STOCKHOLM, Sweden—LELO officials have announced the winners of their UnDesign Awards, a global design contest that challenged designers to tear off the shackles of convention and rethink the meaning of “good design” in the context of encouraging genuine connections between people.
Aline Darc Piculo dos Santos won the Fashion & Accessories category for Toque, lingerie that lights up when touched by someone other than the wearer; Ana D’Apuzzo won the Graphic, Illustration & Painting with “Helios”, a painting depicts “something that is above war and crimes and bad people; nature”; and Floriane Aubrit, Dan Baczynski, Paul Bouisset and Corentin Fabry won the Technology, Products & Spaces category with The City Lung, a “living” object that represents the air pollution index of different cities around the world. The better the air quality, the easier the objects “breathes,” and vice versa.
Each winning entry received a $1,000 prize and their designs will be featured on the LELO.com website for a full year.
LELO officials noted the UnDesign Award forced designers to go back to their roots and undesign those aspects of life that are driving wedges between people on a daily basis.
In essence, the contest was a creative challenge to deconstruct design to reconstruct connections. The issue could not be more pressing since, in the U.S. alone:
· People spend an average of 11.5 hours per day in front of a screen
· 79 percent of smartphone users have their phone on or near them for all but two hours of their waking day
· 38 percent of people under 35 admitted to checking their phone immediately after sex
LELO’s UnDesign Award is not only radical for seeking to replace virtual connections with the real thing; it’s also the first-ever global design award that decided the winner via public vote. It represents a democratic approach to design that’s perfectly in keeping with the competition’s values: opening the awards up to the public itself encourages connections between designers, their designs, and their consumers.
For more information, visit LELO.com/award.
