Report on the IAUD International Design Award 2020 Presentation and Awards Ceremony

(The projected screen during the ceremony: the certificate of the Grand Award)

The IAUD International Design Award 2020 Presentation and Awards Ceremony was successfully held on December 18, 2020 Friday. This year it was held online due to the spread of the COVID-19.  It received appx.170 participants from 13 countries (USA, Argentina, UK, Israel, Austria, Greece, Switzerland, Sweden, Spain, Germany, France, Latvia and Japan) and was held smoothly by arranging simultaneous interpreters.

The IAUD International Design Awards were established in 2010 in order to promote and champion UD by recognizing and rewarding outstanding achievements and in particular products that ensure people of all ages and abilities can enjoy an active, independent and productive life. The number of the applications from various fields has been increasing every time and those applications are from various countries. The awards ceremony was held in Munich, Germany in 2017 and in Bangkok, Thailand in 2018 although it was online this year.

There were 67 entries from both within Japan and overseas. Carrying out strictly neutral examinations, the IAUD International Design Award 2020 Selection Committee selected 1 winner of the “Grand Award”, 9 winners of the “Gold Award”, 19 winners of the “Silver Award” and 35 winners of the “Bronze Award”.

At the ceremony, all the winners were announced in order from the Grand Award by Mr. Keiji Kawahara, the head of IAUD Joint Business Committee/ IAUD Executive Director/ Professor, Graduate School of Nagoya University of Arts and Sciences, Japan.

Mr. Satoshi Kose, Chairman, Board of Directors, IAUD/ Professor Emeritus, Shizuoka University of Art and Culture, presented the award certificates to the award winners.

After that, Dr. Roger Coleman, the Chair of the Award Selection Committee, offered his recorded messages: “In this year’s awards a raft of ideas, innovations and collaborations have carried Universal Design way beyond the kerb cuts and basic accessibility features that the early UD pioneers campaigned so strongly for. This has been done by putting users at the heart of the design process, turning a once top-down prescriptive practice, into one centered on collaboration and empathy.”

Also Mr. Masuda, Co-chair of the Selection Committee, commented: “I was surprised at the diversity of this year’s award-winning works and so I thought it is necessary to clarify this design award and reorganize the content of the application and the examination process. Also, we need to be flexible with the times.”

Then, other jury members also commented and celebrated the winners. The jury members are as follows;

After the citations, the Grand Award winner and all the Gold Award winners gave their presentations remotely. Their presentations were very informative and wonderful. We shared valuable time.

Please visit IAUD website for the details;
Announcement of Award Winners
Full Citations