GROHE, the world’s leading premium brand of sanitary fittings, announced the winners of its GROHE Design Series competition, a program targeting university students from the region to maximise their individual talents and capabilities in the field of interior design and architecture.
The program, led by Paul Flowers, Senior Vice President of Design at Grohe AG inspired dialogue and exchange with ALBA (Académie Libanaise des Beaux Arts) faculty and selected students during the successful launching event of GROHE SPA™, in February 2012, in Beirut.
Paul Flowers delivered a compelling presentation and kicked off the program with an exclusive workshop session. The idea behind the GROHE Design Series is to combine seminars with workshops that deliver compelling insights on the fittings industry whilst cultivating the talent of students.
The Design Series program is part of GROHE’s commitment to encourage, promote, and reward the work of young design professionals. ALBA students were the first ever to get the chance to design and develop projects, with the help of experts at GROHE, to generate progressive contemporary design ideas for bathrooms and kitchens.
Winner of the “40 under 40 Award” and plethora of international awards including iF, Good Design and Red Dot in addition to the prestigious Red Dot Design Team of the year in 2011, placing GROHE amongst the top tier design companies like Apple, Audi, Bose Corporation and BMW.
Paul Flowers stressed the importance of design and how it should be considered as an integral part of the overall business strategy saying: “Investing in design leads to the creation of added value and strongly contributes to building sustainable competitive advantage. Our focus is to generate consumer centric designs, which are implemented through our superior design and technology to create new experience with water. This competition has been a great chance to work with future designers to understand their way of thinking and support the future think-tanks of the region.”
Simon G. Shaya, General Manager & President of GROHE East Mediterranean, Middle East and Africa further added: “We are very pleased to have had the opportunity to collaborate with ALBA University. In the last several months, the process and close cooperation with the university has been extremely rewarding and paid-off with the selection of the winning team. We at GROHE believe in teamwork. Our fusion of innovative technology, inspirational sustainability and outstanding quality is renowned within the industry taking us from strength to strength with our very own in-house design team honoured in 2011 with red dot: design team of the year.”
The competition titled ‘Cultural Relevance of a European Brand in the Middle East’, gave students the opportunity to develop a home spa using the GROHE Allure Brilliant® range, part of GROHE SPA™ collection. After several months of interaction and discussion, the judging panel selected three students to receive a prestigious summer internship at various locations of GROHE, all expenses paid for as the grand prize.
Andre Bekhaazi, Dean of ALBA stressed on the importance of collaboration between global companies and universities stating: “ALBA’s trans-disciplinary structure makes the university unique in its region. GROHE Design Series provided our students with the opportunity to showcase their talents whilst competing for internationally recognized internships. We want to take this opportunity to thank GROHE for bringing the first ever Design Series to ALBA.”
GROHE Design Series created an environment where students were pushed out of their academic comfort zone to think outside the box with “real world” community issues. The course plan was designed to provide opportunities that engage and challenge students to maximise their individual talents and capabilities to succeed in and beyond their schooling. The course plan also provided support for the framework of broad learning outcomes that summarize the knowledge, skills, understanding, values and attitudes essential for all students to succeed in and beyond their schooling.
