Wabi sabi on the lakeside - interior designer of the year competition
Great expectations
Every year the Hungarian interior design association LOSZ - Lakberendezők Országos Szövetsége - holds the much awaited “Interior Designer of the year competition”. Participating designers and interior architects compete for the title in different categories like home, project and junior. While the first two categories include already realized projects, the latter is a fictional assignment, created for interior designers just starting their career.
In this year's event the organizers seem to have wanted to challenge the participants of the junior category quite a bit. Last year’s task was to design a 37m² bachelors condo about which you can read here. This year the assignment was the interior design and furnishing of half of a semi-detached house on a waterfront plot. 143,31 m², with a terrace and a balcony, four bathrooms and a photo studio.
To compete or not to compete
When I attended the first workshop for the competition in early September this year, I would not have dreamt of even finishing this project. Intimidated by the above mentioned requirements I hesitated for weeks, to start the project (very bad decision, looking back now). After having pondered the benefits and trying to estimate the workload that the task would require, I was still unsure, yet extremely motivated by the three workshops that were held by the LOSZ for the participants.
So after attending and working on the very exciting s/alon budapest exhibition, I decided to take part in the competition - with just over one month left until the deadline.
Needles to say: I did not sleep a lot in October
Wabi Sabi who?
In the process of designing the given house I started out with picking a style that would suit the environment and the owners requirements best. I quickly became fixated on the wabi sabi style.
Nature is very important to all three family members, so the wabi sabi style was a great fit. This concept derives from the Japanese philosophy that imperfection is what makes our world uniquely beautiful. Drawing inspiration from this for the furnishing of the apartment, I placed great emphasis on untreated and raw surfaces, asymmetrical elements and the use of natural colors, shapes and materials such as linen, wood, rattan, stone and clay.
In a next blog posts I will detail the designer furniture, local craftmanships’ work and contemporary local art that are included in this project.
Becoming a finalist in the interior designer of the year competition? - Crazy!
Finishing just in time (as expected), I submitted my project 15 minutes before the deadline on November 2nd. Then I slept for what felt like 5 days and proceeded to rescue my relationship from ending then and there, by finally talking more than three sentences a day to my partner again.
After nerve-wrecking two weeks of waiting, I could not believe my eyes when I read that I had made it into the finalists of the competition. This meant I would be eligible to be chosen for the title, but also that I was part of the community prize voting (vote for me here if you like my project).
