Seats of Understanding
15th International Design Contest Trieste Contemporanea
Award ceremony and final exhibition - Winners of the Gillo Dorfles Award, 2024

The Trieste Contemporanea committee is pleased to announce the results of the fifteenth edition of our International Design Contest, a Trieste Contemporanea competition founded in 1999 by the Italian scholar of aesthetics and design Gillo Dorfles with the aim of showcasing the most original contemporary design offerings from the countries of Central and Eastern Europe.
2024 Award Ceremony will be held at Studio Tommaseo in Trieste (via del Monte 2/1) on Friday 28 June 2024 at 6pm, and at the same time the final exhibition of the contest, curated by its international jury, will be inaugurated displaying with the works of the finalists and the winning projects. The exhibition will be open until 31 July 2024. An exhibition catalogue will be published online.

The Seats of Understanding ideas contest is an initiative in line with the GO! 2025 – Nova Gorica and Gorizia European Capital of Culture 2025 project, in which the organising bodies of the two cities declared that they "share the same commitment: being the European Capital of Borderless Culture". Participants were asked to design an urban furniture and potentially iconic object: a seating installation, such as a functional bench, to be placed in both Nova Gorica and Gorizia, representing symbolic meanings related to the historical location of both cities.

The four awards of 2024 edition – for a total of € 10,000 – have been selected by the international jury of Trieste Contemporanea as the best proposals submitted on the theme of Seats of Understanding for their respective award area.

Linda Baissero (Croatia) wins the BEBA Award (€1,000) for the youngest participant selected. Her project "Flumen" is inspired by the two railway bridges in Nova Gorica and Gorizia, Solkanski Most and Ponte Ferroviario, which cross the river Soča/Isonzo and connect the two cities. The designed street furniture is a bench that unites the two shapes to represent the union of the two cities.

The new KATHLEEN FOREMAN CASALI FOUNDATION Award (€ 2,000), for the best project by designers born in Trieste, was awarded to Paola Pisani (Italy), who presented her project “Seidenstrasse” inspired by gelsibachiculture, a traditional activity in Nova Gorica and Gorizia that has historically made the two cities a point of reference for silk production and processing. Her "Seidenstrasse" – or Silk Road – evokes the shape of a cocoon, a place par excellence of metamorphosis, transformed into a community space.

The CEI Award, for the best project from a country participating in the Central European Initiative that is not a member of the European Community, was awarded to Drini Berati (Albania) for his bench “The Weaver's Seat” in which the use of local limestone recalls the shared Austro-Hungarian past, while the choice of beech wood evokes the elegance of the Biedermeier era. The curved shape, on the other hand, reflects the flow of the Isonzo river and symbolises the intertwined destinies of the two cities.

The Croatian group composed of Slavko Petek and Dora Mihinjač wins the GILLO DORFLES Award / FIRST TRIESTE CONTEMPORANEA Award for the best design in the 15th edition of the contest. Their proposal “Go sit” is made up of a series of metal tubes that represent the border that divides the two cities and the railway that runs through them. The seat is a continuous form that allows for comfort, but has a strong visual presence in space. The bench is made to be used from both sides, highlighting the two cities and their symbiotic relationship.

The projects of 11 finalists selected by the jury will also be on show: the group Cristiano Antonutti and Matteo Mizzaro (Italy), Davide Benvenuti (Italy), Azzurra Brugiotti (Italy), Denny Candotto (Italy), Cristian De Marchi (Italy), Doris Forsthuber-Miedaner (Austria), the group Mateusz Góra and Agata Gryszkiewicz (Poland), the group Jurij Ličen (Slovenia) and Taole Chen (Austria), the group Federico Morescalchi and Leonardo Pilati (Italy), Karol Murlak (Poland) and Paul Rajakovics (Austria).

The curators of the final exhibition are the members of the imternational jury panel of the contest composed by Giuliana Carbi Jesurun (Trieste Contemporanea), Barbara Fabro (Central European Initiative), Nicla Indrigo (ADI – Association for Industrial Design), Giulio Polita (architect and architectural historian) and Maja Vardjan (MAO – Museum of Architecture and Design, Ljubljana).
The fifteenth edition of the prestigious contest has been organised by the Trieste Contemporanea Committee under the umbrella of GO!2025 Nova Gorica – Gorizia, with the support of the Regione Autonoma Friuli Venezia Giulia, with the patronage of the Central European Initiative, the ADI – Association for Industrial Design and the City Hall of Gorizia, with the support of the Kathleen Foreman Casali Foundation of Trieste and the BEBA Foundation of Venice, and with the collaboration of the MAO – Museum of Architecture and Design in Ljubljana, the KCB – Cultural Centre of Belgrade and the Studio Tommaseo of Trieste.

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