Title of the entry: »Tray« (1 CD ROM)
Name: Felix Stark
From: 50968 Cologne, Germany College: Ecosign, Akademie für Gestaltung Cologne
Field of studies: Product design, 4th semester

Abstract
»Tray« is more than a tray in the original sense of the word. Tray is also a bowl, a base, a presentation surface and a "furniture-object". This symbiosis of surface and container combines object and furniture, melting into the wall in seamless transition, and thus into architecture. Even if the form is plain and integer, Tray plays with the ambient room, and has an unobtrusive effect. [...] The modern manufacturing process allows here not only an adequate handling of resources and the highest possible efficiency, but also a novel interchange of form language which not only takes the latest technical possibilities into account, but also the way we see things today.

Panel statement:
"Tray" is upon first look literally this, a tray, and remains so when taking a closer look, but it is a tray with an expanded functional and completely modified aesthetic quality. A small circular mound of material rising organically from the surface with a integrated bowl shape offers a receptacle type of object, with a very special kind of appeal extending to the entire tray. The panel recognized this low-impact expression, the professional and restrained manipulation of standard ways of seeing things, which only becomes an emotionally charged event by efficiently utilizing the modern, three-dimensional coating technology with its continuous high-gloss surface.