More than 100 designers, architects and real estate leaders recently gathered at the New Museum in New York City for the 17th Annual Radical Innovation Award Ceremony and Dinner, presented by The Hardy Group.
Eran Chen, founder/executive director, ODA, led the evening for the second consecutive year as MC.
The two finalists for the Professional Project award, Joel Mbala-Nkanga from Populous and Graeme Labe from Luxury Frontiers presented their concepts to the audience, followed by a “shark-tank-style” question and answer session about the creativity of their vision, feasibility, design aspects and potential to impact the industry. The live audience votes were combined with the record-breaking 1,500+ public votes. Luxury Frontiers’ The Turtle Bungalow took the top prize. It was submitted by Labe, Juan Cloete, Rick Van Heerden and Idalina Silva Grech-Cumbo from Luxury Frontiers.
The Student Project winner was The Rocky Hotel submitted by Nadia Shumeeva, a student at TiArch Studio, Kazan State University of Architecture and Engineering. She will receive $5,000 and the opportunity to apply for an assistantship and full scholarship from one of the three Radical University Partners.
In the product category, The Gourd Project submitted by Jun Aizaki from Crème Architecture and Design was the Professional Product winner. The jurors found the Student Product submissions so impressive that they decided to award two winners: PulpaTronics by Barna Soma Biro, Chloe So, Jingyan Chen, Rui Ma from Imperial College London & Royal College of Art and H+S Health Spring by Wen Shin Zeng, Sin- Yu Lin, Yun-Jhen Wu and Yin-Chi Lu from Ming Chi University of Technology.
Radical Innovation is produced by The Hardy Group with the support from sponsoring companies DFL Legal, SUMMA International AHLA Foundation, Beyer Brown & Associates, Continental Contractors, Cooper Carry, DLR Group, Florim, Benjamin West, Chartres Lodging Group, Crown Creative, Hospitality Logistics Intl., JG Neukomm, ODA, Rivur, SHaD, Studio 11 Design, Shawmut, and Crown Creative. Radical Innovation education partners are UNLV School of Architecture, UNLV Black Fire Innovation, the University of Illinois School of Architecture and the NYUSPS Jonathan M. Tisch Center of Hospitality.