(from left) AYDA chief judge of interior design category Lai Siew Hong, Nippon Paint Malaysia Group group general manager Gladys Goh, AYDA gold winners Shahmeena Labeeb (interior design category) and Ng Wai How (architecture category), IJM Land Bhd managing director Edward Chong, and AYDA chief judge of architecture category Ar. Sarly Adre Sarkum.

By NG PAU LING
pauline@thestar.com.my

PETALING JAYA: Asian Young Designer Award (AYDA) is celebrating its one decade and recently announced the winners for 2017 award theme “You for Tomorrow: Future Living as Envisioned Today”.

Shahmeena Labeeb from Taylor’s University and Ng Wai How from University Malaya bagged the Gold Award winners for the Interior Design and Architecture Category respectively, with submissions entitled “Plan Bee – A City Beekeeping Project” and “War Museum – An Extension of Tugu Negara”.

Both of them will soon be representing Malaysia to compete amongst 14 other countries in Asia for the coveted Asia Young Designer of the Year Award 2017.

AYDA was first launched in 2008 by Nippon Paint Malaysia with the aim to nurture the next generation of interior and architectural designers.

“AYDA is a ‘made in Malaysia’ design contest. Starting as a single country competition in 2008, AYDA has now grown to become a regional platform into 15 countries across Asia,” said Nippon Paint Malaysia Group group general manager Gladys Goh in the awards ceremony.

For AYDA 2017, the award theme “You for Tomorrow: Future Living as Envisioned Today” is tailored to challenge the foresight and technical abilities of young designers to anticipate the needs of tomorrow.

The theme encourages future forwards designs that promote green sustainability, community centricity, pushing design boundaries and individualistic.

“This year, AYDA has received over 5,000 student entries from more than 600 design schools, in which 1,109 of them are from Malaysia,” added Goh.

Shahmeena’s entry sought to repurpose an abandoned sites in Jalan Ceylon into a sustainable and commercially viable ecosystem that helps in conservation of bees to ensure that food chain remains undisrupted for future generation.

Ng, on the other hand, submitted an entry that aimed to preserve Malaysian history and historical monuments where the hard structure is purposeful, yet incorporates the ‘heart-and-soul’ elements into his project intent.

“IJM Land has partnered with Nippon Paint Malaysia for the past four years. In support of this initiative, we will provide six-month internships with IJM Land to both the gold and silver winners of each category,” said IJM Land managing director Edward Chong.

AYDA is one of Asia premier design competition platforms that reach out to 15 countries across Asia namely Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Thailand, Pakistan, Indonesia, Iran, Vietnam, China, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, India and Sri Lanka.