2022 PRIZE CUBES BY STUDIO NEWTAB-22

The creators behind this year’s beautiful prize cubes, celebrating sustainable aquaculture, is the London- and Seoul-based design studio newtab-22! Designers Hyein Choi and Jihee Moon are particularly drawn to natural, new or overlooked materials. They seek to bring these into modern life through innovative design through which they are suggesting possibilities for today and tomorrow, facilitating innovative experiments while following the aesthetically pleasing aspect of nature itself.

Material 'Sea Stone' - a sustainable material made from wasted seashells.

Every year, 7 million tons of Seashells are discarded by the fishing industry and by aquafarming. A part of this waste is then reused to make fertiliser, but the vast majority lies abandoned along shores and coastlines, creating smelly mounds or goes to landfill. Yet these shells are materials with high potential, which consist of over 90% calcium carbonate, containing similar to the one of what calcium carbonate in the limestone contains and seen as a valuable biomaterial.​Newtab-22 collect discarded seashells from seafood industries, and then shells are processed, ground and mixed with mineral, sand and natural binders following their recipe which have been developed for more than a year with hundreds of test. Ultimately, those mixtures can maximize the benefit of the materials, as well as textures and hardness.​ The 'material ‘Sea Stone’ proposes the use of discarded seashells to create environmentally and economically sustainable material rather than contributing to the world’s rubbish problem.​ The making method is currently carried out manually to avoid the use of heat, electricity and chemical treatments and ensure the process is as sustainable and affordable as possible. Source

The WIN WIN Award Prize Cubes has the basic shape of a cube, but each year it is made of a different sustainable material. One year it might be seaweed, the next volcanic ash, the year after that, recycled ocean plastic – and so on, until one day, sustainability is so ingrained in our collective behaviour that there is no need for an award. The prize cubes are created in close partnership with our visionary branding agency, Happy F&B.