The Great Indoors Award 2015 - And the winners are...

The Great Indoors is an initiative of FRAME magazine, Bureau Europa/platform for architecture, and Marres, House for Contemporary Culture.

INTERNATIONAL JURY

With 271 entries from 39 countries, The Great Indoors managed to attract top interior designers worldwide. The international jury consisted of: Brendan Cormier - curator Victoria and Albert Museum, Alexis Georgacopoulos - director ECAL- Ecole cantonale d’art de Lausanne, Nora Fehlbaum - co-CEO of Vitra, Deyan Sudjic - director Design Museum London and Jaspar Jansen – designer/founder i29. The jury selected 20 nominees, four in each category: Show & Sell, Relax & Consume, Concentrate & Collaborate, and Serve & Facilitate.
 

AND THE WINNERS ARE….

Winner Category Show & Sell:
Yusuke Seki, Maruhiro Flagship Store, Nagasaki

To show and sell earthenware in a store with a floor of cast-concrete bowls is not only a functional mode of advertisement – the shop’s open façade reveals a stunning installation of the products – but also a dilemma for visitors, who wonder whether they can walk on the surface. Taking the risk, many seize the opportunity to make selfies. This layered approach to retail design is worthy of further consideration.

Winner Category Relax and Consume
India Mahdavi, restaurant The Gallery at Sketch, Londen

A pink room with chairs and tables that look like lavishly decorated cupcakes or a fin-de-siècle tearoom? This place is all about being different. It’s a total environment that challenges preconceptions by appealing to our senses in a dramatic way. Apart from its adventurous colour choice, the space is dotted with intriguing details and beautiful framed illustrations by David Shrigley.

Winner Category Concentrate & Collaborate
RAAAF, End of Sitting, Amsterdam

Although all submissions to the competition are thoughtful and well executed, not all of them push the boundaries and show us new ideas. This project is a prototype and a wonderfully creative attempt to think spatially about future workscapes. Formally reminiscent of Zaha Hadid’s early paintings, the design is not about taste but about the subject being addressed. Will we, in 20 or 50 years, be working while leaning over, lying down or standing up?
 

Winner Category Serve & Facilitate
AllesWirdGut Architects, Magdas hotel/housing, Wenen

Although all submissions to the competition are thoughtful and well executed, not all of them push the boundaries and show us new ideas. This project is a prototype and a wonderfully creative attempt to think spatially about future workscapes. Formally reminiscent of Zaha Hadid’s early paintings, the design is not about taste but about the subject being addressed. Will we, in 20 or 50 years, be working while leaning over, lying down or standing up?

JURY’S REFLECTIONS

While formulating criteria for assessing the 271 submissions, certain members of the jury looked for ‘spatial solutions that respond to the location and the client’s identity’ and for ‘concepts of how we control spaces and their representation’.

Others pointed out designs in which ‘technology and materials communicate the contemporary condition of global connectivity’. The jury concurred in its assessment that the best projects ‘should be flexible and sustainable but, above all, should push the boundaries of how we inhabit spaces, both culturally and socially’. In conclusion, the jury emphasized the search for ideas, because, in the words of Deyan Sudjic: ‘If we’re not judging ideas, then we’re just judging appearances.’

In light of his statement, it will come as no surprise that the award-winners display a radical, often social approach to designing interiors. In RAAAF’s ideas about future office life, chair and desk have made way for an activating workscape. India Mahdavi’s pink colour scheme and inclusion of art work for London restaurant Sketch marvellously evokes fin-de-siècle tea parlours, but with a distinctly modern twist.

The ceramics store that Yusuke Seki designed in Nagasaki invites visitors to walk on what seems to be an installation of stacks of precious earthenware, which turn the showroom into an exciting visceral and acoustic experience. And what about the hotel that AllesWirdGut (German for ‘all will be well’) built in Vienna? It features

78 ‘designer rooms’ for conventional guests and two apartments for refugees awaiting asylum. It puts the haves and the have-nots under one roof, facilitating an exchange between travellers who arrive by choice and those accommodated by necessity.

The Great Indoors is generously supported by the City of Maastricht, the Province of Limburg and the Creative Industries Fund NL.