The results of the "1st Greek National Furniture Design Competition" just came out!Reading the press communication of the organizers, a very well done .pdf fle, I stepped in a few paragraphs that just not feel right.
In their opinion
- there was not an equal distribution of the participants among the competition categories, so for contest integrity sake a 1st prize where not awarded.
- even if the projects had valid aesthetics, all of them had a low level grade of innovation.
- all proposals has, in a technical way, construction and functional lacks that may be solved during prototype building phase.
First of all I think that organizers and jury job is to prize the participants and to judge them for the design proposals and not to express their thoughts and criticize the works, it is a contest and not a design review on each one. As a consequence I found it very insulting toward all designers, winning and non.
In particular
- what does it mean they couldn't give the 1st prize for competition integrity? Even if there were a small number of participants per category, I think someone would deserved the first one. A question...why in the student category there was one...??
- I will not talk about aesthetics. Because is well known that is in the personal opinion of of each one to judge that. "What is beautiful to me, it could be ugly to you". But as for the innovation thing...well guys, when a competition asks to design some products (beds, tables, shading system) that must be at least 50% in hardwood (a material used from "when the man walked on earth") and maintaining low costs (no high tech production methods etc.), what kind of innovations they expect? If they wanted innovation let the designer to do so. A good request would be free of restrictions with a contained cost.
- construction and function lacks. one of the competition request was to send final manufacture blueprints. Yes I agree on sending manufacturable designs and some technical blueprints for better product understanding, but final and accurate ones is another thing. To me it means that I almost must build the product to be sent. As they claim the winning award will be manufactured with a company of their choice (very nice indeed) but the designer must make on his own all the arrangements (contract, payments etc, what about that?). Now what if the designer after making all the final blueprints and choosing all the in market components comes in touch with the company and finds out that they work with other machinery and other components from the ones choosed? What about costs then? Or redisigning and redrawing blueprints? What about if the company is not willing paying all that?
- last but not least, the prototype. Of course some of the lacks and problems are solved in prototype phase! And, I must tell you, that other ones are discovered during this phase and sometimes more than one prototype is built. Otherwise what is the prototype all about? Of course a good thing is to prevent everything during designing phase. But every designer that came across with all production phases knows that.
category: Hospitality.
1st award: none.
2nd award: Andreas Voukenas, Marios Bourikas (beach shading system)
Polichronidi Vaio (beach shading system)
honorable mention: Panos Vasiliou (beach shading system)
Konstantina Koukouzi (hotel sofa system)
category: Children Solutions.
1st award: none.
2nd award: none.
honorable mention: Chrisanthi Anagnostopoulou, Katerina Rousounelou
(adjustable children's bed system)
Eleni Karantaki (children's nursery/desk system)
category: Everyday Needs (students category).
1st award: Dimitris Morakis (hanger).
2nd award: Maria-Eftichia Marentaki (living room table)
Stavroula Vasiliou, Yiannis Markakis, Marianna Pappa
(living room table)
honorable mention: Argiris Antonios, Marios Georntamilis,
Konstantinos Lampridis (hanger)
Aggeliki Tsoupra, Iro Chasapopoulou, Christina Feloutzi,
Dimitris Morakis (hanger)
Sofia Arkoudaki, Giasemi Vagiakou, Eirini Pitaouli (hanger)
All works will be exposed at the "MEDHOME" exhibition on October 17-19/2009.
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