Designblok announced the winners of the international Diploma Selection competition.
19. 10. 2019
Designblok announced the winners of the international Diploma Selection competition. Czech students dominate in both categories.
Designblok awarded the winners of the international Diploma Selection competition, held this year for the sixth time in cooperation with the EUNIC Cluster Czech Republic. The international jury of foreign curators and gallery owners was selecting from fifteen final works in the categories Product Design and Fashion Design. For the first time in the competition’s history, students from the Prague Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design excelled in both categories. The winner of the fashion section is Barbora Procházková with her project entitled Sapience, while the winner of the product section is Matěj Coufal with his diploma Meter. The awarded authors received €1,000 to develop their new collections and the opportunity to present them at the next year’s Designblok.
“The SAPIENCE project is an artistic alternative to creating one’s own clothes. By my blueprint cuts and instructions, I deliberately offer the production know-how of my designs to as wide public as possible, thus addressing the DIY community as well as the ecologically-oriented millennial generation. This is my original way of coping with the issues of sustainability, ecology and the market-suppressed consumers’ individuality; instead, I encourage people to express their subjective creativity and their natural tendency to handiwork. However, the essence of my work is the financially innumerable emotional value based on the relation between users and products,”the author of the collection, Barbora Procházková from the Prague Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design, explained. The second place belongs to Joline Kwakenbos from the Netherlandish ArtEZ University of Arts in Arnhem and the third place to Otilia Vieru from the Royal Academy of Arts, the Netherlands, who presented an extravagant collection of recycled materials.
The best project in the Product Design category selected by the jury is the diploma Meter by Matěj Coufal, also from the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague. “My diploma entitled Meter consists of two mutually balanced layers: researching meter as an instrument, a tool, and its theoretical overlap into other fields and its connection with a designer as a creator. The project also aims at equalizing research, conceptual thinking and practice of a designer in order to harmonize the importance of every part of academic disciplines. Sometimes we have to doubt ordinary things to find new ways of designing instead of merely shaping and presenting yet another shiny product,”the author described. The second place in the category belongs to Zhyldyz Kozhoiarova from Poland and the third place to Vítek Škop, again from the Prague Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design.
To download photographs, please visit https://1drv.ms/u/s!Ao2GOD9C7SZjgbUBaE9oqycDJc2Sjw?e=e7sGYW
The Diploma Selection 2019 jury:
Product Design: Juliet Kinchin, design curator, MoMA, New York (US), Lina Kanafani, curator, gallery owner, MINT shop, London (GB), Rossana Orlandi, gallery owner, Spazio Rossana Orlandi, Milan (IT), Tulga Beyerle, director, Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg (D), Agnieszka Jacobson, art director, School of Form, Poznań (PL), François Leblanc, gallery owner, Gallery S. Bensimon, Paris (F), Gilles Massé, Wallpaper Store, Milan (IT), Adam Štěch, curator and design theoretician, Okolo (CZ), Nora Fehlbaum, CEO, Vitra (CH), Giulio Cappellini, art director, Cappellini (IT), Gerti Draxler, design specialist, Dorotheum (A), Stephan Hamel, design consultant (IT)
Fashion Design:Noémie Schwaller, fashion editor (UK), Andrea Běhounková, Editor-in-Chief, Vogue CS (CZ), Danica Kovářová, curator (CZ), Veronika Ruppert, journalist, editor, Modeschau, Radio Wave (CZ), Jan Králíček, journalist, fashion consultant, Vogue CS (CZ), Petr Matějček, fashion editor (CZ), Aneta Šaferová, Editor-in-Chief, Proč ne?! (CZ)
