Deadline: 27th September 2023 | Young Balkan Designers Contest 2023
Young Balkan Designers Contest 2023, applications are now being accepted. Young Balkan Designers (YBD) is the regional talent platform for the Mikser organisation, which aims to identify, nurture, and promote the creative talents of the Balkan region in the area of sustainable design.
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The project also seeks to revitalise multi-cultural cooperation in the Balkan region while uniting the local design scene, bringing it closer to an international audience, and enhancing its potential by giving emerging designers access to additional training and practise.
“Here and Now” is the competition’s theme.
I hope you live in fascinating times. We do. A technological advance creates new opportunities for remote employment and flexible work schedules, which also alter how our private and public areas are organised. Contrarily, the global health crisis allowed us the opportunity to pause and consider our own values and objectives, which sparked widespread self-reflection on how we want to spend the majority of our days – where, when, with whom, and why. For the constantly changing environments and conditions we face today, the theme “Here and Now – Hybrid Solutions for Contemporary Living, Work, Exchange and Play” calls for flexible, clever, and sustainable design solutions.
They encourage upcoming designers to investigate novel furniture and space functions for overlapping and transitional regions of the daily world, such as the home, workplace, school, public spaces, recreational areas, cosy and social spaces, urban and rural settings, and still and moving experiences. The projects that are submitted should be able to provide their users with a variety of experiences and functions, support various living arrangements, hybrid and itinerant work models, make it simple to create “third spaces,” turn any space into a play area or informal learning environment, among other things. Young designers are encouraged to develop new ideas or revisit old ones by considering the dual or overlapping functions of furniture pieces, modular systems, or other utility objects from the perspectives of a variety of users (adults, children, people of different genders, the elderly, people with disabilities, etc.), as well as varying time scenarios, environmental variations, and social contexts (outdoor, indoor, private, public, etc.).
Awards
The Jury will decide who will win the following competitions:
- Winners of the first round will participate in the YBD for NUNC Exhibition of Proposals in Belgrade (Faculty of Forestry, side event of the Belgrade Furniture Fair).
- Second-round winners: Product Development for NUNC with the assistance of the company’s product development team Successful Prototypes: Display of prototypes at the Mikser Festival in Belgrade and the Milan International Furniture Fair in 2024 (Nunc Booth).
Eligibility
- Open to artists under 40 who are from the Balkans, reside there, work there, or simply enjoy their culture.
- Applicants may be single authors or author collectives.
- Each candidate is allowed to submit several entries.
Criteria
The jury’s favourite criteria were:
- Features of the project that are cutting-edge and improve daily life
- the capacity to cater to the needs of various users
- Multifunctionality
- Circularity risks for the product or its components
- Ergonomics
- Reasonable prices for production and transportation
- creative application of locally available resources
- application of regional methods and knowledge
- Environmentally responsible manufacturing and creative recycling techniques
- Adaptability to regional and global environmental and social challenges
Application
Through an online form, applicants may submit their work until September 27, 2023 at 23:59.
Visit Young Balkan Designers for more info.
