W Hotels Designers of the Future Award 2010 Winners Reveal Their Innovative Designs at Design Miami/Basel

As a reflection of its dedication and passion for innovation, W® Hotels Worldwide, the hotel category buster, has partnered with Design Miami/ to present the works of the 2010 W Hotels Designers of the Future Award. This alliance will allow Design Miami/Basel to expand the benefits that the award brings to the winners, including the chance for the commissioned projects to have a life after the fair through practical applications within W Hotel properties around the world.

The 2010 W Hotels Designers of the Future Award recognizes designers working in innovative ways - whether with new materials, new processes, or new approaches and gives the next generation of design creatives the opportunity to present newly commissioned work to a large and powerful audience.

The 2010 W Hotels Designers of the Future Awards winners were announced during Salone del mobile in Milan:

• Beta Tank
• Graham Hudson
• rAndom International
• Zigelbaum + Coelho

These four winners were chosen by a selection committee comprising Ambra Medda, Director, and Wava Carpenter, Associate Director, Design Miami/; Mike Tiedy, SVP, Global Brand Design and Innovation, Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc; and Marcus Fairs, Editor-in-Chief, Dezeen.com.

“Innovation is at the core of the W brand’s design philosophy,” says Mike Tiedy. “The work of these four winners represents exactly the type of forward-thinking design that W Hotels seeks to bring to its new and existing hotels around the globe.”

“W Hotels has been a design-led lifestyle brand and an innovator in its category from its inception in 1998,” says Eva Ziegler, Global Brand Leader, W Hotels Worldwide. “We are thrilled to partner with Design Miami/Basel and to be involved in identifying the cutting-edge works of these upcoming and emerging young talents and look forward to showcasing their work to a global audience at W Hotels.”

While the prize has always featured unique and groundbreaking design work embodying the most progressive attitudes of each year, this year’s award pushes the drive towards experimentation further than ever. Exploring design work created at the very edges of the discipline, the 2010 W Hotels Designers of the Future Award will look beyond pure product and furniture design to embrace conceptually and technologically vanguard work that bridges multiple areas of practice including art, sociology, and science.

When the W brand opened its first hotel in New York in 1998, it created a new era of hotel design and established itself as the clear leader in the contemporary lifestyle hotel space. Every W Hotel demonstrates a passion for cutting-edge design, rooted in its location and interpreted in a contemporary cool way that is brought to life through unique collaborations with upcoming as well as renowned third party and in-house designers. From the Ottoman-referenced glam of W Istanbul to the design inspired by the dual personality of the British man at the upcoming W London - Leicester Square (Fall 2010), each new W Hotel begins with a design philosophy formed by Starwood Hotels & Resorts’ in-house design team and is then fueled and delivered by a unique collaboration between the designers, architects, graphic designers, and the W brand’s Global Fashion and Music Directors.