This 12 months’s high award within the Rimowa Design Prize, with a prize pool price a complete of 55,000 euros, went to the coed design challenge, “hottie.” The creation helps resolve interval ache by way of a mix {of electrical} nerve stimulation and warmth remedy, all in a wearable gadget you placed on below your garments.
The creatives accountable, German design college students Marc Hackländer and Elisabeth Lorenz, have been feted in Berlin on Tuesday night, as native design followers gathered within the glass-roofed atrium of the Gropius Bau, certainly one of Berlin’s finest identified historic buildings.
Winners of the 2025 Rimowa Design Prize, college students Marc Hackländer and Elisabeth Lorenz
It makes a variety of sense to host the prize right here, Jenny Schlenzka, director of the Gropius Bau, informed the well-heeled, principally black-clad, cocktail-sipping viewers. The grand exhibition area and cultural heart was first in-built 1881 as a museum to have fun the utilized arts, she defined.
The Rimowa Design prize, in its third iteration this 12 months, does a lot the identical. The ceremony this week was the end result of a course of that took round 5 months. Entries have been acquired from 39 universities and design colleges across the nation, then have been finally whittled down to simply seven finalists by a particular jury of native designers.
The jury included Moritz Krueger, artistic director of boutique eyewear model Mykita; Mahret Ifeoma Kupka, senior curator on the Museum of Utilized Artwork in Frankfurt on Primary, and architect Niklas Bildstein Zaar, amongst others. Rimowa chief government officer Hugues Bonnet-Masimbert and Rimowa chairman Alexandre Arnault are honorary jury members.
The seven finalists then acquired mentoring from jury members on the best way to advance their concepts.
“This [the Rimowa prize] is a testomony to the significance of German design,” Bonnet-Masimbert informed the viewers. And, he added, “that is extra than simply an award, it’s a celebration of how design can elevate the world round us.”
The third version has drawn much more entries and “the prize is making a major contribution to the design neighborhood,” Bonnet-Masimbert informed WWD.
The Tonbo challenge featured a lighter, extra aesthetically pleasing trolley that may carry as much as 100 kilograms.
The theme for the prize was, as all the time, mobility. The designers interpreted that in all kinds of how, some sometimes shocking. Initiatives included a light-weight aluminum and carbon fiber trolley, a wearable gadget to assist folks struggling dementia get residence safely (amongst other forms of help), an air purity measuring gadget you can put on like a necklace, a modular system of benches for city areas and a intelligent, modern model of the normal crutch.
The particular point out award, price 10,000 euros, went to the latter, designed by college students Tom Kemter and Niels Cremer. All the opposite finalists bought 5,000 euros. However it was the “hottie” designers who walked away with 20,000 euros.
“We’re just a bit overwhelmed,” Hackländer stated, onstage after the announcement was made.
“It was a one-of-a-kind expertise,” Lorenz added.
“They have been very clear on what the issue was they wished to resolve and had a transparent perspective on the way it might go ahead,” defined the pair’s mentor Nic Galway on what made “hottie” stand out. Galway is senior vice chairman, artistic course at German sportswear model Adidas.
It was additionally an inspiring course of for us, Galway admitted. The younger designers have been invited to go to Adidas’s personal studios and did so a number of occasions. “We bought quite a bit out of it too,” Galway informed WWD. “It was refreshing.”
The Standalone crutch was given the particular point out prize, price 10,000 euros.
