Metropolis Magazine’s 2010 Next Generation® Design Competition, “ONE Design FIX for the FUTURE” is calling for entries. With this year’s theme, they’re looking for one design fix – in a product, a workplace, a city, a building, a landscape or wherever – that “in scale or as inspiration, can improve our future.”

So if you’re a designer who has been in business less than 10 years – or a design student – why not enter? Just think: Your idea might not only win, but with the $10,000 prize in seed money, you might actually watch it come to fruition.



The magazine started their Next Generation Design Competition in 2003 “to promote activism, social involvement and entrepreneurship in young designers.” (Note: It doesn’t matter how old you are, Metropolis only cares that you are new to the field. Their goal is to encourage fresh ideas from people who have not yet had the time or opportunity to make their mark.)

They say the diversity of past entries has been “stunning,” ranging from building design to waste disposals to energy solutions.

Last year’s winners created a unique way to harness wind energy. Check it out.

Herman Miller has been a sponsor of the contest for five years because it fits so well with our long-time sustainability philosophy, started back in the 1950s, when founder D.J. De Pree declared that the company would be “good stewards of the environment.”

One environmental “fix” Herman Miller came up with was to devote 50 percent of a facility’s property to green space. Over time, one fix led to several and now the company is on its way to becoming 100 percent sustainable by the year 2020.

See what one fix can do?

So if you’ve ever sat around the conference table with colleagues or the coffee table with friends and asked the question, “Why hasn’t anybody come up with a way to…,” maybe this is the inspiration you need to do it yourself. But don’t dally. Entries must be in by January 29, 2010. So think big – and fixate on solutions.

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