Formica issues call for 2025 FORM student design competition entries

Notions by Cali Pitcher from the Georgian College in Ontario, Canada, was the Grand Prize Winner of Formica's 2024 FORM Student Innovation Competition

CINCINNATI — Formica Corp. is accepting entries for its 2025 FORM Student Innovation Competition through March 7, 2025.

The eighth annual furniture design competition invites students studying architecture and interior design in the United States, Canada and Mexico to share their inventiveness through original designs that feature Formica Brand products. This year's theme is Designing for Well-being based on the rising understanding of neurasthenics, the field exploring how an environment’s aesthetics can impact mental and physical health.

Designing for Well-being will allow students to demonstrate how elements like color, sound and patterns can have a positive impact on one’s well-being. Students entering will provide a project statement and color rendering of their furniture design that includes at least three or more Formica Brand or FENIX products.

“This competition continues to grow each year — not just in the number of submissions but the sheer creativity we see from students,” said Meghan Howell, North American design and creative director at Formica. “While well-being is an evergreen idea, its importance has been increasingly emphasized by Gen Z and we’re excited to see how students can bring this mindset to furniture design.”

The grand prizewinner will receive a $2,000 cash award and their design will be fabricated and displayed during NeoCon 2025 in Chicago. The second-place winner will be awarded $1,000 and the third-place winner will receive $500. The top three winners will also be invited to attend NeoCon as guests of Formica Corp. for the opportunity to network with industry professionals and gain exposure to the design community.

A distinguished panel of industry leaders will judge the students’ work, with winners announced in early May 2025.

The current iteration of FORM is inspired by a challenge Formica Corporation held in 2008, when the company invited design greats — including Jaime Velez, Zaha Hadid, Michael Graves, Bernard Tschumi and Massimo Vignelli, among others — to create works of art from Formica Brand products. Their designs, which ranged from domestic pieces to conceptual sculptures, were then exhibited at the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati.

Visit formica.com/studentcompetition to learn more about the FORM 2025 competition, including complete competition details, resources and rules.

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Rich Christianson | President/Owner/C-Level

Rich Christianson is the owner of Richson Media LLC, a Chicago-based communications firm focused on the industrial woodworking sector. Rich is the former long-time editorial director and associate publisher of Woodworking Network. During his nearly 35-year career, Rich has toured more than 250 woodworking operations throughout North America, Europe and Asia and has written extensively on woodworking technology, design and supply trends. He has also directed and promoted dozens of woodworking trade shows, conferences and seminars including the Cabinets & Closets Conference & Expo and the Woodworking Machinery & Supply Conference & Expo, Canada’s largest woodworking show.