Brit Insurance Design Awards 2010

The third annual Brit Insurance Design Awards shortlist is on show at the Design Museum, London.  From Alexander McQueen’s last collection to the Hutong Bubble in Beijing, the nominations represent an encompassing and eclectic mix of innovative creations across seven categories: architecture, fashion, furniture, graphics, interactive, product and transport.

The exhibition highlights objects of beauty and social benefit that reflect the social, political and economic landscape of the previous 12 months.  Those with real-world relevance like the Worldmade Sport Wheelchair which shares the same product category as the urban Beehaus Hive and the Kyoto Box - an oven powered only by solar power costing just £3.50 to manufacture - show how some of the nominated designs could improve the way we live (and what a difficult task the judges had).

Antony Gormley chaired a jury - which included UK Wired magazine editor, David Rowan, and Grazia’s style director Paula Reed - that decided the category winners and picked the nifty foldaway three-pin plug as the overall winner.

Previous winners include Shepard Fairey, who won the 2009 awards for his unofficial Barack Obama poster campaign and Yves Béhar’s One Laptop per Child project, which won the inaugural awards in 2008.