Porada International Design Award 2013

1° PRIZE PROFESSIONALS (€ 3.000): “LOPE, Extendable Dining Table” of Regina Antonopoulou and Stylianos Axiotakis
1° PRIZE STUDENTS(€ 2.000): “ICS. Convertible side table” of Mattia Fossati.

Total prizes: € 10.000
Information and Regulations at: www.porada.it

Find out more about the winners here

The jury of the PORADA INTERNATIONAL DESIGN AWARD 2013 has just announced the winners of this competition: an event sponsored by Porada Arredi srl, a leading company in the furnishings and fittings sector, and POLI.design, with the additional support of the Association of Industrial Design (ADI). The announcement took place at Palazzo Natta, administrative centre of the Como Campus of Milan Polytechnic.

There were six winners in all, 3 in the Professional category and 3 in the student category, who were judged to have entered fully into the spirit of the competition. They presented six original and inventive projects involving various types of wooden table, all in line with the distinctive values of a prestigious Italian design brand such as Porada.  The total prize money of €10,000 will therefore be divided between these six winners.

For the PROFESSIONALS category:
1° prize: Regina Antonopoulou, Stylianos Axiotakis, “LOPE, Extendable Dining Table”, total prize: € 3.000
2° prize:  Luigi Tagliabue, Manuela Emanuelli, “voLovia”, total prize € 2.000
3° prize: Jacopo M. Giagnoni, “Bow”, total prize € 1.000

For the STUDENTS category:
1° prize: Mattia Fossati, “Ics. Convertible side table”, total prize € 2.000
2° prize: Bence Kovàcsik, total prize € 1.200
3° prize: Jie Gao, Guangkai Chen, Yingying He, “Floding wood”, total prize € 800

The six high quality designs stood out from among the 379 projects presented to the judging panel: 284 in the Professional category, and 95 in the Student category. There were many submissions from Italy, but the response at international level was also very positive: Iran, Israel, Greece, Brazil, Mexico, Peru, India and Japan were just some of the countries involved.

The winning design in the Professional category was called “Lope”: an extendable dining-table constituted partly of solid ash and partly of matt-effect white aluminium. The latter element adds a very contemporary touch, elegantly enclosing the wooden section of the table. The intention of the two Greek designers, Regina Antonopoulou and Stylianos Axiotakis, was to express our relationship with nature, an aim reflected in the form of the table-legs, inspired by those of an antelope.

The Student category, on the other hand, produced an Italian winner: Mattia Fossati took the first prize in this category with “Ics, Convertible side table”: a versatile side table, designed to be adaptable to a range of uses.
Mounted on a rotatable solid walnut base, the Ics can be transformed into a breakfast tray, a coffee-table or a bedside table. The table-top/tray is fitted with small magnets, and so can be easily removed during the rotation process and then reconnected. The attachment between the base and the top is asymmetrically positioned, enabling the table to be brought up close to a bed/sofa/armchair when needed, and allowing sufficient space for the legs when used as a tray-table in bed.

The jury was composed of important experts from the sector, including: Arturo Dell’Acqua Bellavitis (Principal of the School of Design – Milan Polytechnic), Luisa Bocchietto (President of the Association of Industrial Design – ADI), Roberto de Paolis (Lecturer in Design – Milan Polytechnic), the Matteo Thun Studio, Jon Case (Senior Associate of the South African Studio, Antoni) and Benjamin Kempton (Interior Director of the magazine “Wallpaper”). The members of the panel declared that they were particularly satisfied with the success of this second edition, both in terms of the number of participants, and of the high quality of the projects submitted.