Artemide Hosts the Retail Design Institute: NY’s Annual Iron Design Competition

The Artemide Lighting Consultancy & Training Center and flagship store in New York
hosted Iron Design 2018, RDI’s annual competition in celebration of new design.

Iron Design features 4 teams of students from schools such as Parsons, Pratt Institute, and the Fashion Institute of Technology,
who work with industry mentors to create a unique design for a retail environment.

The student mentors included Jennifer Duffy for Macys, Lucy Goldberg from Lord & Taylor, Anne Kong of F.I.T. and Megan Gundrum.

The students, working closely with their mentors, had only 1 hour to work on their creations, which were presented to RDI members, event guests, and a panel of top industry judges during the event. Each team explained the inspiration for their designs, which were brought to life with renderings by IWD.

This year, the students designed a display piece for Sugarfina and their partnership with the non-profit organization Kiva. Kiva works to empower and uplift women in 83 countries around the world with small loans that can create a path to financial freedom. Kiva lenders crowdfund the loans to provide the tools necessary for borrowers to run their own businesses and make a living for themselves and their families.

Rosie O’Neill, the co-founder of Sugarfina, was present at the event to give an introduction to the projects and to help select a winner.
Rosie joined judges, Tomomi Marzan of Citi Bank, Rachael Shechtman from Story, and Ray Ehscheid From IA as they had the difficult task of selecting one winner from all of the outstanding student work that was presented.

The winning design will be produced and installed in Sugarfina stores, including their flagship at the World Trade Center in New York.

Artemide is proud to support the next generation of designers and to host this exciting competition and event!