The Design Museum announces the seven category winners for the annual Designs of the Year Awards. Designs of the Year celebrates a year’s worth of cutting-edge innovation and original talent; showcasing the very best in global Architecture, Digital, Fashion, Furniture, Graphic, Product and Transport design. The seven category winners are:
Architecture: Heydar Aliyev Center, Baku Azerbaijan - Designed by Zaha Hadid and Patrik Schumacher. Elaborate undulations, folds and inflections modify this plaza surface into an architectural landscape that performs a multitude of functions.
Digital: Peek (Portable Eye Examination Kit) - Designed by Dr Andrew Bastawrous, Stewart Jordan, Dr Mario Giardini, Dr Iain Livingstone. A smartphone-based system for comprehensive eye examinations, PEEK is easy to use, affordable and portable, meaning that it can bring eye care to even the remotest of settings.
Fashion: Prada S/S14 - Designed by Miuccia Prada. Pop-art prints meet sporty details and structured shapes in this boldly coloured, powerful collection. Vogue said of the show ‘By next summer we'll wonder what we ever wore before.’
Furniture: Pro chair family - Designed by Konstantin Grcic. Featuring state-of-the-art ergonomics and pioneering design, the construction of the chair not only allows movement in all directions, but actively stimulates it thereby promoting healthier sitting.
Graphics: Drone Shadows - Designed by James Bridle / booktwo.org. A series of installations consisting of a 1:1 outline of a military unmanned aerial vehicle, or Drone. They have appeared in the UK, Turkey, the USA, Brazil and elsewhere.
Product: The Seaboard Grand - Designed by Roland Lamb and Hong-Yeul Eom. The Seaboard is a reinvention of the piano keyboard, reimagining the keys as soft waves that enable continuous and discrete real-time, tactile control of sound through three-dimensional hand gestures. The design combines contemporary minimalism and traditional handcrafted quality.
Transport: XL1 CAR – Designed by Volkswagen. The world’s the most efficient liquid-fuelled production car; it requires only 8.4 PS to sustain a constant 100kph on a level surface in still air, a speed the car can reach from rest in 12.7 seconds.
From the daringly innovative to the reassuringly good, Designs of the Year 2014 is a condensed and vivid selection of the last twelve months in design. This spectrum of expert-chosen design is an insight into what design can do for us both as individuals and as a society, says Gemma Curtin, curator of Designs of the Year.
