Competition Overview

Previous Competitions

Previous Competitions:

• 2009: Tabletop Luminaire
  

  First Place Winner: Jordan Cammarata
  “Pull” Lamp
  Philadelphia University
  Industrial Design
  Professors: Mark Havens and Jason Lempieri
  A contemporary interpretation of Harvey Hubbell’s pull chain socket, patented in 1896.

  About the 2009 Competition: Collab held its Seventeenth Annual Student Design Competition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art on Monday, November 16, 2009. This year’s competition was held in conjunction with the Museum’s exhibition Marcel Wanders: Daydreams celebrating the innovative design work of the Dutch designer, the recipient of Collab’s 2009 Design Excellence Award.

  2009 Judges: Dennis Askins, Russell Blanchard, Lisa Foley, Jamer Hunt, David Raizman, Gina Reimann

• 2008: Processing Frank Gehry
  
  First Place Winner: Jesse Gerard
  The University of the Arts
  Industrial Design
  Professor: Dan Michalik
  

  The layered plywood technique widely associated with Frank Gehry is adapted to design and produce the Lewis Bench.

   

  About the 2008 Competition: Collab held its Sixteenth Annual Student Design Competition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art on Monday, November 3, 2008, in conjunction with the Museum’s exhibition, Frank O. Gehry: Design Process and the Lewis House, devoted to the architecture and design of Frank Gehry, Collab’s 2008 Design Excellence Award recipient. Students were asked to consider the way Frank Gehry experiments with forms and materials as part of his creative process.

  2008 Judges: Lewis Wexler, Anthony Bracali, Jack Larimore, Stephan Copeland, and Linda O’Keeffe

• 2007: Mapping Modernism
  
  First Place Winner: Yesenia Perez-Cruz
  A. Westphal College of Media Arts and Design, Drexel University, Graphic Design
  Professor Jody Graff

  The Development of Modern Seats

  No other household object is as emblematic of Modernist ideals as the chair. The chair can be mass-produced, sold globally, and is a subject of experimentation with technology and materials. These qualities are exhibited in a vast, white showroom, faithful to the Modernist ideology that an interior space should be "open and free-flowing." Upon entering the exhibit, the viewer was met with a large-scale banner showing line illustrations of chairs. The chairs were not arranged chronologically, but are grouped by similarity of line, demonstrating that development of chairs is about refinement and reinvention of pre-existing forms. The similarities existing between chairs created decades apart demonstrates the immense influence of Modernist techniques and ideals.

  About the 2007 Competition: Collab’s Fifteenth Annual Student Competition, Mapping Modernism, was held in conjunction with the celebration of Collab's new gallery in the Ruth and Raymond G. Perelman Building and its opening exhibition, Designing Modern: 1920 to the Present. This year, students were asked to consider the scope of the Modern Design dialogue.

  The competition challenged students to design a "Map" that links associations between people, things, or events within the context of the revolutionary ideas and trends in art, architecture, and design that developed in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The map should communicate the student’s interpretation of the forces that flowed into, through and around modern design, giving shape to its origins and output.

  2007 Judges: Conny Purtill, Erin Mulchay, Dana Micucci, Julie Hirschfeld, and Jason Alger

• 2006: The Intelligent Ornament

  

  First Place Winner: Miho Wakabayashi
  Pratt Institute, Industrial Design
  Professor Katrin Mueller
  

  Miho's project examines ornament in the tabletop context and celebrates Jensen's aesthetic through organic motif and structural pattern making. The bowl's hidden intelligence is the application of a unique electrostatic coating on the interior. This silvery heat-retaining material allows the bread to be kept warm long after the basket is moved from the oven to the table.

  About the 2006 Competition: Collab's Fourteenth Annual Student Design Competition, The Intelligent Ornament, was part of a week-long series of events celebrating Collab's 2006 Design Excellence Award recipient, Georg Jensen and Georg Jensen, Inc. It posed the question: If Jensen were alive today, what objects might he be moved to create?

  The competition challenged students to design a physical model and supporting presentation board for their “Intelligent Ornament.” A distinguished panel of judges used both in measuring the overall success of each entry.

  2006 Judges: Clive Roux, Virgil Marti, Barbara Flanagan, Monique Faber, Maria Eife

• 2005: Variance and The Vase

  First Place Winner: Brett Duncan
  University of The Arts, Industrial Design
  Professor Rama Korposh

  Brett Duncan's Ice Bloom consisted of flowers frozen in a sphere of ice which blossom and expand as the ice around them melts. Also embedded in the ice sculpture are glass beads which become apparent as the ice melts and they drop sporadically onto the surface the vase melts on. The gentle, occasional sound produced by the dropping beads reminds us of the fleeting quality of the vase. Here, variance is produced in a temporal event which one of our judges likened to a performance.

  About the 2005 Competition: The 2005 competition brief reflected the richness of Collab Design Excellence Award recipient Gaetano Pesce’s contribution to design through his unique approach. By combining elements of art, design, philosophy, and technology, Mr. Pesce has encouraged the wondrous and accidental, embracing imperfections as traits which enhance and humanize his work. Applying this philosophy to design for production has been referred to as “variance.”

  Students interpreted this concept in their development of a full-scale functional prototype of a flower vase. Winning designs demonstrated variance in both philosophy and in manufacturing strategy.

  2005 Judges: Laetitia Wolff, Senior Design Editor, SURFACE Magazine; Lyn Godley, Designer; Adam Kamens, CEO, Amuneal Metal Forms Inc.; Mark Gisi, Director of Sales and Marketing, Amuneal Metal Forms Inc.; Drew Hamilton, Owner, Dane Décor Downtown.
• 2004: Furniture Classics for The Future

Tie for First Place Winner: Adam Johnson
Philadelphia University, Industrial Design
Professor Todd Corlett

Adam Johnson said of his redesign for the Bertoia Chair, "This lounge chair rises up out of the ground to suspend the human body in a minimalist redesign of a classic piece." Judges called this chair a "show-stopper" and a beautiful sculpture which allowed the viewer to fall into the visual comfort of the form.



Tie for First Place Winner: Stephen Cooke
University of The Arts, Industrial Design
Professors Patty Beirne and Rama Korposh

Stephen Cook said of his "Leaf Chair" that it "combines the discipline of the grid structure with the organic clustering of material at its midsection, coupling design with sculpture." The judges found it to be an interesting juxtaposition to the Bertoia Chair's sense of order with a random and casual sensibility. One of the judges compared the gesture of the seat to that of a wedding dress with a train cascading in its wake.



About the 2004 Competition: The 2004 Collab Design Excellence Award recipient was Florence Knoll-Bassett. This year’s theme reflected the rich history of Knoll International’s contribution to the language of design through it’s iconographic furniture. Collab provided several classic designs from the Knoll Studio line from which students chose as points of departure for their design explorations. Through research into material and technological innovations, students redesigned their chosen object for the future.

2004 Judges: Claudia Gould, Director, the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania; George H. Marcus, Assistant Professor, History of Art, the University of Pennsylvania; Jeff Miller, Founder and Principal, Jeff Miller Inc., and VP of Design, ECCO Design Inc., New York; Bill Shea, Founding Partner, Shea+Latone, Inc.; Stephan Copeland, Founder, the Copeland Studio.

• 2003: Main Exterior Signage for The Philadelphia Museum of Art’s new Perelman Building acquisition
• 2002: Paper Lighting
• 2001: Designing The Design Excellence Award
• 2000: CD Box Set Packaging
• 1999: Clock for The New Milennium
• 1998: Shopping Bag for the Terrence Conran Home Furnishing Collection
• 1997: Ice Bucket for Starck/Schrager Mondrian Hotel
• 1996: Chair or Seating Unit for the Richard Meier Museum in Ulm, Germany
• 1995: Tea Kettle
• 1994: Lighting Fixture with Japanese Influence
• 1993: Dinnerware Place Setting