Two exceptional designs were honoured in the fourth edition of the DesignEuropa Awards held at the Axica Convention Center in Berlin. RemigoOne, the electric outboard motor created by Slovenian designer Ajda Bertok and engineered in line with marine innovation and sustainability principles, has won the Small and Emerging Companies Award.

The Industry Award went to the Full Automatic Espresso Coffee Machine, designed by Vittorio Bertazzoni, Matteo Bazzicalupo and Raffaella Mangiarotti for Smeg. This compact machine allows for the professional preparation of coffee in a simple and intuitive way.

During the Awards ceremony, the Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to Swedish designer Maria Benktzon. A pioneer of inclusive and ergonomic design and the first woman to receive this award, Benktzon has dedicated her career to helping others through design, in collaboration with Sven-Eric Juhlin. Many will remember her best for the non-drip coffee pot she created for SAS.

The DesignEuropa Awards, organised by the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO), acknowledge outstanding designs that are protected as registered Community designs (RCDs), as well as influential figures in the field. There are three award categories: Small and Emerging Companies, Industry, and Lifetime Achievement. The Lifetime Achievement category is reserved for designers with a significant body of work, developed over the course of a career, who have had an impact on the field of design.

The Chair of the Jury, the French designer Isabelle Vérilhac, former president of the Bureau of European Design Associations (BEDA), said:

We received nearly 700 excellent applications representing a wide range of industries from all over the EU. Consequently, selecting a winner was a very challenging task. The winners of this edition exemplify great design-thinking, sustainability and environmental responsibility on European design.The winning projects serve as perfect examples of aesthetics, emotion, functionalism, circularity and inclusion in design. They also demonstrate how design is a crucial business asset for innovative companies, both large and small, across Europe.

The Executive Director of the EUIPO, Christian Archambeau, declared:

The DesignEuropa Awards showcase European creativity, innovation and ingenuity at its best. Design is at the heart of Europe and we have two excellent winners who demonstrate the power of design. Europe’s designers and the design industry, including SMEs, contribute to economic, social, cultual and environmental development. Our Lifetime Achievement winner, Maria Benktzon, is a champion of innovative and inclusive design for everyday objects, and her inspiring creations have been featured in some of the world’s largest museums.

The European design industry
Over the past two decades, the protection of designs has been a game-changer for businesses. Design-intensive industries create 26.8 million direct jobs in the EU and contribute 15.5% of the EU’s total GDP.

The EUIPO currently registers over 100 000 designs a year, and has received over 1.6 million RCDs since April 2003, when it started managing this intellectual property right. Germany is the leading country protecting designs at EU level, with more than 347 000 designs in total, followed by Italy with 202 000. In terms of gender representation, a recent EUIPO report revealed that only 26% of the designs registered by EU-based owners in 2021 included a woman designer, below the levels of South Korea, China and the US.

The DesignEuropa Awards Jury, composed of well-respected professionals from the fields of design, academia, business and intellectual property, chose the two winning designs from a list of 8 finalists announced in June.

The winning design in the Small and Emerging Companies category: RemigoOne
RemigoOne is an electric outboard motor for boats. Designed by Ajda Bertok for the Slovenian company Remigo, the motor is lightweight and easy to transport and use, even for people with no nautical know-how. It is manufactured in Slovenia and suitable for all types of boats up to 1 500 kg. The design is guided by innovation and sustainability principles.

The winning design in the Industry category: Full Automatic Espresso Coffee Machine
Designed by Vittorio Bertazzoni, Matteo Bazzicalupo and Raffaella Mangiarotti, this bean-to-cup coffee machine allows professional preparation of different coffee drinks in a simple and intuitive way. It also features long-lasting technology combined with Smeg’s aesthetic line. The direct grinding of coffee beans avoids the use of capsules, minimising waste.

The Lifetime Achievement Award winner: Maria Benktzon
Maria Benktzon’s work focuses on bringing fine art sensibility into everyday objects that create better environments for all. An early pioneer of inclusive design, her creations – from kitchenware to personal hygiene tools – raised the standards for accessibility and functionality. She is the first woman to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award.

Benktzon’s iconic designs, brought to life in collaboration with Sven-Eric Juhlin, include the bread knife for Gustavsberg (1974), considered the world’s first angled knife, the Knork Fork for RFSU/Etac (1978), revolutionary at the time, and the Eat and Drink Plate, all of which are on display at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Another well-known design is the drip-free coffee pot she created together with Juhlin for Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) in 1987, which has been used in over 30 airlines worldwide, with more than 500 000 copies produced.

ABOUT THE DESIGNEUROPA AWARDS
The DesignEuropa Awards have become a firm fixture on the international industrial design calendar. The fourth awards ceremony took place on 5 September in Berlin, in collaboration with the German Federal Ministry of Justice and the German Patent and Trade Mark Office. Previous editions of the DesignEuropa Awards have taken place in Milan (Italy), Warsaw (Poland) and Eindhoven (the Netherlands). The Lifetime Achievement Award was also presented to André Ricard, designer of the Olympic torch of Barcelona 1992, Giorgetto Giugiaro, known for his iconic car designs, and Hartmut Esslinger, who is behind the designs that have characterised the Apple brand.

ABOUT THE EUIPO
The EUIPO is one of the largest decentralised agencies of the EU, based in Alicante, Spain. Ranked as one of the most innovative intellectual property offices in the world, the EUIPO manages the registration of the European Union trade mark (EUTM) and the registered Community design (RCD), both of which provide intellectual property protection in all Member States. It also carries out cooperation activities with the national and regional intellectual property offices of the EU and hosts the European Observatory on Infringements of Intellectual Property Rights.