March 19, 2018

“The way the bottom of my chair’s geometry forms a decagon from the circular sheets is my favorite element of the piece,” said grand-prize winner, Rachel Marie Thompson.

Formica Corp. has announced the top three winners of the FORM Student Innovation Competition. The contest provided students the opportunity to take on the original 2008 FORM challenge, where world-renowned designers and architects constructed works of art from Formica Brand products, creating something to “sit upon, lay upon, lean upon or play upon.” All three winners attend the Michael Graves College at Kean University in Union, N.J.

The grand-prize winner, Rachel Marie Thompson, was inspired by laser-cutting techniques and origami for her winning chair design, “Deflextion.”

“When designing Deflextion, it was challenging to calculate the precise angles of the different circular sheets so they could fit together,” she said. “I was determined to seek out a way to create a curvature form in a new and unique way.”

Kimberly Wheeler’s “Carrara Bellis” structural art design took second place for its creative interpretation of the material. According to Wheeler, her initial designs were linear and flat, but she decided to think out of the box and create the opposite of what is expected of laminate. The result was an organic form with petal-like shapes.

“I love the shadow play and negative space between the petals and how different lighting angles can project patterns around a space,” she said. “It gives the piece a little something extra and interactive.”

“I started this design with it initially looking like a cat tree,” said Wheeler. “I changed it again and again and again and worked with close to 20 different sets of laminates.”

The third-place winner, Sara Camacho, based her furniture design from the beginning on nature. Named the “Cebra Chair,” this piece began as a stack-laminated shape resembling seeds. The final piece offers the illusion of smoothness thanks to the way the panels of laminate are cut; the zebra-like pattern emphasizes that impression.

“Every step of designing the Cebra Chair was a challenge for me,” she said. “Luckily, the hard work paid off. I have several people to thank for that.”

“My favorite aspect of the design is definitely the playful, kinetic element created by the swatch colors,” said Camacho. “If you were to take a walk around the Cebra Chair, an illusion of changing color would be created right before your eyes. The thought of it just tickled me as I was working on it!”

Submissions from around the U.S. were judged by Melodie Leung from Zaha Hadid Architects; Rob Van Varick and Donald Strum from Michael Graves Architecture & Design; R. Roger Remington from the Vignelli Center for Design Studies and Rochester Institute of Technology; Raphaela Platow from the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center; and Renee Hytry Derrington, global design lead at Formica Group. Entries were judged on their use of colors and patterns, overall design aesthetics, the intersection of design and function and the project statement submitted by each student. The competition awarded a total of $3,000 in prize winnings to the top three finalists.