Flap, the sound absorbing panel by Caimi Brevetti, designed by Alberto and Francesco Meda, won in the category “Small and emerging enterprises” of the DesignEuropa awards 2016, revealed yesterday at the UniCredit Pavilion in Milan.
The initiative - aiming at celebrating the excellence in the designs and models sector and organized by the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) in collaboration with the Italian Patent and Trademark Office – bestowed the “industrial award” on the jogging stroller Thule Urban Glide, produced and designed by Thule AG in collaboration with Veryday Design, and the “Lifetime Achievement award” on the Italian designer Giorgetto Giugiaro.
The president of the jury, Robin Edman, said: «Although it is the first edition of the DesignEuropa awards, the level of the competing projects was extremely high. Selecting the finalists was a difficult task, but in the categories Small and emerging enterprises and that of Industry there were two that stood out. Flap and Thule Urban Glide are worthy winners of a highly competitive sector, while the winner of the lifetime achievement award, Giorgetto Giugiaro, is a true legend of design».
In particular, Flap’s fusion of visual and tactile elements and its being a bridge between the industrial and interior design impressed jurors, who stressed also Caimi Brevetti «sophisticated and clever use of the DMC system», through its strategy for the management of the intellectual property.
Besides the designers and the industrial executives, at the award ceremony attended also the Italian Republic State undersecretary Antonio Gentile and the Baroness Neville-Rolfe, intellectual property Minister in the United Kingdom, in order to emphasize the importance of design in the EU economy.
According to a study carried out by the EUIPO and the European Patent Office, in 2013 the industries making intensive use of design have contributed for more than 243 billion euro of the EU's foreign trade balance, generating the 18% of GDP and creating 38.7 million jobs.
