Last weekend, the international jury of ‘The Great Indoors’ awarded five interior design projects during a festive ceremony in Maastricht, The Netherlands. The Great Indoors is an international, biennial award rewarding the best public interior designs in various categories every two years. By awarding prizes and hosting lectures and workshops, The Great Indoors hopes to promote a discussion on the growing importance of the interior throughout the world.
The international jury had the difficult task to first select 25 nominees out of 380 entries. These were submitted, from more than 40 countries. They competed in 5 different categories.
In the category ‘Design Firm of the Year’ it was an agency from Sweden that took the lead. Guise is one of those young firms that is able to combine a distinctive approach with a modest budget in its projects. The jury was pleased with the firm’s clear design methodology and graphic aesthetic, seeing in its ‘light touch’ strategy an alternative for the ‘total make-over’ of these last years.
Design talent is becoming a strong export product of Japan, as shown by the Japanese firm Design Spirits with their prize for Beijing Noodle No. 9 in Las Vegas. They are the winners in the second category ‘Relax and Consume’. Design Spirits succeeded in designing a restaurant with a surprising balance between kitsch and abstraction, and did it in such an entertaining way that it also appealed to the public at large.
In the third category ‘Show & Sell’, Office for Metropolitan Architecture, with design architect Alexander Reichert, won with Prada Transformer. For the jury this project represents a past, as well as a possible future. With references to Russian Constructivism this design implicitly criticizes the blob-architecture of recent years and uses radical strategies to rephrase our present questions with regard to representation.
In the category ‘Serve & Facilitate’, Bureau Ira Koers and Studio Roelof Mulder are the winners with their project: Library for the University of Amsterdam. This entry is the result of a co-authorship between an architect and a graphic designer. In this case the jury fell for the delicate balance between temporality, functionality and expression.
i29 Interior Architects wins with their Recycled Office for Gummo in the category ‘Concentrate & Collaborate’. A design for a temporary office that serves our current wishes for sustainability, with a convincing aesthetic built from recycled material.
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