Dangerous Designs First Round Winner

Paul Morgan, a building design student at Melbourne’s Box Hill Institute has taken out the first Dangerous Design prize of $500 cash – and is in for a chance to win the $10,000 Grand Prize or the social media voted People’s Sur(Prize)!

Launched in 2016, Dangerous Designs is an online competition created to promote the use of wood and wood products in sustainable design and to encourage the commercialisation of appropriate designs. It is sponsored by WoodSolutions, an initiative of Australia’s forest and wood products industry and supported by a wide range of professional organisations, including the Australian Furniture Association, the Australian Institute of Architects and Planet Ark.

Originally intended to be purely a student competition, the response to the concept from across the design community was so positive that Dangerous Designs was restructured to include both student and open categories.

Dangerous Designs is judged by a panel chosen from leaders in a range of design-related field, including architecture, exhibition curation, design and publication. One of the features of the competition is that it seeks to build bridges between designers, manufacturers, and marketers to facilitate the commercial production of items designed for Dangerous Designs.

The winning entry, Laevo Cross Apartments was a functional solution to a real-world problem – sustainable and lower cost housing. A building design student, when he entered Dangerous Designs, Paul is now employed by a leading architectural practice and looking forward to continuing study in architecture at Melbourne University.

“It was a great opportunity to enter Dangerous Designs," said Paul, “I am passionate about sustainable design and I think timber will be a large part of the solution for our built environment in years to come.”

“I would like to congratulate Paul,” said Eileen Newbury, National Marketing and Communications Manager at FWPA, “and all the other contenders in the first round of Dangerous Designs. I would also like to thank our judges for giving their time to the difficult task of choosing between a wonderfully diverse range of high quality entries.”

Entries for the second round of Dangerous Designs are now open. First round entries are available for viewing at dangerousdesigns.com.au