@Toyota: LEXUS DESIGN AWARD 2023 Winning Entries Announced

Pavels Hedström began his career as an architect after earning his Master of Architecture and Extreme Environments from the Royal Danish Academy―Architecture, Design Conservation. He explores how to holistically approach existing ecosystems.

Jiaming Liu is an industrial designer who focuses on bringing fresh perspectives into people’s daily lives. He is currently exploring cross-cultural and sustainable design. He was born in China, where he completed his bachelor’s degree, and recently graduated with a master’s degree from Folkwang University of the Arts.

Temporary Office is a design team of Vincent Lai and Douglas Lee, graduates from University of California, Berkeley. The team has worked on projects crossing the boundaries of architecture, public space, preservation and product design. With a strong focus on historical research and precedent, Temporary Office seeks to constructively respond to the ever-changing needs of our environment in a rational yet playful way.

Zero Bag is a new clothing package with patterned paper detergents attached to water-soluble plastic. After receiving the clothes wrapped in a Zero Bag, wash both the clothes and the bag in the washing machine before wearing them for the first time. This reduces unnecessary packaging waste and removes any chemicals from the clothes.

Kyeongho Park & Yejin Heo are students majoring in industrial design at Hanyang University’s ERICA campus in the Republic of Korea. They are concerned about social and environmental problems and explore user-centered solutions through design.

Visionary and prolific, Karim Rashid is one of the most unique voices in design today. Over 4,000 designs in production, over 400 awards, and operating in over 35 countries attest to Karim’s legend of design. His award-winning designs include democratic objects like the ubiquitous Garbo waste can and Oh! Chair for Umbra and interiors like the Morimoto restaurant, Philadelphia and Nhow hotel, Berlin. Karim has created noteworthy designs for clients Method and Pepsi, furniture for Artemide and Vondom, brand identity for Citibank and Hugo Boss, high-tech products for LaCie and Samsung, and luxury goods for Veuve Clicquot and Christofle, to name a few. Karim is a perennial winner of the Red Dot award, Chicago Athenaeum Good Design award, Interior Design Best of Year Award, and IDSA Industrial Design Excellence Award. Karim is a frequent guest lecturer at universities and conferences, globally disseminating the importance of design in everyday life.

Born and educated in the UK, he started his career as a product designer in 1988 before joining Toyota Motor Corporation in 1994. At first, he worked in advanced design and in 2002 played a leading role in establishing and implementing the Toyota (Vibrant Clarity) and Lexus (L-finesse) design philosophies. After managing various projects in both advanced and production design, he was appointed president of ED² (Toyota European Design Development), where his team spearheaded various projects to define Toyota’s transformation to a mobility company. In 2018, he was assigned to the role of head of design, overseeing both the Toyota and Lexus brands.

As Head of Lexus Global Design, he seeks to define Lexus’ unique values in the form of a brand philosophy, incorporating a clear cultural reference to Lexus’ Japanese heritage and building a design direction that is relevant to users around the world. In his spare time he enjoys carpentry and is restoring a 100-year-old Japanese farmhouse.

Yuri Suzuki is an artist, designer and electronic musician. He explores sound and visual language through artworks and projects that examine the relationship between people and their environments, questioning how both visual art and sound evolve to create personal experiences. Suzuki has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally, including at Tate Britain, V&A, the Barbican and MoMA New York.

Central to Suzuki’s practice is collaboration―he has worked with various musicians including will.i.am and Jeff Mills, as well as commercial clients such as Google and Roland, creating music-based products and digital experiences that explore the relationship between sound and technology.

As a Partner at Pentagram London, Suzuki and his team work internationally pushing the boundaries between art, design, technology and sound, crossing the fields of both low and high technology.

Sumayya Vally is the principal of the award-winning architecture and research studio Counterspace. Designer of the 20th Serpentine Pavilion, Vally is the youngest architect to win this internationally renowned commission. With the Serpentine, she has initiated and developed a new fellowship program, Support Structures, which assists artists and collectives working at the intersection of art with social justice, the archive, and ecology.

In 2022, Vally was selected by the World Economic Forum to be one of its Young Global Leaders, a community of the world’s most promising artists, researchers, entrepreneurs, activists, and political leaders, and, as a TIME100 Next list honouree, has been identified as someone who will shape the future of architectural practice and canon. Having recently joined the World Monuments Fund, Vally serves on several boards through her interest in dynamic forms of archive, embodied heritage and supporting new networks of knowledge in the arts. As Artistic Director, Vally is currently working on curating the first Islamic Arts Biennale taking place in Jeddah in 2023.