Design Projects
To give young designers a chance to get hands on experience and recognition in green design, we’ve been running design competitions and design projects with design students.
MaGiC Design Competition 2009 – Product from Waste
In 2009, we launched our first competition, in which designers started with materials normally considered to be waste – chopsticks, plastic foil, broken umbrellas, old jeans – and turned them into product prototypes.
- Our Design Interns Sport Aprons Later Given to Street Cooks!
Bring it Back Project
After the 2009 MaGiC Design Competition, we invited a diverse, creative team of design students from Tongji University and Shanghai Institute of Visual Arts to join MaGiC Experience. Six interns from China and Italy spent several months of 2009/10 in our green office researching, designing, creating, and finally showcasing a host of fashionable, practical products made from old, non-recyclable event banners – “bringing back” materials that would have otherwise been wasted and discarded. Click here to check out their project and see what MaGiC Experience can be, or watch the video below!
MaGiC Design Competition 2010
This design competition used fashion to make a statement that waste is a resource and a means to divert non-recyclable plastic from oceans, landfills and incinerators. Teams of design students reused soft plastics (which are difficult to recycle) to create prototypes of fashion items – bags, bicycle raincoats and home accessories. Zhang Jing Qiu and Tian Xue Zhu from University of Hong Kong took first place in the competition for the design for sandals made from plastic wrappers.