Winners Announced in 2009 OCAD Design Competition

http://www.ocad.ca/students/articles_campus_life/20090206_design_competition_winners.htm

Each year, OCAD offers students from all design disciplines a unique opportunity to form teams and work together — over the course of four short days — to find solutions to world problems. The competition, which adopts a new theme annually and which also encourages the participation of Faculty of Art students and outside jurors, took place between January 22 and 26, 2009. Winning entries were announced on January 29th.

Winners of the 2009 Design Competition at OCAD.The top prize for this year’s challenge went to a team of third- and fourth-year students in the Industrial Design and Environmental Design programs. Cindy Cheng Han Jung, Jacky Wu, Kathy Tien, Shawn Hsiao Ju Chien, and Arash Sadr were each awarded $400 for their proposal “Green Mile.”

Titled Re-Think, Re-Imagine, Re-Design: Rethinking Models of Consumption, the competition asked students to focus on food and household products, as these essential consumables are arguably one of our most pressing environmental concerns. We purchase 70 percent or more of our garbage output at the supermarket. Given this fact, the mandate of the competition was to come up with innovative strategies to address this problem in a way that remained appealing to consumers. To this end, aesthetics and ethics both needed to be considered by analyzing products’ life cycles and by creating branding and marketing strategies. As stated in the brief for the competition, “This theme (the aesthetic of sustainable consumption) must be considered very seriously, to dispel the widespread belief that sustainability is secondary to consumption and consumable goods.”

Competition winners were chosen by a jury panel composed of Susan King Roth, Dean, Faculty of Design; Greg Van Alstyne, Associate Professor and Director of Research at the Strategic Innovation Lab; Food and Beverage Cluster Specialist Michael Wolfson from the City of Toronto; and Zahra Ebrahim, Founder and Chief Executive Officer at archiTEXT.

Adding to the challenge, the teams had only four days to complete their projects. Literature accompanying the displayed proposals called the event a design charette, a term describing “a period of intense design activity, often immediately preceding a deadline.”

In spite of these rigorous conditions, the students came up with varied and thoughtful displays. Among the innovative solutions was a proposal advocating the use of hydroponic farming in the city, an agriculture method where produce is grown in a solution rather than in soil. Since half the global population lives in cities, this would help limit transportation and carbon dioxide emissions.

Some groups used marketing strategies to get consumers to focus on the health benefits of freshly picked groceries, which have a higher nutritional value than their imported counterparts; others emphasized the communal aspects of local agriculture. Additional strategies included proposed packaging made from starch, colour-coded receipts to help consumers see where they overspend, and savings cards for buying local products.

“Green Mile,” the winning proposal, discussed the implementation of a point reward system not unlike Air Miles or the Shopper’s Drug Mart Optimum Card. The group’s aim was to help consumers to identify which products are the most environmentally friendly. To this end, products that have travelled less miles and have been manufactured and distributed using sustainable methods earn higher reward points. The team’s concept focused on educating the public and making better choices. They write, “Unfortunately, many of us are not aware of sustainability because of lack of education. Therefore, we would like to introduce GreenMile, which creates an opportunity for all of us to [get] actively involved in living a sustainable lifestyle in a more convenient and productive way.”

The team also developed a system that would allow products to be scanned to obtain detailed information on where they came from and how they were manufactured. The points on the reward cards would be redeemable for green hydro and electricity and discounts on other eco-friendly products and produce.

Taking home the second place prize of $200 were second year students Theresa Duong, Material Art & Design;
EV Kelli Hui, Industrial Design; Karen Hsieh, Environmental Design; and Daniel Kim, Graphic Design. “Genesis,” the name of the condominium tower they proposed, featured a hydroponic farm and communal cooking and dining areas.

Honourable mention went to a group of first- and second-year students for “Down2Earth,” a proposed store that would separate the sustainable foods from the non-sustainable. In this store, the “good” products would be placed in a setting designed to soothe shoppers, while the “bad” products would be presented amid the cacophonous sounds of machinery.

Congratulations to those who participated in the event. It will be interesting for all involved to see how sustainability-focused design continues to shape the consumer experience.

By Veronika Lukacs, third-year Criticism & Curatorial Practice student at OCAD.

http://www.ocad.ca/students/articles_campus_life/20090206_design_competition_winners.htm