The 11th LEXUS DESIGN AWARD came to a grand conclusion with the 4 Winning Designs being showcased at Milan Design Week. All winners wonderfully captured Lexus’ brand ethos of “Design for a Better Tomorrow”, with the Fog-X by Pavels Hedström also winning the ‘Your Choice Award’. The LEXUS DESIGN AWARD was envisioned to be a platform that helps the next generation of creatives to realize their ideas for a better future. Through a combination of industry mentorship and providing award grants to build prototypes, the LEXUS DESIGN AWARD helps transform nascent ideas and concepts into tangible solutions. These tangible prototypes were exhibited to the public between April 18th and 23rd at Milan Design Week.
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LEXUS DESIGN AWARD 2023 Winners Exhibition – Milan Design Week
Print Clay Humidifier by Jiaming Liu
Designed to highlight terracotta’s ability to disperse moisture into the atmosphere, the Print Clay Humidifier is a clever, non-electric product that easily humidifies while also uplifting spaces with its elegant design. Designer Jiaming Liu also experimented with using ‘recycled ceramic waste’ as a material choice to realize the humidifier’s design. “Having so many visitors, I was a little bit nervous in the beginning, but in the end, I could enjoy meeting and talking to visitors to show my idea,” Jiaming said. “I would like to have my own design studio and bring this project into the market in the future. I also have a lot of ideas that I would like to develop… so I will follow my passion and explore my creativity to build a Better Tomorrow through design.”
Touch the Valley by Temporary Office
Touch the Valley is a 3D puzzle designed for people with visual impairments. The puzzle consists of topographic pieces that can be assembled by matching adjacent contouring pieces. By piecing together the puzzle, individuals can gain a better understanding of the physical world through touch. The tactile experience encourages sensory perception and provides a unique opportunity for individuals to explore and interact with their environment. “Everything of this LEXUS DESIGN AWARD journey was challenging but also super rewarding for us. Having a timeframe pushes us out from our comfort zone. Hearing mentors’ feedback helps us a lot to keep sharpening our focus and clarify our priorities,” said the design duo Temporary Office. “As a next step for the project Touch the Valley, we would like to try a different type of landscape like Mt.Fuji, Monument Valley, or different national parks in the US…. We would like to see this puzzle in every home in the future since this is such an accessible product.”
Zero Bag by Kyeongho Park & Yejin Heo
The Zero Bag is a sustainable alternative to traditional plastic packaging for clothing and food items. It is made from water-soluble alginate plastic and features a paper detergent inner lining. The bag can be washed along with its contents, and the detergent helps to clean the items before use. Once washed, the bag disintegrates in water, reducing waste and environmental impact. “We were so happy and excited to be here and to showcase our project at Milan Design Week. This is my first time participating in such a global exhibition and it’s like a dream,” designers Kyeongho and Yejin mentioned. “Having received many questions from visitors, now we know which aspects of this project interest visitors and we feel that our explanations are getting better. We would like to keep developing this Zero Bag project and look for a potential partner such as a chemical company so that we can explore materials.”
Fog-X by Pavels Hedström
The Fog-X is a jacket that’s designed to help provide drinking water in arid environments by collecting atmospheric moisture or catching fog. The jacket comes with a “sail-like expandable antenna which captures fog droplets” and leads them into a water container that people can drink out of. To make the Fog-X more effective, it’s supplemented by a smartphone app that guides the user to optimal locations for harvesting fog. “I was super excited to showcase my project at Milan Design Week, meeting many people, receiving feedback. I feel like that they started to consider the issues that I addressed through the project which was exactly what I had intended,” Pavels mentioned. “The project Fog-X involves many different fields from architecture, fashion, materials and technologies… everything into one project, which means I can still explore a lot of possibilities and I feel that a lot of new doors opened in front of myself now.”
Declared the unanimous winner from the LEXUS DESIGN AWARD’s roster of four leading projects, the Fog-X by Pavels Hedström was awarded the coveted ‘Your Choice Award’. Introduced this year, the ‘Your Choice Award’ allowed people from across the world to vote for their favorite project that best represented the award program’s ethos of ‘Design for a Better Tomorrow’. “I’m very privileged to be chosen as this year’s Your Choice Award. It has been a fantastic journey. I couldn’t imagine a more honorable way of ending this journey and continuing the next one.” said Pavels. The Your Choice Award Winner, along with the three other winning designs were displayed for the thousands of attendees at Milan Design Week, giving them the perfect stepping stone into the creative industry, and their ideas the large platform it deserves!
