2019 was a pretty big year for the Asia Design Prize, with Karim Rashid presiding as head-juror. Conceptualized in 2017, and currently on the road to its fourth edition in 2020, Asia Design Prize has really evolved from an idea to a massive awards program that’s been supported by and organized with partnership from design institutions and professionals around the world. With 46 top designers from 14 countries, and a judging procedure that prides itself in being unbiased, ethical, and accurate, Asia Design Prize rewards the best concepts and products from around the world. At the end of the program each year, ADP organizes an awards gala for its winners, where they receive their certificate and memento, and also network with one another as well as with their jury panelists. Winners of the ADP award are also included in Asia Design Prize’s annual yearbook, a permanent place in the Asia Design Prize’s online exhibition, and even have their works featured in prominent design magazines and journals across the world, truly bringing attention and credibility to their work and their skill sets! As the wheels begin moving for next year’s Asia Design Prize competition, we look at some of the top winning projects from this year’s program, hand-picked for the award by Karim Rashid himself, along with the 41 other esteemed jury members from around the world. Cycle through to see some of our absolute favorites, but more importantly, use them as a barometer to measure the worth of your own design concepts, because come 2020, your work could win a prestigious award too! for the Asia Design Prize 2020! Hurry, valid only until December 29, 2019! Unlike conventional microwaves that exist as a box-shaped oven with a door and a rotating plate on the inside, OAVE takes on a much more ornamental approach to gadget’s design, giving it a cylindrical structure and a cloche-shaped lid you can take off to reveal the food inside. OAVE gives your microwave oven a much more aesthetic, table-friendly avatar. The two-part design comprises a rotating base, and a perforated metal and glass cover that sits over your food. Visible from all sides, the food rotates on its lazy-suzy base, illuminated by an overhead light. When you’re done, lift up the lid to reveal the fresh hot meal beneath! Probably one of the most interesting takes on appliance design, the Bium Wi-Fi Router and Wireless Charger assumes the demeanor of an incense-stick burner. When active and transmitting data, the antennas of the router glow with an orange tip, looking like burning incense sticks. When the power runs out, or the internet connection goes down, the antennas go black, almost as if the sticks have been extinguished. The fact that the router charges your smartphone wirelessly is just a cherry on the cake! Almost like the Nanopresso of tea, Pocketea is a pocketable tea-infuser that you can easily carry around, either in your pocket or in your bag. The tea infuser occupies the same amount of space as a large-ish thumb drive, and comes with an infuser chamber made of perforated metal on the inside, with an outer plastic cover. The plastic cover’s purpose is dual-fold. Not only does it enclose the infuser while not in use, it also opens up sideways to become a platform that suspends your infuser in a cup filled with water! You can easily load Pocketea with the tea-leaves of your choice, taking it wherever you go! ZAMO’s building blocks aren’t like your usual stackable block toys. Their unusual shapes are in fact characters in the Korean alphabet which, when joined together to create a word, light up and read the word out for the child. ZAMO brings a novel approach to enhancing a child’s cognitive skills by giving them the building blocks of language. Rather than teaching them how to create stable buildings and structures, ZAMO focuses on building a working knowledge of Korean grammar. Each block comes powered by Arduino, with LED lights on the inside, and magnets around the rim that let you snap individual pieces together. Designed as wireless earbuds that actually complement the shape of your ear cavity, MPOW’s earbuds are as comfortable as they’re functionally top-notch. With customized 8mm drivers delivering pristine audio that’s balanced across all frequencies, and an organic design that sits comfortably within your ear, the earbuds are good enough to be worn for hours, without ear fatigue or the danger of them slipping out. The earbuds come with their own charging case, as well as a series of silicone sleeves to fit different ear-types. The 14-storeyed Onda by Giacomo Fava is a celebration of fluidity and a wonderful use of the Gestalt law of continuity, creating an organic transitioning building by overlaying different floor-plans on one another. The 14-storeyed condominium comes with 18 separate apartments, all with their own dedicated terraces, thanks to the organic design, creating running balconies on every floor. Designed as a sea-front property, it almost looks as if the sea-breezes are sculpting and molding the outer form of this incredibly attractive, fluid building! This neat shape-shifting bookshelf practically doubles in storage, thanks to the use of hinges and the ability to rotate and expand at the same time! The Squaring Bookshelf by Yisestudio sits squarely on a wall, with its 3×3 storage allocation. However, rotate the squares and you get four extra storage spaces, by expanding the negative zones between each of the original squares. Pretty cool, isn’t it? This stretcher is more than a transportation device, it’s an advanced diagnostic tool. Designed to shorten diagnostic times by performing some of the tests while in transit, the stretcher comes with its own X-ray imaging device that can perform a full-body scan by simply sliding up and down the rails to scan any part of the skeleton, testing for fractures or anomalies on the spot, saving both time as well as lives! The Accurate Fire Extinguisher from students of the Dalian Minzu University helps allow you to focus on a particular area while putting out a flame. The extinguisher body comes with an integrated nozzle that expands, allowing you to go deep into the roots of the fire while maintaining your distance. When collapsed back, the hose sits flush inside the extinguisher’s cylindrical form. Designed as an addition to a fleet of firefighting trucks, the Catching Truck from the students of the Dalian Minzu University comes with hydraulic arms that create a safe landing-net for people trying to evacuate a burning building. The hydraulic arms can adjust the height of the net to ensure people jumping from higher floors land safely, while cameras on the top of the cockpit help the driver calculate the best place to park the truck to ensure everyone evacuates the building safely. for the Asia Design Prize 2020! Hurry, valid only until December 29, 2019!