American University of Sharjah (AUS) students won the top prize at the second edition of the prestigious ROCA One Day Design Challenge held at A4 Gallery (Alserkal Avenue), in Dubai on November 12. The competition was part of the Dubai Design Week. This is the second consecutive time that AUS students from the College of Architecture, Art and Design (CAAD), have won this prestigious national competition.

The AUS team of third year interior design students Reem Jeghel, Reem Elwazeer and Habiba Khalifa won the first place prize of AED 6,000 with its project entitled “Rethinking Red, Blue and Everything in between.”

The participants had to create a bathroom product that not only covered basic hygiene and sanitation needs, but also provided an experience related to wellness. The challenge focused on the redesign of traditional bathroom products to help users follow a healthy lifestyle in their homes. The proposal could include new features or functions such as the monitoring of body parameters, inspiring activities or the improvement of basic needs, with the aim of promoting healthy and wellness habits in the private bathroom.

The students explained their project:

"This project addresses the challenge people face in a fast-paced world when they want to take a quick shower while also maintaining a healthy lifestyle. A threshold is estab­lished by creating two vertical planes that control the tem­perature and pressure of the water. The glass plane has the control panel while the stone plane has seamless perfora­tions that are placed according to the human body. The energy of the steam coming from the water is used to control the temperature of the ground between the planes. The radiant flooring system ensures the comfort of people while changing the tempera­ture as the most body heat exchange happens at the feet."

Jury member, Kevin Mclachlan, Design Director of Interior Design GAJ, said:

“We all agreed on a clear outright winner of this year’s contest, chosen for its simplicity and real world product viability. It’s a simple solution to address the use of water against body parametric. The user controls are clear and offer many interesting possibilities. A well-presented project which has a simple idea for future wellness and water consumption.”

With over 170 participants from all over UAE, the competition was open to students and young designers from 12 local universities and up to 30 years of age.

Juan Roldan, Assistant Professor of Architecture at CAAD, said:

“Our students showed a professional way of solving the problem of a very open topic in a very short seven-hour time slot with a high quality graphic narrative. The final proposal was an elegant and smart solution for the given problem of the competition. Having won this competition against students and young professionals is a sign of maturity of our interior design program.”

The jury was composed of Victor Shoone, ROCA Country Manager; Sneha Divias, Sneha Divias Atelier; Laura Bielecki, Senior Interior Design Manager, Ellington; Kevin Mclachlan, Design Director of Interior Design GAJ; and Hazem El-Khatib, Managing Partner Design Design and APID Dubai.