Over the next few weeks we will be highlighting award-winning projects and ideas from this year's Core77 Design Awards 2013. We will be featuring these projects by category, so stay tuned for your favorite categories of design! For full details on the project, jury commenting and more information about the awards program, go to Core77DesignAwards.com.
The projects explores notions of gravity and its influence over space, over our perception of it and over the body itself. By offering a world where people are affected by multiple gravities, we expose new spatial possibilities and new ways of negotiating space.
The inversion glasses are a tool to navigate the inverted gravity experience re-orientating our point of view and spatial references.
- How did you learn that you had been recognized by the jury?
We received the congratulating e-mail at 3 in the morning, because of the time difference here in Geneva, Switzerland. At that moment, we were still working in order to finish our final degree projects. It was less than one week before our latest presentation, we were tired and exhausted. We had to read the email several times in order to fully understand what it was about. Was our project a runner up or the winner? This good news came to give us really strong motivation for the last stages to go!
Camille de Dieu and Jérémie Lasnier are now graduates from the Media Design Master, and Camille Seewer completed the Spaces and Communication Master, both orientations in HEAD-Genève / Geneva University of Arts & Design.
- What's the latest news or development with your project?
For the moment, this project is not evolving anymore. It has been developed at a workshop led by El Ultimo Grito and Auger-Loizeau and was presented in the "Inverse Everything" exhibition for the Milan Design Week in 2012.
However, this exploration about the perception of space through the body was the starting point of other discoveries that we carried on with our master projects.
- What is one quick anecdote about your project?
During the exhibition, it was really funny to invite people to wear the Inversion Glasses. Everyone reacted in a different way. Some were really at ease, almost running, while others seemed drunk. Some were even lost and scared when they had to "climb the stairs," referring to the orange path that modulated the ceiling. The most exciting moment was when we guided them to the entrance of the building, crossing from the interior to the exterior was like jumping into the void! Many people were scared of heights and did not even go out!
- What was an "a-ha" moment from this project?
We remember when we did our first prototype of the Inversion Glasses. The three of us already tested walking with them. We were pretty uncomfortable, walking slowly with our hands in front of us, scared of the different height changes of the door frames that looked like steps. Then, we showed them to Jimmy Loizeau. He put them on his head, and just ran in the corridor! We were terrified that he would fall and hurt himself, but he was just laughing so hard!
View the full project here.
DIZAJN is an exhibition concept that shows students' work of the FH Mainz. The visitor chooses among different plates that are lying in front of him and plug the plates into a hole in the table. The RFIDs on the back of the plate lets the computer know which student work needs to get projected on the baldachin. By rotating the plate a new RFID starts sending its signal. Every plate has five different RFIDs = projects so the visitor can see a huge number of projects. The projects are categorized by verbs/nouns/adjectives and not by the kind of project.
- How did you learn that you had been recognized by the jury?
I opened my mail account and got the great surprise! Really made my day and it makes me proud that they recognized my work. I have seen the other projects that got selected, and they all have an extremely high standard.
- What's the latest news or development with your project?
I got published in a Danish design magazine and I made the second place with my project at my university. I would love to see my project realized in Mainz. It would be so cool if the concept would come to live and a lot of people could interact with the plates and find out what Design and the FH Mainz (university of applied sciences) stands for.
- What is one quick anecdote about your project?
I got the hardware for the table from an online-shop in the UK. I ordered it a few days before Christmas and as a reply they told me that I was extremely lucky that I got the hardware, because they had to shut down their business on New Year's Eve forever.
- What was an "a-ha" moment from this project?
When I first tried the interaction on my 1:1 model and it really worked. I was so relieved and even though I had worked on the project for weeks, I was amazed how cool it looked and I couldn't stop rotating the plate for 15 minutes.
View the full project here.
Our project is a portal, a little utopia. Conceived in response to the Melbourne Museum in Australia, 'Portal for Reverie' is an inflatable parasitic construction that attaches to the exterior of the museum's ventilation system. Constructed from diverse fabrics, it is a flexible shifting surface activated through human presence. It is designed to reawaken 'subjectivity...passion...[and] dreams.'* It celebrates individuals as engaged participants, not spectators, producing active contributors within urban culture. Our design acts as a whimsical foil to the dominant presence of the established architecture.
- How did you learn that you had been recognized by the jury?
We were really eager to hear about the winning projects, so Freya set up an alarm with her phone to watch the live-feed from the jury. The funny thing is, the time difference in Australia meant we were up much earlier in the morning than we needed to be, to get the good news!
We watched the live feed separately, and text-messaged each other as the results came through. It was very exciting to hear we had been recognized.
- What's the latest news or development with your project?
Our project 'Portal for Reverie' has since been displayed for a public sculpture exhibition, as part of the 'Melbourne Fringe Festival'. The inflated form became a whimsical marker in the landscape for cyclists, and pedestrians as they traveled to and from the city.
'Portal for Reverie' was also filmed for 'Animate Activate,' a Melbourne interior design event showcasing work that demonstrated new ways of thinking about dynamic surfaces.
- What is one quick anecdote about your project?
'Portal for Reverie' used three kilometers of over-locking, and an entire stores supply of pink chiffon!
We purchased over 60 meters of fabric for this work, and it required multiple trips to a small fabric supplier in Melbourne. With each visit, the shop assistant became more and more curious as to what we were making... On our final visit she couldn't resist asking, "What kind of dress are you making?" Indeed not a dress, the easiest thing to reply with was, "one for a building!"
- What was an "a-ha" moment from this project?
Although we work collaboratively, Zoe is the one that was really responsible for the 'a-ha' moment. As the project is very site-specific, it was a real breakthrough when Zoe discovered the air vents on Melbourne Museum's exterior. It was lucky Freya was wearing a scarf and we were able to hold it up to the vent and start to visualise the potential of the air currents.
The location gave fruition to our research and allowed us to really push forward with the idea of creating a little utopia for reverie in an urban context.
View the full project here.
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