MA Design Future Society student wins at the RSA Student Design Awards
Congratulations to Sandra Reith who was one of two winners of her brief at the Royal Society of Arts Student Design Awards.
After being recently shortlisted for the prestigious RSA Student Design Awards, we are happy to announce that Sandra Reith from Mannheim, studying on the MA Design Future Society programme, is one of the two winners.
Rebecca Ford, Head of Design at the Royal Society of Arts, said that for this year’s awards they have “undertaken extensive work to redefine what good design for social impact looks like. This has meant updating our judging criteria, panels and process, working towards making the competition more inclusive. Through a carefully developed selection of briefs focusing on pressing social and environmental issues, and by incorporating systems thinking and innovation alongside rigorous research in the judging criteria, we encourage students around the world to build their capacity to address whole population-scale challenges.”
Sandra entered the awards with her submission, ‘TRĒOW’, part of the branching out 2019/20 #RSAdesign brief sponsored by @johnmakepeacefurniture & @woodlandheritage.
TRĒOW is described as “a new material made out of small-diameter logs for value added end uses, leading to a strengthening of the local wood industry and an increase in domestic woodland in the UK.
The United Kingdom is a major importer of timber and timber products, according to forest Research. However, with the right management, a large part of the demand for hardwoods can be met from indigenous forests. Due to the long growing season, broad-leaved forests are less rewarding in the short term than fast-growing coniferous forests. To make broad-leaved woodland financially more attractive again, the project uses lower quality “thin” logs to produce a new material.
The aim of TRĒOW is to create a new sustainable and visually pleasing material with added value that replaces small-diameter logs typically burned as wood fuel in order to strengthen the local timber industry and to promote the growth of domestic woodland. Social, ecological and economic aspects are embraced with the aim to create more woodland for people and wildlife, increase the carbon storage and make broad-leaved woodland more profitable.
In cooperation with the organisation Grown in Britain, the small-diameter logs are harvested, processed into the sustainable material TRĒOW and then promoted.
