edition, with the designers behind the new lighting for the Acropolis unanimously winning the Lighting Designer of the Year Award. The award also recognized the contributions of Tony Lawrence (Lighting Product Director at Concord Lighting part of the Feilo Sylvania), and Craig A. Bernecker (Professor of Lighting Design at Parsons School of Design and Founder of the Lighting Education Institute) with the LIT Lifetime Achievement Award, and presented the 2021 Spotlight Prize to the LUCI Association, a non-profit organization bringing together over 70 member towns and cities worldwide that use light as a tool for social, cultural, and economic development.

Scroll down to take a look at some of the inspirational winners of this year’s LIT Design Awards, or visit the LIT website to see all the winning designs for the year 2021!

Acropolis of Athens and Monuments by Eleftheria Deko & Associates (Lighting Designer of the Year)

The Acropolis of Athens stands as one of the oldest, grandest monuments of human civilization. Among its many testaments, it also happens to be this year’s winning entry for Lighting Design of the Year at the LIT Lighting Awards. The award doesn’t go to the monument itself, but rather goes to the designers behind its newly unveiled lighting, Eleftheria Deko & Associates. “We approached the monuments first with respect”, says principal designer Eleftheria Deko. “Before applying our thoughts on paper we observed the characteristics of this unique place, studied its history, the forms and materials, the visibility from different points of the city, and the significance of this landmark.” The lighting project’s most difficult task is to play a secondary role in the project, seeking to highlight not itself, but the architectural landmark instead. The lighting illuminates the Acropolis in a way that makes the site look outstanding at night from multiple directions both up close and from afar, bringing a new life into the monuments of the Acropolis.

Opteris Chandelier by Opteris Studio (Lighting Product Design of the Year)

The Opteris chandelier pays homage to the Tomopteris, a deep-sea creature. Looking almost like a grand sculpture (akin to the skeletal recreations seen in museums) that hangs directly above a table, the Opteris has a commanding appearance with its incredibly dynamic design and truly unique aesthetic. The lighting fixture is composed of two parallel frames which are interwoven with 104 unique cherry wood fins which interlock on the frames. The result is a chandelier that’s organic and asymmetric, making it look different from every angle, so you’re greeted with a new view no matter where you observe the chandelier from!

Star in Motion by Koert Vermeulen & ACTLD

Perched atop the Kingdom Tower for the lighting festival Noor Riyadh 2021, Koert Vermeulen’s Star in Motion illuminates the skies above the capital city of Saudi Arabia while subconsciously underscoring the festival’s theme, Under One Sky. Throughout the world, in most major religions, stars represent the luminaries that gleam, glow and flicker throughout the heavens. The massive star measures 6.2 meters in diameter and hangs 257 meters above the ground. It comes outfitted with 520 linear meters of LED strips that emit a stunning 1.2 million lumens of light, adding a bright, sparkling jewel in Riyadh’s skyline!

Nantong Grand Theater by Tungsten Studio

Located around a rather picturesque contoured lake, the Nantong Grand Theater adopts an undulating roof that resembles two concert pianos releasing melodious music. On the opposite side of the lake (facing the city) the building has a softly curved, white stage tower, like a light auspicious cloud, stopping on the shore of Zilang Lake, guiding pedestrians to the lake and showing them the beautiful and moving lakeshore landscape. Often, in the pursuit of impactful architecture, buildings look iconic from their top view while looking relatively plain when viewed from the ground. The Nantong Grand Theater, however, ensures a wonderfully artistic facade even when viewed by the pedestrians… something that’s rather fitting, considering the theater is home to art itself!

Hanabi 2020 by Deep Origin Innovation Lab

Japanese for ‘firework’, the Hanabi installation definitely looks the part! The chandelier comes with thousands of pipes diverging out of a single point, with LEDs at the end of them, creating the impression of a firework exploding in the sky. Named Hanabi 2020, the installation draws a parallel between the firework destroying itself in the sky and the destruction and pain of the year 2020, while also serving as a reminder that like fireworks themselves, pain is ephemeral too, and will soon pass… and that one should focus on the beautiful memory the firework/pain leaves behind in our mind.

Serif by Kuzco Lighting

The Serif Collection features clean, angular geometries colliding in harmony. Minimal yet impactful, the rings of light seem to float organically in air, and are individually adjustable, creating a wonderfully asymmetric and versatile piece of lighting that can be oriented to create both 2D and 3D forms, adding visual drama to any space!

Urban Bloom by CA PLAN

Completed in December 2020, the Urban Bloom is a remodeling project of the Galleria Department Store, a landmark in Daejeon built in the 1990s. Covering the façade, 5700 petal modules of nature-inspired concept were all designed in different shapes and sizes through algorithms, and LED modules were installed at the center of the flower to create a media façade. The beauty of the Urban Bloom is that it makes use of light in different ways during the day and the night. In daylight, the Urban Bloom looks dynamic as the sun shifts from east to west, shining on the polygonal petals at different angles through the day to create vivid highlights and shadows… while at night, the entire structure comes to life as LEDs at the center of each flower light up, turning the entire building into a massive lighting installation!

Colms by Yellow Goat Design

Practically ushering in the Christmas spirit, the Colms literally is visualized as a massive tree-shaped chandelier that hangs from the ceiling. Designed, however, to look like shoots of bamboo, the Colms comes with 5 white columns and multiple golden bamboo-leaf tips arranged stylistically like an upside-down Ikebana-style flower arrangement that also happens to illuminate wonderfully at night, as LEDs within the aluminum columns light up and cause the golden leaves to shimmer and scatter light randomly across the room. Designed to be as sturdy as it is stunning, the Colms is a lighting set that can easily be customized too, to fit a whole variety of interior settings.

Visit the LIT Design Award website to see all the winning designs for the year 2021.

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Ex-Aston Martin engineer designed a sleek ‘packable’ cycling helmet that flips inward to become 50% slimmer

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It’s almost hilarious, but the two leading reasons for people not wearing helmets are the fact that it ruins their hair, and that it’s too bulky to carry or store anywhere. While there isn’t really an immediate solution to the former (apart from going bald), an ex-Aston Martin engineer devised a clever way to solve the latter problem. Meet the Flip-Clip Go, a Red Dot Award-winning ‘packable’ helmet that folds down to occupy 50% of its original volume, making it easier to carry with you when not in use.

The helmet’s patented design features a flippable top that turns its dome-shaped form into a frisbee that’s easier to stash in bags, carry under one’s arms, or place inside the cargo space in scooters. Measuring 81mm in thickness when closed, the Flip-Clip Go’s bulkiness gets reduced by 50%, making it much more convenient than traditional bulky helmets that can be cumbersome to carry around.

The helmet’s highlight is its Flip-Clip™ Technology, which allows it to alter its volume by flipping and folding inwards. This nifty little feature turns the bulbous helmet into an 81mm disc that’s about as bulky as a novel or a dictionary. Cutting the original helmet’s mass by up to 50%, the folded helmet can easily be stashed away, so you don’t need to rely on archaic techniques like locking your helmet to your bike.

The helmet was conceptualized by Josh Cohen, Dom Cotton, and Will Wood, friends and bicycle enthusiasts alike (and co-founders of Newlane). The light bulb moment came when Josh used a hire bike in Central London. Feeling a sense of vulnerability without the helmet, he spoke to Dom, who immediately hopped on board and was soon followed by Will, an ex-engineer at Aston Martin who helped conceive the helmet’s design, its details, and finalize its material choices to create a helmet that was effective, lightweight, sustainable, and yet affordable.

The Flip-Clip Go helmet comes made entirely from recycled plastics, salvaged from oceans and landfills, before being treated, processed, cleaned, and re-molded. It comes with a relatively bare-basics design, featuring an airy construction that relies on honeycomb structures, and is supported by a protective inner layer of expanded polystyrene (EPS). Manufactured in partnership with Cameron-Price in the UK, each helmet helps recycle as many as 20 plastic bottles worth of plastic, and Newlane hopes to be entirely carbon-free by 2030.

The Flip-Clip Go helmet is a winner of the Red Dot Design Concept Award for the year 2021.

Designer: Newlane

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The James Dyson Award announces its 2021 Global Winners – Here’s a look at the winning designs

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On a mission to locate, evaluate, and celebrate great young minds and their potentially life-changing ideas, the James Dyson Award is held every year, seeing thousands of entries from budding designers and design engineers from around the world. Just this year alone, the international award program witnessed participants from 28 countries, of which a jury panel of 15 Dyson engineers selected 20 National Award Winners to proceed to the final stage of the competition.

Today, on the 17th of November, the awards program announced the winners of its 3 awards – the International Award, the Sustainability Award, and the newly introduced Medical Award. The winners were reviewed and hand-picked by Sir James Dyson himself, and will now receive £30,000 to help develop their ideas into tangible, life-impacting designs.

Click Here to view all the James Dyson Award entries for 2021.

HOPES – International Winner


HOPES (short for Home Eye Pressure E-skin Sensor) is a wearable biomedical device that allows pain-free, low-cost, at-home intraocular pressure (IOP) testing for patients suffering from glaucoma. “It turns out that IOP is the clinician’s single metric to assess glaucoma”, mentioned the designers behind HOPES, who were motivated after one of the team members’ fathers was diagnosed with glaucoma back in 2019. Regular monitoring of IOP fluctuation is critical to help determine long-term treatment goals, although at-home IOP testing still remains faulty at best, and inaccurate compared to the Goldmann applanation tonometry method, which still remains the clinical standard for testing intraocular pressure. The HOPES is a finger-glove with a high-density pressure sensor array embedded at the tip, connected to a smartwatch that sits around the wrist.

Using the device is as simple as running the HOPES app and applying pressure on the center of the eyelid with the fingertip. The wearable then lets you know when the test is complete, and accurately calculates the user’s intraocular pressure while comprehensively recording all the test results over the previous days and weeks. The device comes with a one-size-fits-all design, is pain-free, user-friendly, and costs 10x lesser than going to a physician. The design team behind HOPES is currently cooperating with clinicians at the National University Hospital in Singapore to collect patients’ eye pressure data to train their machine learning models They’re also simultaneously optimizing performance and improving on the design and form factor of the HOPES device. Watch the entire video here.

Plastic Scanner – Sustainability Winner


While the idea of being able to scan and identify a piece of plastic doesn’t sound particularly ground-breaking to the average consumer, it could be potentially ground-breaking for plastics recycling facilities, allowing them to swiftly identify and sort out different types of plastics while recycling or repurposing them. Aimed at helping reduce plastic pollution drastically (by allowing them to be efficiently recycled), the Plastic Scanner is an open-source gadget by designer Jerry de Vos of TU Delft, Netherlands. Having spent time as a core team member of Precious Plastic, Jerry quickly learned what a hassle it was to correctly identify plastics while recycling them. “Large factories in Europe are able to sort plastics based on infrared reflection”, de Vos mentioned. “It became my personal mission to make similar technology available for any recycler around the world.”

The Plastic Scanner is a nifty handheld device with an open-source design that can easily be built and modified by any plastics recycling facility, especially in low and middle-income countries. The device uses a discreet infrared spectroscope to identify plastics. It isn’t as accurate as the infrared techniques used by state-of-the-art spectroscopes, but it’s a low-cost solution that’s accurate enough at identifying most common plastics. Currently, Jerry is assembling a team of friends and colleagues to create new prototypes and to do pilot projects in both industry- and low resource settings. Ultimately the goal is to build DIY kit versions of the Plastic Scanner and build out a database of open-source documents and schematics that make it easy for others to build and contribute to the project. Watch the entire video here.

REACT – Medical Winner


A Medical Winner in the James Dyson Award, the REACT is a new system for stopping bleeding from a knife wound. The REACT system uses a rapid, inflatable Tamponade device that is inserted into the stab wound. The automated inflation of this Tamponade provides internal pressure directly to the bleeding site, controlling bleeding faster than current methods by essentially ‘plugging’ the wound opening. The most common cause of death in a knife wound is blood loss. It takes only 5 minutes to bleed to death, which isn’t enough time for even an ambulance to arrive at the location in most cities. The police are often the first trained responders at the scene, but they do not have access to the tools required to prevent blood loss. The hope is that REACT will change this reality.

The most common training advice to first responders is that if the impaled object is still within the body, to absolutely leave it be. This is because the object is applying internal pressure to the wound site whilst also filling the cavity, preventing internal bleeding. The REACT works on the same principle, effective even when someone is bleeding out. The implantable medical-grade silicon Balloon Tamponade is inserted into the wound tract by a first responder, and pressure sensors within the REACT device help determine how much to inflate the tamponade to provide the right amount of pressure to stop the bleeding. The simple application and automated inflation procedure of the REACT system makes it a game-changer for first responders. The Tamponade can be installed and can stop hemorrhaging in under a minute, saving hundreds of lives a year. It’s suitable for large cavities like the abdomen too, and it is also easy to remove, giving the patient the best chance at reconstructive surgery. Designer Joseph Bentley of Loughborough University has filed a patent on the REACT system, with hopes that it will eventually be developed into a product that saves hundreds of lives every year.

Click Here to view all the James Dyson Award entries for 2021.

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Augmented Reality Helmet concept aims at revolutionizing how firefighters rescue civilians

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Brave - Augmented Reality Helmet for Firefighters

Technology is best put to use when it gives us powers we didn’t have before. Whether it’s being able to fly using airplanes, see through skin and bones using X-rays, or send each other messages using radio waves and satellites. I’ve long believed that augmented reality has the ability to positively impact life as we know it, beyond just entertainment and games. Microsoft’s Hololens has often demonstrated how AR tech can help remote learning and servicing, whether it’s something as simple as sending instructions to a technician fixing a faulty circuit box or plumbing pipe, or as game-changing as helping doctors learn more about the human body by literally being able to see inside it using virtual, augmented, and mixed reality. A Red Dot Design Concept Award-winning entry, however, is pushing the capabilities of augmented reality imaging to help firefighters effectively assess buildings, find structural weak spots, avoid infernos, locate and rescue victims, and quickly plot safe escape routes.

Brave - Augmented Reality Helmet for Firefighters

The Brave is an AR Headset with a helmet attachment purpose-built for firefighters to use while training and in action. The headset itself comes with an array of cameras along the front that allows the internal chip to effectively plot out its surroundings, and a HUD under the headset’s main visor helps project digital elements on the physical world while the firefighters move around. The outer visor also covers the upper half of the face, preventing dust and debris from making its way into the firefighter’s eyes, while a mask on the lower half of their face remains unobstructed or untouched.

When paired along with the helmet, the Brave is complete as a state-of-the-art imaging, safety, and rescue tool. The helmet comes with lights built into the front and the back, illuminating the path while allowing firefighters to see each other in smoke-filled corridors. The rear of the helmet even comes with a camera lens that allows the AR headset to see what’s behind the wearer too, informing them of any developments. Finally, the hard-hat helmet works as the ultimate head-protecting device, softening the impact from debris that may fall from above, and overall helping the firefighter effectively perform rescue missions without getting hurt. Along with the AR headset, however, the Brave is the ultimate rescue tool. It helps firefighters effectively see behind walls, beyond floors, and observe the building in a way that the eyes cannot.

The Brave AR Helmet is a winner of the Red Dot Design Concept Award for the year 2021.

Designers: Kim Hyewon & Shin Alim

Brave - Augmented Reality Helmet for Firefighters

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This architectural structure is UV-resistant protective shell that operates like a bionic flower!

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This award-winning architecture structure is a concept design that creates a UV-resistant space by closing like a shield. It absorbs ultraviolet rays and unfurls like a bionic flower based on the intensity of the UV index in the area! This protective photosynthesis shell aims to solve the harm caused by excessive ultraviolet radiation in public spaces so that you can still go out while better solutions are being developed.

The earth’s ozone layer can block 97-99% of the ultraviolet light from solar radiation. According to the research of the World Health Organization, if the ultraviolet light exceeds the index of 3 or above without proper shielding or sun protection measures, it will cause sunburn and related diseases.

Due to the increase in ultraviolet radiation caused by the breaking of the greenhouse effect ozone layer in recent years, especially in countries and regions located between 30 degrees north and south latitudes of the equator, this design has been conceptualized for Schuster Park in Queensland, Australia. UV-resistant shielding space uses solar energy, green fluorescent protein, and an ultraviolet module device to create the bionic shell.

Based on the increase and decrease of the UV index intensity, the structure will fold and unfold like a bionic flower – when the ultraviolet light is strong it will become a pavilion to cover, and at night when the ultraviolet rays are weak it becomes the installation art that will glow naturally. The whimsical building envelopes and fiber optic tubes are filled with green fluorescent proteins; the size of the module opening and closing will be adjusted according to the absorption rate of ultraviolet light and can emit light at night. It almost reminds me of the bioluminescent waves!

Designer: Chsiao-Yu Sun and Chien-Hsun Chen

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This chic self-watering planter uses a porous terracotta inner vessel to absorb water and hydrate the soil

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The A-Pot displays elegance not just in execution but in thinking too. The simple two-piece self-watering planter uses an outer vessel made from glass, so you can see the water level, and an inner vessel made from terracotta, to place your soil and plant in. The way the self-watering mechanism then works is rather simple. Instead of the soil or a wicking medium pulling water towards the roots (so you don’t need to manually pour water on the plant every few days), the inner terracotta vessel does the job, thanks to its porous structure. Simply placing the terracotta vessel in water allows it to absorb the water and hydrate the soil inside. Using osmosis, the terracotta vessel only pulls as much water as the soil needs, and the result is an incredibly elegant little planter that autonomously waters the plant within while looking beautiful enough to keep in any part of your home!

The A-Pot is a winner of the Red Dot Design Concept Award for the year 2021.

Designer: Zonesum for Dowan

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This futuristic drum kit lets you sample real world audio and turn them into synthesized rhythms

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Think like a Novation Launchpad or an AKAI MPD, but in the shape of a drum kit. Codenamed the ‘Collector’, this futuristic vision from the mind of Liu Tianchen aims at bridging the worlds of electronic music and actual instrument-playing together. The rather slick-looking electronic drum kit features six adjustable pads and two pedals mounted on a folding frame. The kit comes with a folding stool too, and two drumsticks, giving you a near-authentic drumming experience.

The difference, however, is in the fact that the Collector doesn’t rely on a pre-existing bank of drum sounds, but instead, gives the artist the flexibility to collect and build their own banks, either by purchasing samples online or making samples of their own. Then, working just like any good MIDI controller, the Collector lets you create beats using these samples in a way that closes the gap between actually jamming on a real-life drum kit, and just simply pressing buttons on a MIDI controller. When you’re done, the entire setup packs up like an easel and stool, and stands flat vertically against a wall, occupying a fraction of the space that a real drum kit would.

The ‘Collector’ Future Drum Kit is a winner of the Red Dot Design Concept Award for the year 2021.

Designer: Liu Tianchen

Cutting Edge Design Concepts that were granted the 2021 Red Dot ‘Best of Best’ Award

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You can’t envision any future without conceptualization. Concepts have always interested us and have been the backbone of Yanko Design because they present an image of products, technologies, experiences, and consequently, futures. They showcase an inventiveness and creativity that’s truly worth appreciating and that’s where we see a massive overlap of interest with our friends who host the Red Dot Design Concept Awards.

This year’s Red Dot Design Concept Awards: Best of Best honors some exciting concepts. Whether it’s the cutting-edge technology used in consumer electronics, or in the health sector, or design that uplifts user experiences and environments, Red Dot’s Best Of Best is our annual go-to for designs that speak of creativity, cross-discipline collaboration, and marvelous execution. Here are a few of our favorites from this year’s Red Dot Design Concept Award: Best of Best! Scroll right to the bottom to see which project won the Luminary Design Award! You saw it here first!

Click here to view more Award-winning designs from the 2021 Red Dot Design Concept Award.

Cognixion One AR Headset by STEL Design

Cognixion One is the world’s first wearable speech-generating device, combining a Brain-Computer-Interface with Augmented Reality to enable communication in those with disabilities like never before. Three context-aware, predictive keyboard options, radial sentence builder tools, and an integrated AI assistant are all powered by 6 occipital-placed electrodes and 4G mobility, enabling comfortable use and functionality to the wearer, who’s presented with a new, intuitive way to communicate with the world. Designed for tetraplegic users with communication disabilities, the technology is usable in any position, in any environment.

Pickup Truck by Canoo

Designed by the eponymous California-based startup, the Canoo Pickup Truck is a modular electric pickup designed for a variety of scenarios. Unveiled just this year, the new pickup emphasizes modularity and looks to maximize its utility. It has tables folding down around the vehicle, various hidden storage areas, and numerous charging points on the exterior of the truck. The pickup will offer over 200 miles of range with an option between a dual- or rear-motor configuration. Currently in its concept stage, the Red Dot Best of Best Award-winning vehicle is slated to go into production by 2023.

Flowspace Pod by Microsoft Office Envisioning Team

Designed for hybrid workplaces, Flowspace is an innovative little private pod for solo working in crowded offices. Draped in gray felt, Flowspace comes with automated privacy panels that create a hybrid of a conventional desk and round pod. As currently conceptualized, each pod comes with its own desktop computer, desk, and stool. The desktop computer’s monitor spans almost the entire panel inside the pod, making it an ideal screen for heavy workloads and even presentations. The pod itself comes in two halves to combine and provide plenty of privacy amidst busy work zones. Whenever you want to get back to the WFH grind, Flowspace creates a temporary sanctuary for focus and deep work.

Jinni Virtual Assistant Zhong Zuozheng

Here’s a question nobody probably ever thought of… how do deaf and mute people communicate with voice assistants? Or specifically, with smart speakers? It’s a question that Jinni, a sign-language-based smart assistant, hopes to answer. Equipped with a camera that can read sign language inputs, and a large screen that can communicate with its user, Jinni brings the power of virtual assistants to a subset of people that are often ignored when designing mainstream tech. Just as the smart speaker is a ubiquitous little gadget in homes, Jinni hopes to do the same for the deaf and mute communities, giving them the same access to life-changing tech.

Mollie Salt & Pepper Shaker by Anshuman Kumar

Mollie is an adorably playful salt-and-pepper shaker tool that embodies Zen aesthetics for an interactive seasoning experience. Designed to look like a shaker, it makes the act of ‘shaking’ salt or pepper over your meals much more fun and engaging… although be careful, it’s pretty easy to get carried away and end up with an over-salted meal! Ultimately, Mollie introduces a new playful facet to eating and preparing food!

The ‘Flip-Clip’ Helmet by Newlane

The Newlane ‘Flip Clip’ is a truly packable helmet designed to make carrying headgear easy and convenient. The helmet’s patented design features a flippable top that turns its dome-shaped form into a frisbee that’s easier to stash in bags, carry under arms, or place inside the cargo space in scooters. Measuring 81mm in thickness when closed, the helmet’s bulkiness gets reduced by 50%, making it much more convenient than traditional bulky helmets that can be cumbersome to carry around.

Virgin Galactic Spaceship Interior by Seymourpowell

Envisioned by UK-based creative consultancy Seymourpowell, the Virgin Galactic Spaceship Interior provides a unique customer experience that is suitable for a zero-G environment, elevating access to the view of Earth from Space while ensuring safety within a strict weight budget. Designed for the VSS Unity (which embarked on its first fully-crewed sub-orbital mission with Richard Branson on the 11th of July), the interiors provide space for 6 passengers and come with 12 large, porthole-style windows, 6 of which are positioned directly next to the individual passenger seats, offering a stellar view. The cabin interior is also complemented by icy hues of white, silver, and teal, intended to be reflective of space itself and the Earth below.

.lumen – Glasses for the Blind by DESIRO Vision for .lumen [Luminary Winner 2021]

Founded as a research startup with the mission of empowering the blind, .lumen just unveiled their first wearable, a head-worn gadget for the visually impaired, that mimics the helpful characteristics of a guide dog. The guide dog, unanimously seen as a good solution, has multiple drawbacks – high cost of training, and most blind people can’t take care of guide dogs on their own. Due to this, there are only around 20,000 guide dogs for 40 million blind people. The Red Dot Luminary Award-winning .lumen offers a much more scalable solution to solving the daily problems of the visually impaired. Designed to sit on heads the way a VR or AR headset would (without obstructing the eye region), the .lumen glasses can do three things incredibly well. It can understand an environment, its objects, their positions/movement in 3D; it can then compute interaction paths to wanted objects, or generally, based on context; and finally, the glasses can transmit information to the blind using haptic and auditory impulses.

Click here to view more Award-winning designs from the 2021 Red Dot Design Concept Award.

8 of the most inspiring Professional Concepts from the iF Design Award global design community

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The iF Design Award has been consistently hand-picking the best, most innovative designs since 1953, honoring top-class achievements in categories spanning Product Design, Transportation Design, Communication Design, Packaging, Service Design, Architecture, Interior Architecture, Professional Concepts, and UI and UX for 67 years in a row. The entire iF Design Award program saw as many as 10,000 submissions this year, which were evaluated by 98 international design experts from 21 countries, on the iF Jury.

Just this year alone, 1,744 designs received the iF Design Award for their creative accomplishments across various categories, while an additional 75 designs went on to win the highly-coveted iF Gold Award for their outstanding work. The iF Design Award always culminates in a grand ceremony in Berlin, although owing to the pandemic and global travel restrictions, award-winning products and projects this year are being celebrated digitally with an international content campaign encapsulated by the slogan “The CreatiFe Power of Design” in cooperation with popular design platforms and seven renowned design museums.

Over the course of the past few months, Yanko Design has curated and featured winning designs from this year’s program too – this time, we’ve hand-picked ten award-winning designs from the ‘Professional Concept’ category below(the list even features TWO iF Gold Award winners!) All the iF Design Award winners can also be viewed on the newly-launched iF Design App that gives you access to a grand database of award-winning design projects and their creators, right at your fingertips!

To view all these designs and many more, visit the website of the iF DESIGN AWARD.

Click Here to download the iF Design App – a new experience in discovering outstanding designs.

Award-Winning Professional Concepts from the iF Design Award 2021

Infinity Mover by büro+staubach for Beijing E.U.K. Co., Ltd.

Modeled on the format of a tram, the Infinity Mover bypasses the tram’s demerits – its need to travel on tracks, its clunky nature, and its reliance on a human driver. The Infinity Mover modernizes this by turning the tram into an electric-powered autonomous vehicle that’s modular, interactive and intuitive for riders, and moves on regular roads. Working off a series of LiDAR sensors, the Infinity Mover can easily be deployed on existing roads with no infrastructural changes, and can help turn public transport into a state-of-the-art human-centric public service!

Lilium Aircraft by Lilium GmbH (iF Gold Award Winner)

With 36 tilting jet engines that give this eVTOL the power of flight, the Lilium Jet is capable of carrying up to 5 passengers for a distance of 300km on a single charge in just a 60-minute ride! It boasts of a wingspan of only 11 meters, with a design that has no tail, rudder, gearboxes, or oil circuits, making its design truly revolutionary. The iF Gold Award-winning design is all set for its debut in 2025, with a hope that future models will be able to fly autonomously too!

OBEX Protective Surf Hood by Design Partners

Concussions are bad enough… combine them with being stranded in a water body and you have a deadly combo that can easily become a life-threatening situation for surfers. The OBEX is a life-saving piece of equipment that helps protect surfers in the event of a rough fall. While the hood can’t prevent concussions, it helps soften the impact with a head-enclosing design. A special pressurized container near the neck also contains an automatically inflating neckband that keeps the surfer’s head above water in the event of a fall. The inflatable flotation device is colored yellow, making it easily visible against the blue of the water, and comes with reflective tape too, to increase visibility and save lives.

BMW i Interaction EASE by DESIGNWORKS for BMW Group

The reason the BMW i Interaction EASE looks the way it does is because it aims at challenging the very notion of how cars will look in the future. Envisioning a future where cars are simply extensions of our homes and our selves, the BMW i Interaction EASE concept comes with a ‘cabin/chariot on wheels’ design that autonomously moves from one point of the city to the other with the passengers sitting inside as they would in a lounge. The i Interaction EASE is powered by the virtual BMW Assistant, which recognizes the passengers as they board, welcoming them by adjusting the interiors to suit their preferences. The warm, welcoming seats with 3D-knit-surfaces awaken on contact with embedded smart materials ready to assist, giving passengers the freedom to move and naturally interact. “Depending on passenger desire, the space adapts using gaze, gesture, and touch for the closest, most natural interaction to transform the entire interior”, mention the DESIGNWORKS team (an in-house subsidiary of the BMW Group).

S I X T Y & T W E L V E by Rosenthal

Sixty years ago, Rosenthal stirred up the porcelain industry – with avant-garde designs by artists, designers and architects. Now the German porcelain manufacturer is celebrating its studio line with a limited anniversary collection and translates 60 iconic vases with twelve contemporary colors (hence the collection’s name). The vases come in a dizzying variety of styles that are the very antithesis of wheel-spun pottery. Designed to look like they were created using generative design techniques (I wouldn’t be surprised if they were), the vases don’t show the same revolved symmetry you’d associate with traditional ceramics. Instead, they’re boldly inventive, unabashedly geometric, and have an artistic quality that brings pottery and ceramics into the 21st century!

Interactive Intelligent Unmanned Sweeper by LanWei for Jilin University (iF Gold Award Winner)

Approaching autonomous vehicles rather differently, the Interactive Intelligent Unmanned Sweeper isn’t your average self-driving vehicle. Instead of providing transportation as a service, it provides cleanliness, working like an oversized Roomba for your streets. “It can clean streets automatically by means of accurate sensors and intelligent algorithms, and it can also do more”, mentions designer LanWei. “Unlike current street sweepers, the new design makes it futuristic and approachable, and also ensures that citizens can safely come into zero-distance contact without danger.” Moreover, the sides of the sweeper can even display important messages, civic announcements, and even traffic guidance.

CITO Liquid Biopsy Analysis for Cancer Treatment by Cambridge Consultants

CITO is a rapid liquid biopsy diagnostics platform that improves patient experience in cancer care. The platform makes it possible for non-specialist technicians in small clinics to monitor patient response to treatment while a patient waits, significantly reducing delays to diagnostic results. The compact device combines functions of three instruments in an easy-to-sterilize form and sub-surface lighting pulses intuitively to alert system status. CITO opens the door to personalized cancer treatment by giving oncologists rapid access to biopsy data so they can make informed adjustments to each patient’s treatment plan.

Atmocube by notAnotherOne for AtmoTech

With its interior-friendly design, Atmocube is a one-stop solution for complex air quality management in private, public, and commercial buildings. It accurately measures the most dangerous air pollutants and vital environmental parameters in real time, while looking less like a complex, technical, bordering-on-industrial appliance and more like a design-forward product that helps blend into the space while giving it a touch of avant-garde tech. Considering the serious impact of indoor environments on people’s well-being and health, the device serves the user by integrating various air pollution sensors into a single neat platform. The wall-mounted device comes in a variety of colors with replaceable swatches (like terrazzo, wood, concrete, metal, glass) to suit different interiors, allowing clients to customize their Atmocube to suit their decor. This approach to design brings products like Atmocube into the forefront, allowing people to place such gadgets in their living rooms and lobbies, instead of relegating them to store-rooms.

To view all these designs and many more, visit the website of the iF DESIGN AWARD.

This leather card-holder is made just by folding a single piece of leather – no metal rivets, stitches, or glue

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With a design that relies on the simple powers of Origami and Kirigami, the One Piece Leather explores how to build products without additive or subtractive design. Armed with just one piece of stamp-cut leather (that’s probably the only subtractive process used in the entire product), designers Hou Shuo and Zhang Xiao have created a compact, minimalist leather card holder with 2 sleeves to separate multiple cards, and even a flap to close the cardholder and prevent objects from falling out.

The cardholder is perhaps the businessperson’s most important accessory. It does two main jobs, hold your own cards that you distribute to others, and hold the cards you receive from other people in the industry. Up until social media allowed people to connect to each other, the card-holder was the most powerful tool to expand your professional network. In a lot of ways, it still is an incredibly powerful piece of EDC, and the One Piece Leather is a rather nifty little product. Made from just one simple stamped piece of leather (ideally you could make it out of denim, Tyvek, canvas, or any other fabric), the One Piece Leather lets you simply fold your card-holder together. It ships flat-packed, making it rather logistically efficient, and engages you as the user, by letting you build your product (where have I heard this strategy before? Oh wait, IKEA!)

The holder’s clever design wraps around itself in a way that lets you segregate your cards by having a separate compartment for the cards you distribute versus the cards you receive… and its compact shape and size means your cardholder easily slips right into your pocket so you can carry it around wherever you go. Besides, the lack of rivets, stitches, and glue makes it pretty cost-effective (in terms of materials used/required and labor costs), and allows it to be more durable and easy to recycle too.

The One Piece Leather is a winner of the Red Dot Design Concept Award for the year 2021.

Designers: Hou Shuo & Zhang Xiao