WINNERS

The Federal Office of Culture has named 17 winners of the Swiss Design Awards. Each award carries prize money of CHF 25,000. The Swiss Design Awards are presented in the categories fashion and textile design, graphic design, mediation, product and industrial design, photography and scenography.
This year the 17 Swiss Design Awards go to:

Ottolinger: Cosima Gadient & Christa Bösch
The Ottolinger label has built an international reputation with its collections almost overnight. Cosima Gadient and Christa Bösch dexterously combine handicraft with machine production in a variety of textile techniques. Their uninhibited blending of high and low culture is very much in tune with current fashion. Collection and communication come together to create a holistic contemporary image. (live and work in Basel/Berlin)

Rafael Kouto
Rafael Kouto has the creative confidence to let clothes evolve directly and through technical skill while they are actually being made. His eclectic designs are the product of many-layered working processes and an accomplished follow-up to previous tFor all their apparent archaism, these garments are nevertheless refreshing. (lives and works in Losone/Zurich)

Sandro Marzo
Sandro Marzo presents a market-ready, comprehensive and coherent collection with individual items that fit easily into the modern wardrobe. The designs
are generously cut and sensitively coloured. Independently treated fabrics and details inserted with meticulous craft underscore the beauty of the individual pieces. (lives and works in Allschwil)

Ondřej Báchor
Referencing Czech typefaces from the 1950s, Kolektiv is a carefully crafted serif font with an irresistible contemporary feel. Combining charming Czech typographic idiosyncrasies with a precise Swiss approach, it consists of five weights and three italics. This set of versatile and highly readable letterforms successfully showcases a cross-cultural symbiosis. (lives and works in Lausanne)

Ann Kern
In her diploma project, Ann Kern offers a trenchant reading of a highly topical and complex subject: intersectionality. The project is consistent in terms of its references, choice of authors and unique editorial approach. Her graphic selections eschew superfluous elements, relying instead on images deployed in complementary fashion and meticulously executed typography. (lives and works in Zurich)

Sylvan Lanz
In his bachelor project, Sylvan Lanz uses a specially developed interactive web app to investigate the topical issue of variable fonts. Basing his work on language research, he interprets the intonation, volume and tonality of the voice and their impact on the character forms of words and sentences. The precisely and carefully drafted typeface skilfully combines extreme line weights and letter breadths. (lives and works in Basel/Zurich)

Pascal Storz & Fabian Bremer
Eleven books, most with black and white typographical bindings, are presented in a graphically engaged and outstanding presentation. They display a rich variety of fonts, compositions, layouts and materials that are precisely attuned to the content, texts and images of each volume. Each book is carefully overseen as it passes through the production process and receives its own distinct identity. (live and work in Berlin/Leipzig)

Studio Ard: Guillaume Chuard & Daniel Nørregaard
With its Tate Etc. magazine, Studio Ard presents an inspiring take on the spirit of collectivity and collaboration. Texts, photography and illustrations are commissioned externally, making every issue unique. The variable layout allows for great diversity and gives each article a characteristic flavour. The choice of images and typographical details reveals exceptional care. (live and work in London/Lausanne)

Common-Interest: Nina Paim & Corinne Gisel
Corinne Gisel and Nina Paim of Common-Interest use design as a lens through which to view the world. As part of their innovative practice they conceived, curated and staged Department of Non-Binaries, an exhibition with an unconventional approach that embraces contemporary cultural complexity and moves beyond the facile simplicity of modernist ideology. (live and work in Basel)

Marc Asekhame uses the magazine form as the primary vehicle for his highly coherent photographic production and reflection. His aesthetic vocabulary often blurs the boundaries between reality and fiction. (lives and works in Zurich/Paris)

Solène Gün
Turning her poetic and optimistic gaze on a topic that is constantly in the news — immigration in the banlieues — Solène Gün undercuts prevailing stereotypes and prejudices. Both her photographic idiom and the radical subtlety of her presentation demonstrate great maturity. (lives and works in Biel/Bienne)

Lukas Hoffmann
Lukas Hoffmann presents an image-object of great formal, aesthetic and technical precision that compellingly reflects every stage in the production process, from taking and working with the picture right through to framing and presentation. The frontality of the composition draws viewers into the picture’s space, challenging them to embrace the beauty and desolation of the landscape. (lives and works in Berlin)

Filipe & Viricel: Micael Filipe & Romain Viricel
The jury is impressed by the maturity and consistency of Filipe & Viricel’s chair design. The real challenge when developing a chair is engaging with the object’s long and rich history. This design also fits into a long tradition of pure plastic chairs. The jury particularly notes the high quality of the draughtsmanship. (live and work in Lausanne/Lyon/London)

Egli Studio: Yann Mathys & Thibault Dussex
For the jury, this project is an intelligent and contemporary industrialisation of a product idea, conducted with great expertise in terms of production, logistics and distribution.The table and bench ingeniously link sub-assemblies together using small-format, tool-based connecting elements. The result is a seemingly simple, aesthetically attractive, understated and stable furniture system. (live and work in Geneva/Renens)

Dimitri Nassisi
In the foreground of Dimitri Nassisi’s work we find not a product but a service. A meticulous and comprehensive technical analysis of an existing structure forms the perfect basis for implementing his idea. Drinking Hydrant is a good example of how designers can, through a simple change of perspective, continue to put forward new and relevant concepts. (lives and works in Grens)

Julie Richoz
Julie Richoz’s four award-winning projects are an impressive demonstration of her ambitious approach to design. In each case, she stood alongside actual craftspeople and engaged intensively with their working methods and processes. Her interest in crafts reveals how craft and design depend on each other in ways that will play a key role in the more harmonious development of our environment. (lives and works in Paris)

The jury acclaims a coherent series of scenographic projects, set designs and spaces conceived by Daniel Zamarbide in constant dialogue with strong historical and cross-cultural references. His collaborations with performers through props, intermediary objects and regulated fields of tension engage with and influence the dramaturgy and the perception of space. (lives and works in Geneva/Lisbon)