Golden Pin Design Award 2019, and the winner is...sustainability

Again this year, Livegreenblog has been taking an active interest in the Golden Pin Design Award and the Golden Pin Concept Design Award which concluded on 5 December with the awards ceremony in Taipei.
The 30 Golden Pin Design Award 2019 Best Design winners are comprised of 8 from the product design category, 9 from communication design, 11 from spatial design, and 2 from integration design. Taiwan-based designers took home the lion’s share with 17 Best Design winners, followed by China with 7, Hong Kong with 4, then Germany and South Korea with 1 each respectively.
This is the second year that the Golden Pin Design Award has presented Special Annual Awards championing circular design and social design. W Glass (designed by Kiwico Corporation and Spring Pool Glass), winner of the Best Design and Special Annual Award for Circular Design represents the holistic importance of recyclable materials, stemming from the designers’ consideration of the product’s life cycle. Likewise, Best Design and Special Annual Award for Social Design winner, The Guidebook of Marine Debris (designed by Taiwan RE-THINK Environmental Education Association and SimpleInfo Design) raises awareness about the need for action, closing the loop, and reducing waste that inevitably flows into our oceans.
Design for sustainability was the leitmotif of this year’s award ceremony that focused on the design industry’s role in implementing the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals under the theme “Gala @ 23:59”. The award ceremony’s creative director, Keng-Ming Liu (Founder and Creative Director of Bito) curated the entire event around this theme, from the key visuals (link) to the opening ceremony video.
In fact, the Golden Pin Design Award 2019 Final Selection jury, formed of 10 global design experts identified a number of design trends among this year’s winners, which emphasise the pivotal trend of circular design in response to the global environmental crisis. 
It was also interesting to see the trend of experimental renovation in architecture. For some time now in Taiwan, local institutions are working on programs to revive historical architecture, particularly from the early twentieth century Japanese colonial era. Many buildings from the era are made out of wood, which means they fall into disrepair much quicker than those built from brick or concrete, and are therefore in desperate need of preservation. Architects focusing on these renovation projects often bring their own contemporary touches to the architecture and interior design, which results in experimental fusions of the old and the new. A growing trend also outside the Chinese-speaking market. Golden Pin Design Award 2019 Best Design winner, JCA Living Lab is a century-old Japanese dormitory in Taipei, which was renovated by JC Architecture and features the design firm’s signature interior-exterior layers via glass interventions in the architecture. JCA Living Lab was also awarded Interior of the Year at the INSIDE World Festival of Interiors in Amsterdam (link Agnese). Golden Pin Design Award 2019 Design Mark winner, RiRo 26 is another Japanese dormitory built in 1940 and located in Kaohsiung. The renovation project was led by GCA studies and supported by the Kaoshiung City Government Bureau of Cultural Affairs. 
2019 was a winner in the sustainability stakes, but it also set a new benchmark for the Golden Pin Design Award and Golden Pin Concept Design Award.  The two awards received a combined total of 7,937 entries, which is a 5 per cent increase from the combined total number of entries in 2018, underscoring the importance of these opportunities for designers to measure up against each other.

Christiane Bürklein

Golden Pin Design Award eand Golden Pin Concept Design Award 2019
Find out more: http://www.goldenpin.org.tw/en/
Images: Courtesy of Golden Pin Design Award Group