On the 24th of May 2011, Becker celebrated its 75th company anniversary. During the celebration the awards were presented to the winners of the BeckerContest 2011. About 180 guests congratulated the winners with great applause when one after the other was asked to come onto the stage. Host Birgit Büscher, Dr. Ralf Becker and members of the jury recognized the young designers with a moving laudatory speech.

The winners were kept in suspense and only found out in the course of the event who had won one of the main prizes endowed with cash. All finalists were presented with a 1 : 1 scale prototype of their draft, which was ceremoniuosly unveiled. The three proud main winners are:

• 1st place: Chang Yu-Chih and Hu Tsuo-Ning with their chair “Type Y” (prize money 8,000 Euro)
• 2nd place: Tjark Rumohr with his slide “Kalle” (prize money 5,000 Euro)
• 3rd place: David Geckeler with his chair “Nord” (prize money 3,000 Euro)
• A special prize for the “innovative combination of materials” was awarded to Malte Licht and Gunnar Sören Petersen (prize money 2,000 Euro).

Overwhelming feedback

The chairman of the international jury, Prof. Dieter Zimmer, said, he had never experienced such a high
participation in a design contest. The jury examined with high diligence each of the 1,132 submissions
and then decided on the ten best. The awards will be handed over during a festive event on 24th May 2011 in Cologne - the evening before the international fair Interzum starts.

We were very impressed by the submitted ideas and would like to thank all participants of the contest.
Young designers from all over the world showed us that curved plywood is an excellent and versatile material to be used for modern product design.