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Bright ideas - The Designer - 04.2008

The final round of a recent design contest brought together some contrasting ideas on how to get the most out of a versatile material.

Last year’s design competition from LG HI-MACS® gave design students from the Czech republic and Slovakia the chance to show how their creativity could be brought to life and produced four striking washbasin designs that tested the proprieties of the material.

This year, the competition was broadened to add Russia, Hungary, Sweden, Germany, France, Spain, Italy and the UK to the finalist rota.

The brief – “catering” – was deliberately left as broad as possible to ensure a wide range of designs without too many creative restrictions. Entries were then assessed within the individual countries, with the winner from each selected for the final in Geneva.

The result was an unusual mix of ideas, some built around practical problem-solving needs and others for which aesthetics were clearly the main motivation.

Perhaps the strongest idea from the former category was the entry from the United Kingdom. Designed by Mai Honda, a student at the Birmingham Institute of Art and design, the “Maino” seating concept is designed to provide customers at coffee shops or airports a discrete and private space. This cross between seat and sculpture is made from a double sheet of LG HI-MACS® to enable it to show a different colour on each side and “thermoformed” to enable it to be moulded into its usual shape.

Honda’s design could also be easily adapted to offer a double seat rather than the single seat design shown in the concept drawings.

Another project designed with practicality in mind was “AdapTable” by Emelie Heden and Isabelle Olsson of the Ingvar Kamprad Design Centre at Lund University, Sweden. The table would be used in a restaurant to divide spaces up depending on the number of diners, allowing space to be marked out for privacy for the consumer and maximum space efficiency for the restaurant.

The “Blou” table designed by Rafael Zaragoza Alvaro of the University Polytechnic of Valencia, Spain, was very much a creation devised with the Spanish tapas culture in mind. The table contains pre-cut holes into which plates can be placed, leaving the user with their hands free to hold their drink.

A highly unusual design for enabling children to combine eating and play (which for some parents might sound like a nightmare!) came from the design team from IED Design in Italy. “SlideEat” is a hybrid table and slide intended to encourage children to enjoy mealtimes. The design includes moulded table settings spaces to keep plates, cups and cutlery safely on the table and reduce the risk of spillage.

Clever aesthetics were at the core of designs from Germany (“CoolStool” by Elena Gerber), France (“Bar’Roc” by Natacha Lesty), Slovakia (Matej Brzy’s “Lily” table), Hungary (Geza Csire’s striking bar furniture designs). There was also a positively loopy design from Anton Nikitin from Russia whose “spring mounted drinks table” is intended to enliven drinken establishments.

The design judged to be the winner by an international team of design experts however, was the “Deko” table by Karel Vranek of the Czech Republic for a highly complex display of the type of shapeachievable through thermoforming.

All the design concepts will be on display at the LG HI-MACS® stand at the Milan Furniture fair this month, located in Zona Tortona.