Awards and prizes are vital to professional ecosystems in supporting talent and new ideas; for the design industry, competitions encourage creative minds to leap beyond the bounds of practicality to imagine the future, solve problems and build new communities. Expanding impact with international breadth and egalitarian opportunities, competitions often provide space for emerging talents and students, providing support, mentorship and experience to develop their careers and process.
For Polish ceramics manufacturer Ceramika Paradyż, hosting the Paradyż Designers Competition brings together all of these values, alongside an innovative way to challenge how its products can function. This year, the third edition challenged architects and designers to craft imaginative digital designs using a new series of sintered stones, TRI-D. The natural product, a baked composite of quartz, feldspars, clays or kaolins, performs as an alternative to natural stone; extraordinarily durable, tiles retain their aesthetic from the surface to the cross section, making them ideal for worktops, windowsills and fireplaces, yet in fact, the possibilities are endless.
To tap into this potential, Paradyż encouraged unconventional and disruptive thinking from spatial to product design, across three competition categories: Main, Student Project and Special, with a division of Product, Outdoor and Interior. A credit to the open-ended brief and array of financial prizes enabling designers the freedom to invest in their own personal practice, the competition attracted almost a thousand original, visionary projects, with entries from Poland, Spain, Italy, Ukraine, Malaysia, South Africa, USA, Egypt, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Turkey making it to the second stage.
This record-breaking global participation and scale for the competition brought new trends and techniques to the fore, all deliberated over by a creative set of jurors chaired by pioneering German architect and artist, Jürgen Mayer H. The wider panel of experts included Didier F. Faustino of Mésarchitecture studio; David Basulto, architect, founder and editor-in-chief of ArchDaily; Agnieszka Kalinowska-Sołtys, partner at APA Wojciechowski and President of the Association of Polish Architects; and a wider expert selection of creative directors, product designers, plus the winner of the second edition of the Paradyż Designers competition, Alek Pluta.
Impressing the jury with an immersive and luxurious patio sculpted with a geometric pool, bar and conversation pit, architect Selçuk Kişmir of Fabric.a from Turkey won first prize in the Main category. Serenity and simplicity continued in the second prize winning project, Egyptian architect Mostafa Salem’s minimalist bus stop, where materials aesthetically blend with the mountainous setting to elevate an everyday experience, which also won the “Outdoors” division of the Special category. Meanwhile, the third Main prize went to Agata Gała of blank studio in Poland for her serene courtyard yoga studio with its atmospheric oculus.
The Student prizes brought increasing degrees of drama, monumentality and engagement with nature; first prize went to the organic hybrid space of Piotr Hańderek (Poland; Architecture, Cracow University of Technology); second prize went to a seamlessly flowing indoor-outdoor kitchen and dining setting by Szczepan Zalewski (Poland; Academy of Fine Arts Warsaw); and third to an escapist spa infused into its environment by Ohireme Uanzekin (Nigeria, Architecture at Heriot-Watt University Dubai).
Showing off the technical possibilities of TRI-D sintered stone slabs as a product, both in interiors and outdoors, the winners of the Special category demonstrated attention to detail and crafted focus. The “Product” division prize was awarded to Małgorzata Niedzielska of Niedzielska architektura from Poland for her scalloped bathroom suite including an integrated vanity with a sink and tub, while the winner of the “Interiors” division went to Marta Żebrowska-Wojczuk and Weronika Król of mow.design studio in Poland, for their high-end kitchen with customised functions.
The Paradyż Designers competition’s gala in May 2024 at the Reduta Bank Polski in Warsaw brought all of these creative minds together with Ceramika Paradyż’s community of architects, interior designers, journalists, partners and friends. It was a celebration of talent and prestigious prizes, each of which included a visit to Salone del Mobile to further extend the power of the design community and spirit of international exchange.
Learn more about the Paradyż Design Competition here.
