Heineken, which is well-known for its successful bottle design experiments and deep involvement with the music industry and youth culture, is stepping into the interior design zone and is encouraging emerging designers to take part in development of a pioneering nightclub. The project, which was announced back in April, has been launched last week and will be open until August 14 for young and aspiring designers from New York City, São Paulo, Tokyo and Milan. The ultimate goal is to develop a state-of-the-art live concept club space, which will be unveiled throughout the duration of Salone Internazionale del Mobile 2012 in April in Milan.
The submissions to the ‘Heineken Open Design Explorations Edition 1: The Club’ project are accepted via a dedicated page on Facebook—entrants, who represent various design disciplines, are asked to upload a simple portfolio of their works and wait to be one of the 80 finalists (20 per city), who will be shortlisted by the coaching panel. They will be invited to present their projects in the PechaKucha at special parties, and around five designers from each city will be selected then to partake in development of the club space.
The winners will start working with renowned experts to “uncover insights from club life around the globe, exchange ideas with esteemed designers and challenge existing club environments by creating innovative design concepts that will be produced to become part of the club.” Starting mid-September, they will get down to work head-by-head with their coaches, celebrated experts in their industries, including Luc Schurgers, founder of MiniVegas (motion design) and Fabio Rotella of Studio Rotella (interior design), and will embark on a tour across various nightlife venues to get a deeper insight into the culture of clubbing and draw inspiration from the well-known hotspots for developing their own unique elements, which will be later used in co-creating the concept club space.
“This first edition of the Open Design Explorations provides a real opportunity for emerging designers to showcase their work on a global stage, outside the constraints of their everyday work, by being part of an exciting project with a wide-reaching cultural ambition. It is especially exciting as it is the first project in our new co-creation design program that will see us collaborating on a number of projects over the coming years. We have a progressive history of design at Heineken, illustrated by the fact that Heineken was recently recognized with a Silver Lion at the Cannes Lions in June and an iF award earlier in the year for our STR aluminum black light bottle. We are excited by the prospect of what innovations can be achieved through this program,” comments Mark van Iterson, Manager Global Heineken Design & Concept.