The Best of 2009 Student Design

Best of Student Design

Pratt: Mag Stool

A huge hit at May's International Contemporary Furniture Fair (it won ICFF's Editors Award for Best Design School), Pratt Institute's Department of Industrial Design's "Design For A Dollar" booth was pure recession innovation. Students were challenged to create unique furniture, decor, and lighting designs with a production cost of $1. Li-Rong Liao, a first year graduate student, turned a stack of used magazines and a bottle-worth of glue into a stunning abstract stool. Despite being made of paper, the Mag Stool is strong enough to sit on, and Liao says the structure could be expanded to create a bench, chair, or table.

Best of Student Design

Pratt: Metamorphosis Lamp

Undergraduate student Sukmo Koo teamed up with Pratt graduate Young Taek Oh--currently continuing his studies at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts--to create the Metamorphosis lamp. Koo and Oh collected used egg crates to build their design, which was inspired by the Mobius Strip. The hardware to hang and electrify the piece put the cost point over $1, but we're convinced a chandelier with this much visual impact could not be made for less.

Best of Student Design

RISD: Crochet Crochet Chair

As part of the Rhode Island School of Design's "Architecture of the Chair: Materials and Techniques" class, Masters student Ruth Fore chose to crochet flexible aluminum wire to create her Crochet Crochet chair. Moving from small to wide gauges to weave a structure that could support a significant amount of weight, Fore used about 3,000 feet of wire to create the one chair.

Best of Student Design

RISD: Split Seat

Isao Takezawa used vegetable tanned leather to create his Split Seat for the same RISD class, sewing together three separate pieces to create his stool. When the material is soaked in boiling water and dried, it hardens enough to support a person's weight, while still maintaining leather's supple feel. This undergraduate student didn't just add the diamond cutouts in the leather for aesthetic purposes--it gives the leather a bit of give for an even more comfortable seat.

Best of Student Design

Virginia Tech: Urban Artifact

Students at the Virginia Tech School of Architecture and Design experiment with highly efficient computerized techniques to create furnishings that are truly industrialized. Catherine Worsham used these methods to craft this cool urban multi-purpose piece. The luscious red wonder can be used as a bench, edge fencing, or even a bike rack.

Best of Student Design

Virginia Tech: Laser-cut Lounge Chair

Employing techniques traditionally used by the automotive and aerospace industries, graduate student Kashuo Bennett created this design using a computer, which in turn communicated the appropriate measurements to a cutting machine that crafted the laser-cut sheet. Bennett then folded the metal to create a stunning white indoor/outdoor chair. Talk about cutting edge.

Best of Student Design

Philadelphia University: Armadillo Chair

For the past five years, Wilsonart Laminates has challenged students to create a design celebrating the company's products. In 2009, Wilsonart visited a sophomore design class at Philadelphia University and asked them to create a chair featuring the laminate chip in any way imaginable--as long as it could seat up to 400 pounds of weight. Aodh O Donnell's Armadillo Chair took home this year's prize. He chose to mirror the strength of Wilsonart Laminate in his chair, comparing it to armadillos' armored shell. To us, the shingled laminate makes a masculine shape and material seem feminine--almost like the ruffles of a gown.

Best of Student Design

Philadelphia University: Imperial Chair

When creating her piece for Wilsonart's challenge, undergraduate student Julianne Magliaro drew inspiration from one of the most powerful seats in Chinese history--the Qing Dynasty's imperial rector chair. This seat of honor is comprised of intersecting rectangular laminate cut-outs created by a CNC routing machine (basically a computerized cutter) for perfect proportions. The high gloss white and the one spot of red make for chinoserie at its most modern.

Best of Student Design

SCAD: Puffy Frames

The works from the Savannah College of Art and Design's renowned Working Class Studio go beyond a simple semester project. Students are challenged to create affordable home decor lines feasible for mass production and sale at retail and online stores. Undergraduate student Ashley Olson's Puffy Frames bring a whole new dimension to wall art. The frames, which are available in two sizes and four colors, can hold framed art, gallery, and lightweight mirrors, or can act as the art in-of-themselves.

Puffy Frames, $60; 912-525-6992, shopSCAD.com.

Best of Student Design

SCAD: Nikki Lampshades

Another design from the Savannah College of Art and Design's Working Class Studio, the Nikki Collection of lampshades are delightfully versatile. Masters student Nikki Hartomo's patterns are more traditional but the enlarged scale of the flowers and stripes lets them adapt to a contemporary or classic setting. Their stainless steel spider fittings allow the shades to be used as floor or table lamps, as well as pendant lighting.

Best of Student Design