Rafał Kowalczyk (ASP Łódź), urban bicycle, Awarded by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage, photo of the Gallery of the ASP in Katowice
The ASP Rector’s Awards of the Academy of Fine Arts go to the best design projects of the past academic year. Over two dozen young designers from Gdańsk, Katowice, Kraków, Łódź, Poznań, Warsaw and Wrocław competed for seven prizes.
Joanna Michałek from the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków won first prize, along with 17,500 złoty (over 4,000 euro). Her project is a system of visual identification meant for firms in the wood industry.
Other winners include Rafał Kowalczyk (Łódź ASP) for his prototype of urban bicycle, Kamila Mróz (Wrocław ASP) for her modular jewelry and Joanna Sichel (Gdańsk ASP) for her walking frame for the disabled. Prizes also went to Marcin Kasprzak (Katowice ASP) for his information retrieval tool for the dyslexic, Wiktoria Lenart (Wrocław ASP) for Worknest, a workstation for open studios, and Martyna Bargiel (Katowice ASP) for her Corruption Scandals, an infographic series featuring the biggest corruption scandals in Poland over the last two decades.
"This year's competition shows the diversity of education in the field of design in Poland’s public universities", said Adrian Chorębała, manager of Rondo Sztuki in Katowice. "It also reminds us that every thing that surrounds us has its author".
The competition also included applications for mobile phones, lamps powered by alternative energy sources, costumes meant as artistic installations, comic books, fashion photo shoots, fonts, armchairs and eco-bags. "Our assessment took into account, among other things, the coherence of concepts, their functionality and quality, as well as realization of the design", adds Chorębała.
Organized by the Katowice Academy of Fine Arts, the design concourse was held for the fourth time. The main goal of the project was to provide young designers with early career opportunities. In 2012 the main prize was won by Waldemar Węgrzyn of the Katowice ASP, which created a prototype of electronic book connected to a computer.
All 28 participants will be on display until the end of Augustat Rondo Sztuki in the Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice.
Source: PAP, asp.katowice.pl, ed. JN, 25/07/2013
Translation: LB, 26/07/2013