Brice Genre, Hanika Perez: A Coffee Maker for Nespresso

(jiří Macek) The winning project of the Nespresso Design Contest was a coffee maker that changes its appearance thanks to the heat of the water.

The task of the students’ design contest “Coffee Luxury 2008” was to explore luxury as a state of mind, an attitude towards life, and also as a permanent search for exceptionality and unique beauty. For the high quality coffee producer Nespresso (www.nespresso.com), the concept of luxury is of crucial importance, as is the company’s interest in design. That’s why the winner’s prize was not negligible: 12,000 Euros. However, three other projects were awarded the 2nd and 3rd prizes, plus an honorable mention. The jury had the task of choosing from 334 submitted projects; among the members of the jury, there were several designers who were guests of Designblok in the past: Konstantin Grcic, Ineke Hans, and Mattali Crasset. The president of the jury was this year’s honorary guest of Designblok - Alfredo Haberli.

The winning unorthodox and capricious coffee maker was designed by a pair of French students, Brice Genre and Hanika Perez, of the Université Toulouse Le Mirail. Their project was called “Untitled.” The water’s temperature creates shapes on a white board, which is the domineering part of their puristic coffee maker. It would be great to find it in one of the 117 unique Nespresso coffee boutiques, which provide both the environment of a designer coffee bar and the pleasure of first-rate coffee. One can find one of these boutiques on Pařížská Street in Prague.

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