Making the cut

HOW does the future look? Promising, if the winning entries from this year's Red Dot Award for Design Concept become a reality. Among them include City Firefly, a bicycle chain lock system that instantly turns into wearable safety gear for cyclists. The band, meant to be worn across the body, lights up at night, keeping the cyclist safe as well as stylish. Then there's

the Nude Coatrack, which attempts to strip things down to the bare basics. The flat-packed coat rack comprises six lengths of wood that can be assembled without instructions. The different pieces of wood are inserted into each other to form the rack, without the need for any metal parts. The production cost of Nude Coatrack is 50 per cent lower than other coatracks on the market.

Meanwhile, Animal Farm is a series of lamps designed with the twin themes of craft revival and the re-purposing of used glass bottles that don't make it back into the recycling chain. These upcycled bottle lamps take on animal forms, shaped from pieces of wood, made by local craftsmen in Karnataka, in South West India. By bringing this dying local craft and the cause of re-purposing together, Animal Farm tries to provide an ecologically conscious solution.