Reporting by Temenouzhka Zaharieva. Above, Waste Chair for In Context - Eco Design Workshop

Part of the numerous events during Sofia Design Week 2012, the student workshop In Context - Eco Design was organized together with the University of Forestry in Sofia and lead by the unique Austrian industrial and product designer Thomas Feichtner, winner of numerous design prizes and most recently named, "Austrian Designer of the Year" 2011.

The task at hand was to design furniture and products made from sustainable materials. The winning design was a team of three students—Denitsa Ilieva, Stoyan Voynishki and Mariela Koleva—who, with their vision for a chair/waste bin really surprised the jury. The product is a high chair that is essentially hollow. The base collects discarded materials and the upper part of the chair, the seat, acts as a press. When one sits on the chair, it pushes the waste down and reduces its volume. The concept of this product provides complete freedom in choosing the materials for its production as well as for separate collection of waste.

Another interesting design was the chair "Reply" made of plywood with individual components assembled without the use of auxiliary materials. The chair was designed by a student duo, Tzvetan Stoykov and Sonia Ivanova. The chair is stylish and comfortable, suitable both for home and for commercial spaces.

The exhibition Light in the Context of Fashion is an interesting project organized by Farolla Ltd.—a company offering custom designed lighting—in cooperation with the National Academy of Art as part of the events of Sofia Design Week 2012. We know that fashion and interior design have a lot in common and most often the connection is through textiles. The overall theme of this year's Sofia Design Week is In Context. The theme was a great fit with a previous Farolla collection, DressLight, where designers were challenged to show light in the context of fashion. In collaboration with the National Academy of Art, Farolla announced a contest for the students from the Fashion department. The task was to recreate their ideas and models using the unique fabrics of Farolla.

The winners were Nikolai Bozhilov, Ina Chokova, Viktoria Ognyanova, Borislava Kamenova, Lidiya Suteva, Marta Pesheva and Teodora Shumenova. Their models were part of the lighting installation "The Light in the Context of Fashion" in the showroom of Farolla-Dresslight (Sofia, Ricardo Vakarini str. 10B) next to the luminaires of Dresslight, made of the same fabrics.