Best by design

It's touted as the biggest night of the Australasian design year - the Best Design Awards. Organised by the Designers Institute of New Zealand, the awards recognise thestrongest work produced across nine disciplines: spatial, product, graphic, moving image, interactive, besteffect, public good, the Nga Aho Award - which showcases multicultural design collaboration - and the freshly introduced user experience category. The winners were recognised last night in front of more than 1000 designers and friends at the Viaduct Event Centre.

CHROMATOSE

Product: Concept/experimental: Gold Pin

Designer: Mark Wilson

Digital meets natural with the Chromatose 3D printed plant. The organisms open slowly to reveal their colourful insides, and close quickly when touched, like a Venus fly trap.

CIRCUSLIGHT

Product - Lighting: Gold Pin

Design: Resident

Circus is a system of interconnecting rings, which can be arranged in sequence to create vertical decoration. Each solid brass ring projects a diffused LED light source outwards around a 360-degree plane.

AIR NZ TE TOHU

Design: Designworks

Nga Aho Award:Purple Pin

Product - Designed Objects: Gold Pin

Air NZ's Tohu began as a means to identify Te Reo-speaking cabin crew. But became more than simply a badge - it's a symbol to acknowledge the importance of Te Reo Maori to us all - and to champion its growth and prosperity into the future.

NOT JUST AN UDDER STOOL

Product: Sustainable product design: Bronze Pin

Designer: Carina Webb

In the dairy nation of New Zealand, Webb has developed a way to recycle Fonterra lightproof milk bottles, transforming them into stools. Showing that recycling can lead to something beautiful.

JRUMP

Interactive, Applications - Gold Pin

Design: Oddboy and Apparcanum

Four Kiwis got together to design the ultimate game: the premise: the year is 2017. Following Donald Jrump's successful bid at the 2016 election, international borders have closed, brick sales have increased. Donald Jrump has destroyed Earth and now, to conquer the Galaxy and make it great again, he needs to jump his favourite thing: walls.

BACKHOUSE

Product: Furniture: Gold Pin

Design: Backhouse

The JBW Armchair pays homage to the Backhouse founder, Joe Backhouse, drawing on his mid-century aesthetic. Rich in heritage, made with machinery.

Five artists to hear

ALAN IBELL

Ibell has long been interested in painting as narrative; a way to tell stories using figures to convey poetic or abstract visual experiences. His images are inspired by dreams, memories, personal anxieties and existential musings.

Sanderson Contemporary Gallery, today 11am.

RICHARD ORJIS

At times, bold and bright; at others, curious and unsettling, Orjis is always interested in exploring how everything might be intrinsically linked. He uses photography and sculpture to opens a dialogue with art, nature and sexuality.

Melanie Roger Gallery, today 11am.

STANLEY PALMER

Using a process that involves the engraving of bamboo sheaths, Palmer's prints are rich, multi-layered, earthy, warm and sensitive. New and selected prints feature in an Artweek Auckland four-day only exhibition.

Melanie Roger Gallery, next Saturday 11am.

LAURA WILLIAMS

The scenes in Arcadian Crumpet are nothing if not varied. Whether they look as if they they're having a "frolicking good time" or are wistful, almost melancholic, looking, love and yearning links the subjects of Williams' brightly-coloured folk art.

Black Asterisk Gallery, today 2pm.

JACK TROLOVE

Regarded as painter's painter, Troloves works are all about oil paint and its application. It is layered to create portraits you need to stand back and drink in to truly appreciate.

Whitespace Gallery, next Saturday 2pm.