Witex Premieres the Winners of the "[export] b" design competition at Domotex

Recreating wood flooring as well as derived timber flooring such as laminates is a task which product developers face anew every season. The product specifications often place tight limits on creativity. Manufacturing technologies must be taken into account and the requirements of marketability and cost effectiveness must be met. Promoted by the current product design and financial constraints, the floor covering manufacturer from Augustdorf wanted to know how wood flooring can be seen in a new way and asked students of interior architecture, architecture, industrial and product design, visual communication and art about this topic.

With the motto, “Giving the Floor to New Ideas“, the project “[export] b” was launched last summer for this purpose and then a Europe-wide idea and design competition was advertised in which numerous technical colleges participated. The design competition was to open up new perspectives on the topic of the floor of the future. Here not only ideas on the colour and design of floor panels should be explored but also new concepts of form, format, grid patterns, materials, techniques and technologies could be freely created. As expected, many of the drafts submitted were limited by the design of the surface and the interplay with materials, less so with technical or structural innovations and not every draft can be implemented in production just like that but that was not the task. The idea competition was consciously advertised as “open minded”, without any restrictions.

The winners were determined from the numerous works submitted on December 18th at a Frankfurt design hotel by a five-member jury. In addition to Dr.-Ing. Dietmar Danner, head editor of the architecture magazine AIT and XIA, the jury also included Knut Völzke, General Manager of Leise Integrated Design, Industrial Designer and jury chairman Lars Contzen of contzentrade, architect Ralf Meyer, 2plan4u and the manager of Marketing and Property Sales Markus Schätzle from Witex.
All drafts contained a lot of variety with innovative suggestions which should give floor surfaces a unique identity without referencing wood or stone. The desire to individualise the room through graphic statements in the flooring was detectable in numerous ways.

Fresh ideas are feminine.
The works declared the winners all originate from female participants. Thus, 1st prize went to Nina Elsner at the Lippe and Höxter Technical College for her work: "4 seasons - structures of nature". Annika Hartmann, from the Detmold School of Architecture and Interior Architecture, took second prize with "feelin'fine" and 3rd prize went to Judith Engelmeier with “If Wood Were Still Alive: Son and Heir“ [Wenn das Holz noch lebte: Stammhalter], from the Technical University of Dresden, Department of Architecture.

Nina Elsner’s work (1st place) sets itself apart primarily through the aesthetically striking surface design. The painting applied on several semi-transparent layers gives the surface a high value and conveys an overall artistic impression which is reminiscent of classical fresco painting. Here it is possible to detect the outlines of the MDF support material so that the result radiates authenticity. Annika Hartmann (2nd place) persuaded the jury with an innovative material mix of a laminate surface and textile intarsia. The result of the product includes a pleasantly cosy nature with noise-absorbing characteristics. The idea by Judith Engelmeier (3rd place) features a special panel available as a standard product which allows a branch or tree to “grow” from the flooring up into the room. It can serve the function of a wardrobe or simply make reference to the history of the flooring in artistic form. The jury was impressed by the resulting interrelationship of area, space and function.
Witex presented the contributions of the winners and a selection of the work submitted at Domotex in Hanover as part of contractworld in Hall 4.

Copy free of charge (4,184 characters including spaces)
- We kindly request a courtesy copy.

Kontakt:
Witex Flooring Products GmbH
Marketing and PR Department
Nord-West-Ring 21
32832 Augustdorf
Tel: +49 5237 / 609 -0
Fax:+49 5237 / 609 -180
E-mail: pr@witex.com
Internet: www.witex .com