Generation Awake winners exhibit works at Green Week

The winning designs of Generation Awake’s Young Designers Contest are being displayed at the Green Week conference, which is currently being held in Brussels (3-5 June).

The European Commission originally created the Generation Awake campaign as a means to encourage adults aged between 25 and 40 to ‘think about consumption habits and their consequences for the environment, natural resources, quality of life, health and well-being’.

The campaign focuses on the importance of reusing and recycling in day-to-day life as well as highlighting ways to save water, energy, and other natural resources in an attempt to reduce waste.

Young Designers Contest

In keeping with the campaign’s theme of ‘waste as resource’, the Young Designers Contest asked people aged between 18-40 years old to ‘upcycle’ new products – such as clothes, toys, artworks, jewellery or furniture - from ‘waste’ materials.

The aim of the competition was to ‘spread the idea of reuse of materials among young people, and to inspire reflection about our planet’s limited resources, the value of waste, and how to use creativity in tackling environmental issues‘.

The four winning designers from Bulgaria, France, Italy and Lithuania were chosen by a team of five ‘independent experts’, and the designs are now being displayed in a special exhibition, alongside the eight runners up, at the Green Week conference.

The Winners

Bulgaria - Nikolai Kovachev

‘The Bubble House’ is a playhouse for children that has been made of ‘environmentally-friendly materials’ such as cardboard and PET plastic bottles. Designed in a cube shape, the playhouse can be used for either outdoor or indoor activities.

France – Mathieu Collos and Cyril Rheims

‘Plastic Bloom’ is a game designed for children aged three years or older. It features the use of ‘a recycled plastic screw clip’ that enables children to create their own patterns and designs using recycled bottles caps collected from drinks bottles.

Italy – Laboratorio LINFA: Gian Marco Vitta, Luigi Cuppone, Raul Sciurpa and Federico Fiordigiglio

The Italian winners co-designed a collection of furniture made from ‘100 per cent reclaimed wood’ entitled ‘Sine qua non’. Designed for use in both private and public spaces, the furniture ranges from chairs, tables, bookshelves, wardrobes, cabinets and home accessories. Some pieces also have the additional feature of being foldable 'making them more suitable for a nomadic lifestyle'.

Lithuania - Deimante Malūnavičiūtė

The Lithuanian winning design entitled ’LA.GĖ.DĖ’ is a ‘chair-suitcase’.  Upcycling an old, Soviet-era chair – belonging to the artist’s grandma – the design can be folded up into a transportable suitcase. 

Generation Awake Campaign

The Young Designers Contest is only one aspect of the Generation Awake campaign. With over one million hits since its launch in October 2011, the campaign’s interactive website is available in all 24 official EU languages.

The campaign also involves a ‘Consumption Guide’ to inform people about the impact of their consumption behaviour and provide alternative ‘wise choices’ for the planet, and a film, ‘The Awakeners’, which promotes the message of viewing waste as a resource.

Read more about Generation Awake.