Living Off-Grid: Design Competition Seeks Products to Promote Self-Sufficiency
Key Highlights:
- The Design Innovation in Plastics (DIP) 2024 competition calls for designers to create plastic-based products powered by alternative sources like solar, wind, or bioenergy.
- University undergraduates from the UK and Ireland are tasked with designing functional plastic products for either the domestic or sports and leisure markets.
- With a submission deadline of March 31, the competition emphasises creative design concepts over intricate mechanisms, and winners will be announced on July 5 after evaluation by industry judges.
Products that don’t require conventional power sources to function are being sought by the Design Innovation in Plastics (DIP) competition for its 2024 award.
Creative designers interested in working with plastics have been asked to design a product that can work off-grid, using anything from solar, wind, tidal, thermal, kinetic, or bio and mechanical energy sources.
The 2024 competition, which will be contested by university undergraduates all over the UK and Ireland, is asking them to design a functional item which is an original concept or a significant improvement on an existing product – and made primarily from plastic. The product must be aimed at the domestic or sports and leisure markets.
Students must submit their projects by March 31, when a panel of industry judges will examine the entries and choose their finalists. The award ceremony takes place on July 5.
Chairman of DIP, Martin Sixsmith, said: “This is a challenging but dynamic theme which will encourage undergraduates to make creative use of the versatility of plastics. We’ll be looking primarily at the design concepts rather than the minute detail of the mechanism of the product – but the mechanism does need to be feasible, in principle, based on research.
“There are plenty of ideas out there from which to draw inspiration. Some examples are highlighted on the entries page of our website, which students are encouraged to look at.”
Design Innovation in Plastics is the longest running plastics competition of its kind in Europe, having been established in 1985. It is supported by the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining, the Worshipful Company of Horners, and sponsored by design and plastics organisations, including Covestro.