The finalists in this year’s annual Rimowa Design Prize are definitely out to save the world. The seven prize-winning designer teams, chosen from different design schools all around Germany, wanted to comfort lonely old people, help the hearing-impaired speak, save the planet, make a mobile home for bees and, in one more whimsical case, have environmentally friendly furniture fly.
The design competition was initiated by Cologne-based luxury luggage brand Rimowa in 2023 and aims to recognize the best young designers in Germany. There’s a prize pool of 55,000 euros and in the same way that Rimowa’s parent company, LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, has run an annual fashion design competition, the German design contest is supposed to highlight new talent and inspire as well as raise the luggage brand’s profile.
The theme for the competition has been “mobility” every year since 2023 but as one of the prize-giving’s hosts pointed out, “It’s also about designing for a better future.”
The contest has been getting bigger every year, Rimowa’s chief marketing officer Mathieu Plenier told between 300 and 400 guests attending the prize-giving at Berlin’s minimalist Kulturforum building on Monday evening.
Shelves from student Valerio Sampognaro’s Aerodomestics project can also be flown like kites.
In 2023, only 15 schools sent in entries, he said. This year, there were 40.
Besides camera crews, design students in carefully chosen outfits, and guests flown in from around the world by Rimowa, the audience also featured a who’s who of German design stars, including the seven locals who had mentored the students.
Each of the mentors had chosen one project out of all the entries to support over several months, before the students presented the final prototypes to the public and the judges.
Mentors included product designer Konstantin Grcic; Stefan Daniel, vice president of photo and design at Leica, and Farah Ebrahimi, art director at Frankfurt-based furniture studio e15, previously design director at BCBG Max Azria and DKNY in New York.
Also making an appearance in Berlin was Beatrice Monguidi, who will take on Rimowa’s chief executive officer role from June 1.
“It’s very exciting to take my first footsteps into the brand in this very meaningful and inspiring context,” she said onstage. “It also even made me a little emotional. You reminded me of when I was a student here in Germany.”
Monguidi said she had been impressed by all the diverse, impactful, socially conscious and “ingenious” design projects.
Pip is meant to be an easy-to-use companion for lonely seniors and gently prompts users to go for walks or socialize through subtle chirping sounds.
The winner was the Nura project designed by Samuel Nagel and Paul Feiler of the Hochschule für Gestaltung Schwäbisch Gmünd. They had come up with a bracelet that translates sign language into spoken language, by measuring muscle activity in the forearms of the person doing the signing. As first-prize winners, the pair will receive 20,000 euros. They were mentored by Tim Richter, head of industrial design at German industrial giant Siemens’s health branch Healthineers.
“It’s been insane and amazing,” Feiler said onstage, beaming.
The second prize of 10,000 euros went to Niklas Henning from the Hochschule Magdeburg-Stendal, for his peat harvester. The Paludi harvester “enables sustainable reed farming while protecting delicate ecosystems.”
And although the student who put together the Aerodomestics project didn’t win the biggest prize — Valerio Sampognaro will get 5,000 euros along with all the other finalists — he did get the biggest “oohs” and even laughs of the night when his introductory video showed him flying his good-looking, minimalist and lightweight shelving like a kite.
