Qatar Museums Supports RO Plastic Prize 2021
Qatar Museums have partnered with Rossana Orlandi for the third edition of the Ro Plastic Prize to challenge and inspire the design community to think differently. The best projects selected will be presented as Finalists during the Milano Design Week 2021 and will travel to Doha for an exhibition next year. SCALE will bring the best entries in the last two years to encourage participation in this culture of reuse.
Shown here is an art installation of Ro Plastics -Master Pieces as part of RoGUILTLESSPLASTIC 2019, the international project launched by Rossana Orlandi to stimulate the design community on the highly debated topic of plastic usage. This exhibition featured world-famous artists who created one-of-a-kind pieces using recycled plastic. This piece by William Amor is an art installation of spontaneous flowers between the museum’s railway. A bed of poppies, cornflowers, and wildflowers made from plastic bags, fishing nets, and abandoned ropes present a poetic signature: the metamorphosis of plastic pollution into precious products.
Since the invention of plastic, more than 8 billion metric tons of the material have been produced and more than half have been discarded or incinerated. This number is constantly growing: over 322 million metric tons are produced each year, and 8 million metric tons end up in our oceans. The Ro Plastic Prize, established in 2019 seeks creative entries in the categories of exemplary urban and public furniture design, innovative projects to help communities transform waste into wealth, and inspiring communications campaigns.
Ro Plastic Prize is an international competition founded and curated by the Milanese collectible design gallerist Rossana Orlandi and her daughter Nicoletta. The project was launched with an aim to involve design and creative communities all over the world to spur a new cultural production re-using, re-cycling, and up-cycling waste.
What makes the competition different this year is that Qatar Museums has announced that it is the official main partner of the 2021 Ro Plastic Prize and it is the first donor to undertake sole sponsorship of the Juried Prize, which will be presented on September 7, 2021, in conjunction with an exhibition at the Museo Scenza e Techologia Leonardo da Vinci for Milan Design Week. Her Excellency Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, Chairperson of Qatar Museums, has been named honorary president of the Prize’s international Jury.
The Qatar Museums sponsorship was made public in conjunction with a webinar preview of Milan Design Week on April 13. As part of the preview, H.E. Sheikha Al Mayassa announced QM’s commitment to the Prize.
H.E. Sheikha Al Mayassa said, “As museums are platforms for knowledge production and for inspiring individuals to find solutions to enhance the quality of their lives, it gives me great pleasure to announce Qatar Museums’ commitment to combine design excellence with environmental stewardship and sustainability in sponsoring the 2021 Ro Plastic Prize. I have had the privilege of working with the namesake of the Prize, the critical future thinker Rossana Orlandi, to support Doha’s creative economy with our exciting townhouse project in Msheireb Downtown Doha, the world’s newest and largest regenerative city. I am doubly excited that the winners of the 2021 Ro Plastic Prize will be exhibited in Qatar next year as part of our ever-growing commitment to sustainable programming.”
Her Excellency Sheikha Al Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, Chairperson of Qatar Museums, has been named honorary president of the Prize’s international Jury.
“I started all of this in 2018 with my daughter Nicoletta, moved out of the sheer desire to avoid feeling helpless in the face of the issue that the world was facing at that time: plastic,” Rossana Orlandi recalls. “I didn’t know exactly what to do, but I certainly knew what I didn’t want to do: simply be one more complaining voice. With passion, I dedicate myself to spreading the concept on which GUILTLESSPLASTIC is based: Plastic is not at fault. Instead, it is the abuse and misuse of it which have caused such profound environmental tragedy. Nicoletta and I began to involve the many designers who are friends of the Gallery as well as those who are involved in our work to demonstrate this idea by asking them to conceive of design with the reuse, recycle and upcycle of plastic in mind.
“We became increasingly passionate and excited and we wanted to do even more to involve as many people as possible. Enter the Ro Plastic Prize, an international award dedicated to creatives from all over the world with no age limit. The goal is to find, stimulate, and encourage the creation of design, social responsibility, and communication projects that could concretely become part of the solution to a real problem,” she said.
In 2002, Rossana Orlandi decided to abandon the fashion world that had been her domain for 30 years to open an art and design gallery that has now become a veritable mecca for design.
The different RO Plastics Prize 2021 Categories are:
- Urban and Public Furniture Design
- Responsible Innovation Projects
- Emotion on Communication
The final date for the submission of projects for consideration is May 25, 2021. To apply for this competition, click here.
The finalists will be exhibited in conjunction with Milan Design Week, which will take place from 5 to 12 September 2021. The final projects will be displayed in the Hall of Waste, one of the exhibitions of RoGUILTLESSPLASTIC 2021, located in the Cloisters of the Leonardo da Vinci Science and Technology Museum.
