Grand Prix Design 2024 for Paola De Martin

On the recommendation of the Federal Design Commission, the Federal Office of Culture (FOC) is honoring three people with this year's Swiss Grand Prix Design: the fashion designer and creative director Lucie Meier, the photographer and film producer Luciano Rigolini and the designer and design researcher Paola De Martin. The prize has been awarded since 2007 and is worth 40,000 francs each.

Paola De Martin was co-founder of the Zurich fashion label Beige and worked as a lecturer at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts and at the ZHdK. She completed her doctorate at the Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture gta at ETH Zurich, where she now works as a postdoc. Paola De Martin has been researching classism and other forms of discrimination in our culture for years. In her dissertation “Give us a break!” at Professor Philip Ursprung's chair, she dealt with the feeling of belonging and non-belonging in the Zurich design scene. The starting point was experiences that she had due to her social background from a migrant working class family.

“Here examination of norms, rules and structures is groundbreaking for design research,” writes the FOC. Paola De Martin expanded the classic profile of a design educator into a multi-faceted and influential personality. In addition, the jury writes, she contributes to many platforms on which design history is created and disseminated. “The themes of De Martin’s transdisciplinary work are groundbreaking and imperative today.”