One of the highlights of this year’s Design Miami/Basel was the expansion of the Designer of the Future award to incorporate four winners. Recognising creativity that forces us to challenge our understanding of design, the award celebrates new forms, new technologies, new processes and concepts, from designers who’ve covered a vast amount in a short space of time.

2008’s winners were Martino Gamper, Max Lamb, Clemens Weisshaar & Reed Kram and Julia Lohmann. Their prize was a commission to produce a new design work, exhibited at Design Miami/Basel incorporating concrete. Concrete was chosen in homage to the material of the Markthalle in Basel, where the final works were exhibited. Wool was chosen, given its diametrically opposite properties to concrete – providing ample room for experimentation in the designs.

The designs were also supplemented by a short video revealing an aspect of the creative process. But if you didn’t make it Basel, don’t worry, we’ve got them here too.

The video on this page shows the work of Max Lamb. The youngest of the winners, Lamb only graduated from the RCA in 2006 but has since carved a formidable niche for himself in the design art world, carved being the operative word. Driven by process as much by result, Lamb’s designs explore the properties of material, pushing them to their limits and encouraging a level of human interaction both in the process of making and using.

‘Solids of Revolution’ was the name of his Design Miami/Basel project and comprised a series of concrete and felt stools, turned on a lathe and worked into with traditional woodworking tools. Using autoclaved cellular concrete, which is five times lighter than normal concrete, Lamb was able to treat the material like wood, turning each block on a lathe to create a series of unique stools. To achieve a similar property from wool, Lamb compressed felt blocks together with different edged profiles to make three sets of three stools.

Kram-Weisshaar video

Click here to see Kram-Weisshaar's video

Martino Gamper video

Click here to see Martino Gamper's video