Last night, the winners of the 2022 MullenLowe NOVA Awards were announced. The celebrated work spans disciplines, from spatial practice for climate emergency to films that reframe the perceptions of tower blocks.
The selection was made by a jury including Director of the Design Museum Tim Marlow, CEO of Colart, Dennis van Schie, graphic designer and previous NOVA winner Jahnavi Inniss and Jose Miguel Sokoloff, Global President, MullenLowe Group Creative Council.
Alongside the first prize, runners up and the Unilever #Unstereotype Award, which are decided by the jury, the YourNOVA People's Choice Award is voted for by the public (and this year saw a record number of votes!).
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Malu Luecking, MA Biodesign
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Malu Luecking, MA Biodesign
NOVA Award Winner
Malu Luecking, MA Biodesign
Landless Food
We are in the year 2050. Agriculture, as we used to know it, barely exists anymore. Our spectrum of natural flavours has been significantly reduced. This loss of agro-biodiversity not only endangers human health, but also the spirituality and cultural importance of culinary traditions. The project, Landless Food, proposes a regeneration of humanity’s food system by introducing a new family of timely flavours, based on microalgae, that bring our culinary memories back on the table. Landless Food presents six food objects as reincarnations of three types of lost flavours.
NOVA Runner Up
Talia Beale, BA Fashion Communication
To Trudge in Zundon
"The media often push negative perceptions upon blocks of flats, presenting them as a type of cabinet of curiosity for the poor, problematic and unconventional. It then stigmatises areas such as estates to be brutalist no-go zones, feeding into the ever growing class-war. There are many realities which exist within these concrete castles and this fact often falls short to gang affiliation presented through fetishised and traumatic imagery. This means other voices tend to not be heard.
Through art house film, I wanted to explore how this process of film making could subvert ideas about estates and specifically address new voices – specifically creative kids who live in blocks. I want to define a new avenue named ‘art estate’ film, where the focus is on communities from housing estates pushing the boundaries themselves of how blocks of flats and the stories within them can be represented."
NOVA Runner Up
Shao Qi Tan, BA Ceramic Design
In Flux
A design collection of porcelain sculptural installations that interplay with light and space.
In Flux is a material research that blurs the lines between the glaze and clay body. The design objective is to preserve a state of flux – the momentary movement of changing states – between fluidity and solidity. Through the addition of flux, alumina and heat, a series of viscous sculptural glazes and self-glazing porcelain bodies is developed.
YourNOVA Award
Antoinette Oni, M ARCH: Architecture
The Honourable Harvest
The Honourable Harvest is an architectural and land-use design project developing a Reforestation Institute in Kaduna, Northern Nigeria. Utilising indigenous construction methods and traditional materials, the design aims to accompany the reforestation efforts in the wider Sahel Region, West Africa. Through spatial design, resource planning and cyclical farming practices, this scheme revives climate-resilient local economies and customs that are ecologically restorative and culturally informed. The Honourable Harvest aims to promote reciprocity, respect and reverence for the living and non-living natural world.
Unilever #Unstereotype Award
Qiongzi Zhu, MA Narrative Environments
Her World: A Living Archive for Queer Connection
"Her World is a multi-sensory archive which documents the stories and philosophies of queer women and non-binary people. It acts as a response to the visual-focused world of dating apps that do not serve women, non-binary people and demi-girls, and leave them with the need for spiritual and sensual connection.
During a series of ‘art therapy’ workshops, the project compiled over 60 profiles which exhibited participants' inner desires, struggles and joys. Her World is an exhibition which showcases these profiles, it encourages the interactive exploration of love and connection between queer women and non-binary people."
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NOVA Award 2021
