Surf Safe wins local Lexus Design Award
For the second year in a row, students from AUT have participated in the local Lexus Design Awards, with Lachie Douglas, a Creative Technologies student, winning for his entry 'Surf Safe', a GPS life-saving wrist band designed to assist lifeguards in identifying swimmers in need of help through the ability for the swimmer to trigger a distress signal by the press of a button. It also has automatic triggers that send an alert to the lifeguards in the event the swimmer travels outside the designated parameters.
Dr Yvonne Chan, Director and Associate Dean of External Engagement at AUT, says the partnership with Lexus has been invaluable for the students. "The partnership with Lexus New Zealand has allowed us to give the students a work integrated learning experience and industry perspective, through both their ambassadors Resident, and working with a commercial organisation. We have some amazing up and coming designers in this country, so it's great to be able to partner with a company that allows us to showcase them both locally and globally."
This year, students from the Faculty of Design and Creative Technologies studying Creative Technologies and Industrial Design will enter their amazing prototype concepts created around the global competition theme "Design for a Better Tomorrow".
Lexus New Zealand has entered all six student entries with Lexus backing into the international Lexus Design Awards competition. Finalists of the international Lexus Design Award competition will participate in a virtual workshop at Intersect by Lexus - NYC, receive one-on-one mentoring from world class design professionals, and receive $25,000 USD to complete their prototypes.
The Lexus Design Award AUT competition uses the same design criteria as the international competition, and is judged by Lexus Ambassadors, Simon James and Scott Bridgens of Resident, and a group of Lexus representatives. Resident's Managing Director, Scott Bridgens says "it's incredibly rewarding to mentor the AUT students and watch their ideas form into fully fledged concepts for entry into both the localised and global competition.
"From a mentoring and judging perspective, we feel privileged to mentor the students who can anticipate the needs of tomorrow and translate a sustainability-focused design making the world a better place" he says. "Lachie's design was one that stood out to us as being a product a nation surrounded by water could make a huge societal difference to the lives of Kiwis."
Concepts must anticipate a challenge of the future, address that challenge with an innovative solution, and captivate the imagination with its exceptional design. Lexus will provide cash prizes to the first, second and third place winners of $1,000, $500 and $300 respectively.
The winners were announced at a virtual awards ceremony broadcast from Palmerston North on 29 November. The winning concepts were;
1st Place – Lachie Douglas for his concept 'Surf Safe'
2nd Place – Andrew Lee for his concept 'Buddy'
3rd Place – Roxy Allnutt* for her concept 'Depth'
Lexus New Zealand has entered all six student entries with Lexus backing into the international Lexus Design Awards competition. Finalists of the international Lexus Design Award competition will participate in a virtual workshop at Intersect by Lexus - NYC, receive one-on-one mentoring from world class design professionals, and receive $25,000 USD to complete their prototypes.
