Call for entries – Metropolis Magazine – "Next Generation® Design Competition: ONE DESIGN FIX FOR THE FUTURE"

Next Generation® 2010, sponsored by Herman Miller, is expected to attract hundreds of entries from around the world. Entries for ONE DESIGN FIX FOR THE FUTURE are due January 29, 2010.

Metropolis established the Next Generation® Design Competition in 2003 to publicize the conviction that drives everything that Metropolis does editorially:  Good design is not a frill, not an expensive luxury, but is basic to how things work, from buildings, to cities, to consumer products and energy grids.  Faced with great environmental challenges, we must all assure that the buildings and devices in our world are not only functional, but contribute to a sustainable way of life in the future.  Everything we use, live in and work in must work better for this to happen.  And great design can make this happen just as much as great engineering and great dedication.

ONE DESIGN FIX FOR THE FUTURE, the Next Generation® Design Competition, challenges designers of all kinds – architects, interior designers, product designers, landscape designers, graphic designers, and communication designers.  We are looking for entries that propose ONE DESIGN FIX to our designed environment, fixes that can be applied to the way that the designer himself or herself may actually live today:  the products we use at home or work, our home or workplace, our city, or any commercial application.  We are looking for a design fix that may be quite humble or affect only a small thing, but which in scale, deployed throughout our society, can improve our future by making it more sustainable, energy-efficient, less damaging to the environment.

The winner will probably not be something that is explicitly environmentally re-engineered.  It will be a brilliant, possibly quite small and – naturally – beautiful and elegant fix that will benefit the environment in the long run.  The winning entries will display the entrant’s training, imagination and passion for improvement in a completely unexpected way.  We are looking for first-rate design imagination applied to a difficult, overlooked or completely mundane problem – resulting in a solution that is practical, clearly thought out and presented, and will have real-world consequences for the human community.

“We are the leading design industry magazine with a culture of sustainability,” says Susan S. Szenasy, Metropolis editor-in-chief.  “So we’re putting our money where our editorial heart is.  We believe that the design profession has the tools and techniques that the world needs, and that good design is a way of solving problems.”  Horace Havemeyer III, Metropolis’ publisher, adds: “Designers are fixers.  And Metropolis wants to show how much good design – not just good intentions – can add to the building of a more sustainable world in the future.”

“We are particularly pleased that Herman Miller, Inc. is sponsoring Next Generation® 2010,” says Peter Lenahan from Metropolis magazine.  “Herman Miller says that as a company, they design ‘furnishings and related services that improve the human experience wherever people work, heal, learn and live. We think that Herman Miller’s values are perfectly aligned with what Next Generation® 2010 ONE DESIGN FIX FOR THE FUTURE is trying to achieve.”