Sydney hosts design extravaganza
Sydney locals Robbie Wells and Lee Litson will join teams of designers competing in the first ever Sydney edition of the ‘Iron Design’ contest, held on August 6 at the Power House Museum in Ultimo.
The competition is part of the museum’s Sydney Design exhibition showcasing the best of the Australian design world from July 31 until August 15.
Recent winners of a 2010 Australian International Design Award, Wells and Litson are looking forwards to pitting their skills against other teams in the unique competition.
“I’ve never heard of anything like this before,” said Wells.
“We’re really excited to be a part of it.”
They will join teams from a range of disciplines and backgrounds including architects, designers and lecturers from the nearby University of Technology Sydney.
Along with business partners, Litson and Ashley marsh-Croft, Wells developed the design for the Emotiv EPOC that takes signals directly from the users brain and transmits them to a computer or game device.
A release from 4Design claims the device “detect the user’s facial expressions, moods and emotions allowing the user to interact in cyberspace in a new way.”
Producer of the Powerhouse’s program for Sydney Design, Jane Latief, said the program will help to gain exposure in the community for design and hopefully help the field to grow.
“Australians are quite good in design and bring their own unique flavour to it,” she said.
“Events like this are really important in bringing design into the mainstream consciousness.”
Designers will work in studio-based teams of 1-3 people, and there will be eight teams altogether for the night. Teams start in two 20-minute preliminary rounds, where four teams battle against each other. The winning team from each round then go into a shorter 15 minute championship round, where the winner is crowned Iron Designer.
The key ingredients for each round are three words. Each round, three key words will be announced and the designers have to use these words as the basis for their designs. The festival theme is “Tell Us a Story” so judges will be looking for the designers to tell them a incorporating the words.
A previous event in Melbourne had the key words “Moon” “Cycle” and “T”. The winning team re-created ET riding over the moon on a bike.
Creator of the Iron Design concept, Laura Cornhill, said the contest had sold out to enthralled audiences in Melbourne and she hoped to bring that enjoyment and appreciation of design to Sydney.
“One of the main philosophies underpinning our work is that design should engage and entertain audiences,” she said.
“We always like to bring a good sense of humour to the work that we do and we hope that if we enjoy making it, others will enjoy seeing it.”
The Iron Design contest will be hosted by local ABC radio personality, Robbie Buck and will take place on August 6 at the Powerhouse Museum, Coles Theatre and foyer.
