3 X iF Design Award 2013 for Delphin Design

As many of you know we officially gave up reporting on private design awards a couple of years ago – for us the emphasis in such awards is more often than not too heavily biased towards generating income for the organisers rather than helping or otherwise furthering the designers and their works.

And as such don’t merit our support.

While some awards are obviously more honourable than others; we decided ignoring all would be fairest.

However as Angela Merkel continues to teach us: what is the point in clearly defining your position on something if you can’t alter it occasionally.

Especially for a design studio as congenial, convivial and charming as Delphin Design.

Sign by Delphin Design for Trendglas Jena (The tea lamp candle is in the base...)

At the 2013 iF Awards Thomas Wagner and Dirk Loff, aka Delphin Design, picked up product design awards for their S 160 and S 170 conference chairs for Thonet and their teapot “system” Sign for Trendglas Jena.

A well deserved hat trick of success for a design studio who continually produce high quality work – most recently of course their PS 07 Bureau for Müller Möbelfabrikation – but always remain just outwith the spotlight of public attention.

Launched by Thonet at Orgatec 2010, the S 160 and S 170 are families of multi-purpose chairs which can be used individually or en mass. Although in principle very simple objects the majesty of the S 160 and S 170 families lies in the carefully reduced, single piece seat shell. It’s not revolutionary, but has been realised by Delphin Design with an all too rarely seen ease and grace. More revolutionary is the mechanism that allows the chairs to interlock via the armrests. The result is a combination of technical innovation and clearly defined form that one has come to expect from Delphin Design.

We know absolutely nothing about Sign for Trendglas Jena other than what we have read on the website, and so can’t and wont comment any further on it.

The awards aren’t Delphin Design’s first ever success at the iF Awards. But three in one year isn’t the sort of thing that happens every 12 months.

The 2013 awards list features no Bouroullec, no Antonio Citterio, no Naoto Fukasawa, and just one mention for Konstantin Grcic

And three for Delphin Design.

Hence our congratulations.

As we said at the beginning, private design awards are not really our thing. As so often however we find ourselves on this point in a minority, and several of the truly international awards – such as the iF Award – have become established as industry wide indicators of quality and innovation. The industry looks at the winners and takes them as benchmarks. And that is what makes Delphin Design’s success ultimately so pleasing, it means their work has not just been formally recognised on an international scale in competition against similar pieces, but will now reach a much wider, specialist audience that may have been the case.

Which is the least it deserves……

Thonet S 160 by Delphin Design