Kazerne Design Award 2021
Tomorrow is shaped by the students of today.
The Kazerne Design Award is a prize meant to encourage recently graduated students from Design Academy Eindhoven. The jury will grant a lucky winner with eternal fame, pretty good exposure, and 5000 euro. Sponsored by Stichting Loyola.
This year the jury and the board of Foundation Loyola, chose Zwets’s work after an extensive deliberation. Selection criteria were authenticity, creativity, execution and relevance of subjects in combination with a catchy pitch. Jury Member Van Eijk: “Teun’s project is relevant now; now that the world becomes more and more digital, especially after the last 1,5 years. His project and presentation are about making and improvising. The current uncertain situation demands makers that are able to improvise. Within his project, there are plenty of ideas left to develop in the upcoming years.”
Watch the Kazerne Design Award Show 2021 here.
Jury
Kiki van Eijk is one of the most accomplished names of Dutch Design. Her world is whimsical and colorful, lyrical and personal, yet refined by skillful craftsmanship.
In her design studio, Anne Ligtenberg explicitly chooses to work with subjects that contribute to our personal and/or social well-being. She is able to successfully translate and visualise complex issues into accessible designs.
Annemoon Geurts is the founder and creative director of the renowned design hub Kazerne where she, together with guest curators like Joseph Grima, Lidewij Edelkoort and Ilse Crawford, shows the meaning of design for the world of tomorrow.
Winner
Teun Zwets – Project Teunland
Welcome to Teunland: the fascinating world that represents the agile brain of Teun Zwets. Each piece of furniture in this collection was finished in less than a day with materials that happened to be available, to lose as little time as possible and to stay concentrated. With a focus on the practical instead of the conceptual, on usability instead of refinement, he creates a new aesthetic that questions our throwaway society.
Nominees
Noor Bootsma – The Alliance of Common Waters
The international waters are the only space on earth open to all. Yet we use the oceans as a waste dump, while over-fishing their resources. Noor Bootsma suggests taking the community garden as a model for the shared care of the oceans. In The Alliance of Common Waters, all stakeholders of the ocean share management responsibilities based on the same principles.
Miya Fassbender – Urban Futures
Cities are shared projects, but few people actually know what an urban planning process entails and who is involved. Miya Fassbender developed a board game to address these complexities in a playful way. As in any group project, you will find contradicting positions and opinions. For all millennials priced out of the housing market, or for anyone who wonders why cities develop the way they do.
Niall Keville – Objectext
Objectext by Niall Keville is a series of objects systematically built from the same restrictions as letter forms – with straight and bent lines – like a three-dimensional alphabet. Their size and materiality suggest furniture or objects that in some way or another relate to the human body. The ambiguous function brings into question how we read objects and how we can rewrite the interaction between ourselves and objects.
Benjamin Motoc – Growth
A birthmark here, some wrinkles there; a family may resemble one another, but each individual is different. Benjamin Motoc used other than standard materials for his industrial moulds, and developed a production line that produces series, yet generates a unique outcome with each casting. His sculptural furniture tells the story of their evolution and prompts to rethink current mass production.
Paulien Nabben – AMBARA
Rwanda is successfully stimulating local design and production of clothes. These clothes are often made with imported, environmentally harmful textiles. Ambara is a collaborative textile lab in which Paulien works together with Rwandan craftsmen and experts. Together, they develop textile from local plant-based resources. Her accessible methods contribute therefore to the economic and ecological well-being of its place.
Marie Panken – Type of Thought
Intrigued by the 140-year-old QWERTY keyboard, Marie Panken realized that thoughts alter and adapt as they move from mind via hand onto the page or screen. Type of Thought consists of four typing tools, each inspired by a modern art movement. “Do I want to let my mind run free, find new connections, cut through to the core or change my perspective? I switch between tools depending on my aim.”
Tadeás Podracky – The Metamorphisis
Our surroundings are becoming less personal. We live in prefabricated houses, occupied by mass-produced furniture and spend most of the day in a virtual worlds. To establish a more sustainable, stronger, emotional bond with our environment, Tadeáš Podracký created a series of objects based on emotional decisions, destruction, unpredictability and expression, in which he simultaneously emphasizes the layered identity of the contemporary individual.