Design Miami/Basel Names Swarovski Designers of the Future Award Winners

A trio of international emerging designers have won the second annual Design Miami/ Swarovski Designers of the Future Award. Sound artist Yuri Suzuki, glass artist Anjali Srinivasan, and designers Veronika Sedlmair and Brynjar Sigurðarson of Studio Bryhjar & Veronika will debut their winning commissions as part of the main Design Miami gallery program in Basel this June.
The award “aims to highlight diverse and technologically vanguard approaches to design through the work of designers that are not yet household names. This year’s laureates speak to the breadth of the field,” Rodman Primack, executive director of Design Miami/, said in a statement released by the fair.
Winners, who will utilize Swarovski crystals in their designs, were selected by a jury that included Nadja Swarovski, member of the Swarovski Executive Board; Deyan Sudjic, director of the Design Museum in London; Zoe Ryan, curator of architecture and design at the Art Institute Chicago; Li Edelkoort, trend forecaster and director of Parsons Interdisciplinary Design Program; Asif Khan, architect; and Alexandra Cunningham Cameron, special projects, Design Miami/.
Suzuki, born in Tokyo and now in London, studied and later taught at the Royal College of Art in London, while founding his own r&d consultancy to work with Google, Panasonic, and Disney. His Dentaku company created OTOTO, a circuit board-based synthesizer that can turn almost any object into a digital instrument, which MoMA acquired as part of their permanent collection in 2014.
Dubai-based Srinivasan received an MFA with Honors from RISD in 2007. Her work focuses on combing hand-blown glass with digital technology like sensor controls and remote tracking, resulting in sculptures and installations that have been exhibited around the world, along with custom pieces from her ChoChoMa studio.
The German-Icelandic duo Studio Bryhjar & Veronika explore storytelling and narrative through practices including furniture making and sound and video art. They have recently collaborated with Spark Design Space and Camper, along with shows at Fondation d’enterpreise Galeries Lafayette and other galleries.
Previous winners of the award include Fernando Romero, Ross Lovegrove, Asif Khan, Jeanne Gang, and Troika.
This year’s commissions will be shown at Design Miami/Basel from June 14-19.