NTUST set a record of having 20 Red Dot Award winners from a single school
2011-11-19
The grand finale of the "red dot award: design concept 2011" is out. NTUST is the biggest winner that won 20 red dot awards, among them two are the Best of the Best Award. (Photo by Chen Yi-Jing)
Among the 20 winners from NTUST, Chiu Shih-Chan's Peanut Sofa is very inspiring fun design, which is made with two sheets of plain polypropylene – a recyclable and low-cost material, a practice copying the concept from the art of paper folding (origami) to turn a two-dimension design paper into a three-dimension, real chair. (Photo by Chen Yi-Jing)
In conventional thinking, chairs for kids are only good for sitting small children and closets are supposed to be big and clumsy. Students and faculty members of NTUST's Design Department are trained to look into even small details in life. Their resourcefulness explains why they have great design ideas that are often realized into products to better people's living standards. This year, their design products help set a record of winning 20 Red Dot design awards by a single school.
Young designers from Taiwan have brought home from Red Dot Award: Design Concept 2011 59 awards and NTUST, which was ranked No. 1 among universities in the world by iF Design, accounts for a little over one third of the total awards by taking home 20 winners. Everybody on the campus is happy to hear the good news. President Chen Shi-Shuenn and Dr. Regina Wang, Head of the Design Department, are delighted to see such an impressive performance. Dr. Wang said that NTUST's design force has already left an imprint on the world of design and we plan to send a team to the awarding ceremony to secure our visibility.
Among the twenty Red Dot Award winners, two were also awarded Best of the Best award. Fruit Crayon, designed by Feng Cheng-Tsung and Yin Tzu-Chi, is a drawing set for children which, with crayons shaped and colored like various fruits, engages the imagination in ways that ordinary crayons do not. Little Explorer, done by Chen Liao-Hsun, Chen Wei-Ting, Tsai Hui-Jou, Dai Siao-Ying, and Chen Jia-Wen, is an outdoor toy that borrows the familiar form of the fishing rod to engage children in the discovery and observation of marine life in its natural environment. Both winners of the Best of the Best award are excellent design works for education purposes.
(Fruit Crayon by Feng Cheng-Tsung and Yin Tzu-Chi)
(Little Explorer by Chen Liao-Hsun, Chen Wei-Ting, Tsai Hui-Jou, Dai Siao-Ying, and Chen Jia-Wen)
This year's Red Dot design concept also witnessed several rising stars from NTUST. Feng Cheng-Tsung, second year graduate student, and Poh Liang-Hock, who just graduated this year, are both winners of three items. Su Pin Chia, Chiu Shih-Chan, Cheng Yu-Ting, and Chen Yan-Ting all won two rewards. Chiu Shih-Chan's Peanut Sofa has attracted a lot of attention. He demonstrated that assembling sofas can be like putting together paper models. With two pieces of PP cardboard, an oval sofa is readily put in place for your cozy sitting.
Chen Yan-Ting and Chen Yung-Hsun noticed that almost all baby dinner chairs are exclusively for kids and they are not space-saving for storage. They then decided to design an adjustable chair for babies of a few months old while unfolding and it becomes a tall chair for either an adult or a kid while it is folded. In another design named Clothing Frame, Wang Yue-Chi and Wang Yu-Jung created a new style of wardrobe that puts one's clothing on display.
A new course of design marketing in NTUST's design curriculum
Vice President Perng Yeng-Horng, concurrently Dean of the Design College, said jokingly that we have a new problem of how to commercialize our design works now that we have so many design award winners. As a matter of fact, the College of Design is going to offer new courses of design marketing and design agency. Since not every one of our students can be winners of international design competition, we hope everyone can contribute in the world of design.