A chair that is currently the centerpiece of an exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria has been nominated for an international award for ugly product design.

 

Lepidoptera, by Simone LeAmon, recently won the NGV’s Cicely & Colin Rigg Contemporary Design Award, which has a prize of $30,000.

 

 

The prize was judged by Dr Kees Dorst, Professor of Design at the faculty of Design, Architecture and Building of the University of Technology, Sydney and senior researcher at the department of Industrial Design of Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands.

But, questioning what is good and bad design, the chair is also one of 14 shortlisted designs for the ‘world’s first’ bad product design award, the Oops Design Award.

Established in disgusts of how the world is “overflowing with visually badly designed products”, the awards were created by the international group of product design specialists, including product designer Andrej Statskij, design journalist Magda Braun-Sommer and and product design historian Adam Hoops. Awards consider the ugliest, silliest and most useless product designs of the year.

2009 Cicely & Colin Rigg Contemporary Design Award is on display at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, Federation Square from Thursday 12 March to Sunday 30 August. The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia is open 10am–5pm, closed Mondays.  Admission to this exhibition is free.