Department of Design

As part of the graduation ceremony of the Department of Design 2025, the Bachelor project «Memoscent» by Alissa Knopp, subject area Industrial Design, was awarded the ZHdK sponsorship award. The ZHdK sponsorship awards honour outstanding diploma projects that enrich the respective discipline with new perspectives and encourage new discourses in innovative ways. In 2025, 14 diploma project from the seven subject areas competed for the design sponsorship award. A jury – consisting of internationally renowned designers – decided on the winner. Due to the large number of outstanding diploma projects this year, the jury also awarded two honorable mentions: to Luca Busby & Basil Egger with their Bachelor project «Soma» (Subject Area Interaction Design) and to Nicolas Wagner with his Bachelor project «printed plants catalog» (Subject Area Visual Communication).

All nominated projects will be presented extensively on the platform Showcase Design from the end of september 2025.

«Memoscent – Biographies of Scents for People with Dementia» by Alissa Knopp

Short description «Memoscent»:
Nothing evokes memories as powerfully as a familiar scent. The sense of smell is the most emotional of our senses. This potential often remains untapped in everyday life with dementia. «Memoscent» uses specific, biographically relevant scents to promote trust, a sense of security and interactions and make it easier to settle into a care facility.

«The jury was particularly impressed by the depth and carefulness of your iterative design process: You brought yourself up to date on dementia research, worked with experts from the Demenzzentrum Sonnweid, repeatedly conducted workshops with your target group, identified the needs of the relatives, experimented with perfumers and finally, you have developed your own mapping method in order to tailor the scent samples to the individual biographies.» – Excerpt from the laudatory speech by Prof. Dr. phil. Sophia Prinz (Professor for Design Theory and Design History) at the graduation ceremony

The Department congratulates Alissa Knopp on the award!

Honorable Mentions

In her laudatory speech, Prof. Dr. phil. Sophia Prinz called the project «Soma» by Luca Busby & Basil Egger «[...] cutting edge research on alternative forms of computing which will bring both technological and ethical challenges».

Nicolas Wagner's research and design practice in his project «printed plants catalog» was described by Sophia Prinz as follows: «[...] the Jury was particularly convinced by the conceptual stringency of the «printed plants catalog». In your project, your go through the whole process of sustainable colour manufacture: Starting with historical research, planting and collecting plants in Altstetten or at a  motorway exit at Brunau, and ending with the preparation of pigments at your home. In addition, your idiosyncratic nomenclature as well as your consistent design breaking out of the norm. «printed plants catalog» is not only a book, it is a kind of an ecological colour archive of the city, built by human and non-human actors.»

The Department Design congratulates on the awards!