2022 Student Design Competition

What does the next generation imagine for the future of design?

Every year, university-level design students respond to a unique challenge that affects daily life with the best designs showcased by Collab and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The inspiration for the 29th annual Collab Student Design Competition was, as always, thematically linked to the work of the annual Collab Design Excellence Award honorees; world-class individuals recognized as having made significant contributions to the field of design. The 2022 Collab Design Excellence Award honoree and the inspiration for this year’s Collab Student Design Competition was DRIFT (studiodrift.com), the renowned Dutch designers Lonneke Gordijn and Ralph Nauta. The work of DRIFT – an Amsterdam-based multidisciplinary studio that bridges the categories of art, design, and technology. DRIFT is known for, “manifestation of the phenomena and hidden properties of nature with the use of technology to learn from the Earth’s underlying mechanisms and to re-establish our connection to it.”

2022 Collab Student Design Competition took place on Monday, November 16, 2022. In affiliation with the Philadelphia Museum of Art, this year’s event was held remotely allowing for entries from beyond the Philadelphia area. It provides a unique opportunity for university design students to experience competition outside the classroom and to receive valuable feedback from nationally recognized industry leaders in design, all conducted online.

The prompt was to create an object for the physical world, which incorporates two or more of the following characteristics: Science Fiction, Nature, Technology, Transformation, Movement, and Sustainability.

Congratulations to all the talented emerging designers who submitted their work the 2022 competition:

First place: One Day, Nirmal Patel & Yingei Zhuo (Parsons School of Design)