The Brief

Design and fabricate a trophy for Edinburgh College of Art's staff awards ceremony. The trophy should embody the values of the school and incorporate a sustainable material into its design. I completed this project as part of a small group.

The Research

Respect, Community, Valuable, Unique, Harmony

Through talking to clients and completing our own individual research, we identified 5 Key Words that we wanted our trophy to embody:

We then used these words alongside a semantic differencials research process to get a better understanding of how to represent these words through the form of our trophy.

We then identified the potential of using glass bottles as our sustainable material. This method of repurposing materials gave our trophy a unique selling point.

We started experimenting with the material in various ways as shown below. This included embedding the glass in concrete, plaster and even sanding down the glass into intricate gems.

Material Exploration

Final Product

A modern design, crafted using waste glass bottles to create a trophy that symbolises the importance of the beautiful, unique parts of a whole.

The hand crafted gems in the middle of the trophy symbolise the staff this award celebrates, and also act as a suncatcher when sat in the window. This allows the trophy to light up the room, just as the nominated staff in the category do on a daily basis for the university.

The main body is made from plaster, the plaque is the bottom of a glass bottle that has been sanded and engraved with the award winners name and gems are handing from a hand crafted silver chain.