Taipei International Design Award (TIDA), hosted by the Taipei City Government’s Department of Economic Development, has entered its 14th year, offering total prize money in the amount of NT$3.8 million to reward outstanding designers.

In addition to continuing the practice of previous years, where works in the three major categories of industrial design, visual communication design and public space design are solicited from designers from around the globe, we were faced with the continuous effect of the COVID-19 global epidemic, where people’s life and work patterns in the past year and a half have gradually revealed new daily patterns. Therefore, this year a special Social Innovation Award has been established, to recognize design creative and practical works with innovative thinking to solve the challenges and issues faced by society and cities.

In 2021, TIDA attracted 5,545 submissions from 72 countries/regions to join the competition. Once again, the number of participating works broke all previous records, with foreign works accounting for more than 70%.

The award recipients of TIDA 2021 were revealed on 4 November 2021, the grand prize, the Taipei City Mayor Award was presented to Mr. NK Kuo who is the founder of Forest Wood Archi-Tect and Mr. Yu-Hao Huang who is the founder of Curvink Architects, their winning work is 「Maker Space」which is a revitalization of monuments in Nangang district, Taipei City. They also won the NT 600 000 prize money.

In addition to continuously receiving major cooperation and endorsement from the World Design Organization (WDO), the International Council of Design (ICoD) and the International Federation of Interior Architects/Designers (IFI), this year, for the first time, TIDA cooperate with the German iF Design Award to jointly promote and commend Taiwan’s excellent design on the international stage.

The jury continued the well-functioning convener system and invited three well-known domestic design professionals, including Prof. Cheng-Neng Kuan, the Honorary Chair Professor of Department of Industrial Design Shih Chien University, Wing Kei Chan, Leslie, the founder of Leslie Chan Design Co., Ltd., and Cheng Chung, Yao, founder of T1 Design Co., Ltd. to respectively serve as the new conveners of industrial design, visual communication design, and public space design, to found the judging panel consisting of 23 design experts from different continents both domestic and abroad, including the United States, Germany, Austria, Lithuania, Czech Republic, Thailand, South Korea, Brazil, Spain and Taiwan, through rigorous evaluating system, the winners of the Gold, Silver, Bronze and Special Awards were selected from many outstanding works. In short, the Taipei International Design Award has been established into an iconic platform for the international design competition.

The full list of recipients is available for download.