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The Industrial Design studio won the NATIONAL AWARD FOR STUDENT DESIGN 2023
18. December 2023The Industrial Design Studio won the title of National Award for student design GRAND in a prestigious international competition. The awardee is a student of the studio, Jan Kaděra, and his bachelor’s thesis, dealing with the design of the HUGO adjustable wheelchair. Award-winning works can be viewed until February 15, 2024 as part of the exhibition Nový (z)boží in the České spořitelny Gallery at Rytířská 29, Prague 1 – Staré Město.
“My goal was to design a wheelchair with functional ergonomics that adapts to the dimensions of a child between the ages of 4 and 10,” explains the author of the award-winning work, Jan Kaděra. “I also incorporated a small box with tools into the design, which will ensure easy and quick adjustment of the individual parts of the cart according to the user’s requirements. In the design proposal, I emphasized practicality, longevity, variability and clean design.”
“This year was very successful for our studio,” says the head of the Industrial Design studio doc. MgA. Martin Surman, ArtD., who supervised the winning bachelor thesis. “In addition to winning the third Red Dot Award, which is awarded as part of one of the world’s most important design competitions, the Red Dot Design Award, we have currently added the highest possible award in the National Award for Student Design 2023, which is one of the most prestigious design competitions in Czech republic. At the same time, I am convinced that the award-winning design, which is technically thought out in detail and essentially ready for serial production, certainly has production potential, and I firmly hope that the product portfolio of the traditional Czech wheelchair manufacturer KURY spol. will expand in the future. s r.o.,” adds doc. Surman.
The award-winning design of the HUGO children’s wheelchair is visually successful and, thanks to a number of elaborate details, has a distinctive and original expression. Its design solution has a rational functional basis respecting ergonomics, technical parameters and production technologies defined by the manufacturer. The concept of a growing wheelchair intended for children between the ages of 4 and 10 with originally designed frame parts whose size can be transformed by mutual variable adjustment is certainly a financially and environmentally beneficial idea. In the author’s work, it is necessary to appreciate not only his careful approach and effort to find a visually and technically optimal and at the same time innovative solution, but also his communication skills, thanks to which he was able to realize his design proposal in cooperation with a leading Czech manufacturer.
“For the company KURY spol. s.r.o., which, as a long-standing manufacturer of wheelchairs, had the opportunity to collaborate with Jan Kaděra on the development of an innovative children’s wheelchair, I can say,” recalls Petr Kupka, CEO of KURY spol. s r.o., “that we were very pleased with Mr. Kaděra’s approach from the very beginning. We were pleasantly surprised by the fact that he very quickly learned the principles and rules of using wheelchairs and this already partially facilitated his work on the designs of the basic structure of the wheelchair. Cooperation and overall mutual communication was also facilitated by the fact that Mr. Kaděra acted as a designer, constructor and developer in one and was able to combine a functional and timeless design with the fact that at the same time he accepted the preservation of the correct ergonomics of the wheelchair user’s seat and other user characteristics. We are glad that young designers are interested in the sometimes neglected area of wheelchairs.”
author of the text: doc. MgA. Martin Surman, ArtD.