Hasta La Ideas

With the words “Ich bin ein Kronberger,” Dr. Mark Breitenberg summarized his speech “Changes and Challenges of International Design Promotion” at the BraunPrize 2009 Award Ceremony on September 16th. Breitenbach, president elect of ICSID (International Council of Societies of Industrial Design), provost of California College of the Arts and former member of the BraunPrize jury, knows what he is talking about. Kronberg is not only the hometown of Braun, where the prize was founded in 1968, but also the place where the winners of the BraunPrizes are painstakingly selected.

BraunPrize 2009 Finalists: (clockwise from upper right) Johanna Schoemaker, Karsten Willmann, Stephan Zimmermann, and Tobias Stuntebeck.

No other design competition for young professionals requires so much effort to select a winner – three rounds of judging by two different juries must be passed. In 2009, a record number of 1074 projects from 54 different countries were submitted. The members of the BraunPrize jury included Anna Kirah, design anthropologist from Oslo; Kazuo Tanaka, President of GK Design Group, Tokyo; Florian Seiffert, retired Professor for Product Design, Fachhochschule Mainz (and first BraunPrize Winner in 1968); Rainer Silbernagel, Director of the Braun Engeneering, Kronberg; and Jury Chairman Peter Schneider, Head of Braun Design Department until the beginning of 2009. In the first two rounds, 22 projects were chosen for the BraunPrize exhibition, which debuted during the ceremony and will tour internationally. The 2009 catalogue of all awarded projects, including the winners of the BraunPrize Mexico and China, is also available.

More pics and the winner after the jump…

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