Moderated by Phoebe Reilly

Idealists with grand notions of changing the world are always welcome in the Student Design Review, but it was the entries that achieved big things in small ways that most impressed this year's jurors, Charlie Lazor, Kali Nikitas, and Luke Williams. Such projects, which reflected what Williams called "thinking attention" to areas that have previously been ignored, included a robot that races past traffic to detect and put out fires in tunnels. The concept was so obvious the jurors were astonished it didn't already exist. Other intuitive designs that reached the competition's honors list were the Bold Cane walking aid and N-One wearable intravenous fusion pump, both of which turned objects closely associated with illness into stylish accessories.

Where last year's jury voiced concerns about the paucity of green entries, this panel thrilled to the plentiful display of social consciousness. Industry may respond to client and market demands, Williams noted, but "students see concerns that are on the horizon. They are very, very good at capturing the zeitgeist." A main preoccupation was conserving resources. Two solutions, each with a smart-home vibe, were the Hot Fridge, which transfers heat produced during the refrigeration process to a separate compartment for warming food, and the Janus Resource Awareness system, a hub that monitors in dollars the energy expenditure of every outlet and light switch in a home.

Despite the jury's admiration for earth-friendly gestures, however, it gave its top award to Trans-sensing, a whimsical experiment in human perception that translates music into an alphabet of colors and shapes. The jurors honored the project's depth of creativity, a quality they found in only a few other finalists (the Ta-Da collection of furniture that intentionally provokes anxiety, and the Fully Loaded Chair, made entirely of shotgun shells, were among them). Which is not to disparage the many visionary agendas on view. "After all," Williams asked, "if you can't come up with concepts in college that might save the world, what are you doing there?"

Phoebe Reilly is an editor at Spin magazine. She is a frequent contributor to I.D. and has also written for Surface magazine, and the New York Post's style section. She lives in Brooklyn.

View the 2006 winners.

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