About the year 2014

About the year 2014

'Swiss Design Awards' exhibition

Swiss Design Awards 2014 in Basle during DesignMiami/Basel and Art Basel

The Swiss De­sign Awards 2014 ex­hi­bi­tion pre­sents the 49 works by the de­sign­ers who reached the sec­ond round of the Swiss De­sign Com­pe­ti­tion. It is an ideal op­por­tu­nity to find out more about con­tem­po­rary de­sign and fea­tures works by young and es­tab­lished de­sign­ers from a num­ber of areas: prod­ucts and ob­jects, fash­ion and tex­tile de­sign, graphic de­sign, pho­tog­ra­phy, scenog­ra­phy and in­ter­me­di­a­tion. Some of the works are com­mis­sions while oth­ers are the de­sign­ers' own pro­jects. To­gether, they pro­vide an in­sight into the cur­rent ac­tiv­i­ties of the Swiss de­sign in­dus­try.

The ex­hi­bi­tion it­self has been de­signed by Holzer Kobler Ar­chitek­turen, who de­vel­oped the over­all con­cept jointly with the Fed­eral Of­fice of Cul­ture (FOC).

Competition

Or­gan­ised an­nu­ally by the FOC since 1918, Switzer­land's lead­ing na­tional de­sign com­pe­ti­tion aims to cre­ate plat­forms that help the com­pe­ti­tion win­ners ad­vance in their ca­reers and pre­sent their work to a wider au­di­ence.

Of the 252 dossiers sub­mit­ted by a total of 303 in­di­vid­u­als, the FOC sin­gled out 20 po­si­tions (29 de­sign­ers) from the fields of graphic de­sign (9), fash­ion de­sign (4), pho­tog­ra­phy (3), prod­ucts and ob­jects (4). Win­ners can choose be­tween prize money of CHF 25,000, a six-month in­tern­ship or free stu­dio res­i­dences in New York.

This year was the third since the age limit of 40 was lifted. A glance at the list of win­ners re­veals that around a fifth were over 40, and this pro­por­tion is also re­flected in the ap­pli­ca­tions.

Jury

Chair
Patrick Reymond
architect, designer, Atelier Oï, La Neuveville

Members
Laurent Benner
visual designer, London and Zurich

Lionel Bovier
Editor, JRP/Ringier Kunstverlag, Paris and Zurich

Christoph Hefti
Textildesigner, Brussels

Annemarie Hürlimann
Exhibition curator, Zurich and Berlin

Renate Menzi
Design collection curator, Museum of Design Zurich

Heidi Wegener
Organisation consultant, Meilen

Experts
Maurice Scheltens
Photographer, Amsterdam

Catherine Ince
Curatrice Barbican Art Gallery, London

David Rust
Gavillet & Rust, visual designer, Lausanne