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Make Me A Designer – Lodz Design Festival

The Make Me! Competition has been a part the Lodz Design Festival since its second year and is now a key part of the festival – and a major international competition for young designers. New designers, makers, students, and graduates from art and design backgrounds are invited to submit their work. This year, 21 projects were selected from the 247 applications; and one winner was chosen to receive the overall prize of PLN 20,000 (approximately 6,000 USD).

11.06.14 | By
Make Me A Designer – Lodz Design Festival

The Swallowtail Mirror by Australian designer Bernard Benny.

Make Me Competition

Dress me up by Warsaw’s Academy of Fine Arts (Faculty of Design) graduate Magda Pawlas, is an armchair with a sleeveless jacket that can either be worn by the user or slipped over the chair to provide cushioning.

Make Me Competition

One of the most ingenious projects to be shortlisted was Grip Chłodzący (Cooling Grip) by Justyna Strociak and Magda Gąsiorowska. Inspired by natural ventilation often used in architecture, the 3D printed bicycle handbar directs the flow of air caused by the movement of the bike into the cyclist’s hands to keep them cool. Magda Gąsiorowska and Justyna Strociak are in their fourth year of Industrial Design at the School of Form in Poznań.

Make Me Competition

The Kawara Chair by Tsuyoshi Hayashi is designed to salvage industrially rejected Japanese roof top tiles that would otherwise have been discarded. The tile simply slots into the wooden frame without the need for glue or nails.

Make Me Competition

Jan Godlewski’s Patyczaki (Stick Insects) uses 25×25 mm ash wood slats and fastening elements made of duralumin PA6 to create a modular system of furniture that users can design and make at home. The table, bookshelf, and lamp are just three examples of the potentially infinite possibilities.

Make Me Competition

zestawyZestaw (setSet) by Joanna Jurga, Dominika Wysogląd, and Martyna Ochojska is a collection of edible tableware, which after a meal, can be eaten, fed to the birds, or thrown away to decompose with the food waste.

Make Me Competition

Alicja Patanowska collects glassware discarded on the streets of London in the early hours of the morning, and hand-throws bespoke ceramic forms to give each one a new function as a plant pot or vase, hence the name of the project: Plantacja (Plantation).

Make Me Competition

Tapei-born Fabricia Chang studied at Design Academy Eindhoven in the Netherlands. Flexible Order is an attempt to give people the tools to break out of the aesthetic conformity she noticed there and express their own personal aesthetic preferences, albeit within uniform and ordered parameters.

Make Me Competition

Latko & Fragstein (Michał Latko, Łukasz Fragstein) have designed A1, the first model from a collection of products that are designed to make use of vanishing crafts typical of the Silesia region – an area of Central Europe now mostly in Poland, with parts in the Czech Republic and Germany.

Make Me Competition

Dziupla by Polish practice Menthol Architects (Liliana Krzycka, Rafał Pieszko) is a nesting box for sparrows, nuthatches, flycatchers, redstarts, and woodpeckers, designed to be installed on walls and trees in urban environments.

Make Me Competition

And last, but by no means least, the winner of the 2014 Make Me Competition was Studio Blond & Bieber (Essi Johanna Glomb & Rasa Weber) with Algaemy. Algaemy is an analogue textile-printer which produces its own pigment made from algae. The resulting textiles changes color over time when exposed to sunlight.

Katie Treggiden is a purpose-driven journalist, author and, podcaster championing a circular approach to design – because Planet Earth needs better stories. She is also the founder and director of Making Design Circular, a program and membership community for designer-makers who want to join the circular economy. With 20 years' experience in the creative industries, she regularly contributes to publications such as The Guardian, Crafts Magazine and Monocle24 – as well as being Editor at Large for Design Milk. She is currently exploring the question ‘can craft save the world?’ through an emerging body of work that includes her fifth book, Wasted: When Trash Becomes Treasure (Ludion, 2020), and a podcast, Circular with Katie Treggiden.