Pune: Gowtham Reddy, a student of the National Institute of Design (NID) won the best student project for his project ‘Osmos-the self-watering plant’ at the Lexus Design Award India (LDAI) that was held on the valedictory day of Pune Design Festival in the city recently.

He presented a solution for watering plants regularly without daily human intervention. His system can keep plants watered for a 15 days without allowing mosquitoes to breed in the stored water.

LDAI received over 700 entries from across the country for 12 categories. As many as 707 entries were received with 268 from the professional design community and 439 from students.
A paper boat by Elephant Design Private Limited received the packaging design and Design House Of The Year Award.

Two awards for jury’s choice were given to Akshaya Patra Foundation for their project on ‘unlimited food for education’ that provided wholesome lunch to over 1.6 million school children across India. PBK Waste Solutions Pvt Ltd won an award for ‘the daily dump-making waste visible and beautiful’. Design for the public utility was given to Venkataraman Associates for  redevelopment of a church street.

Saif Faisal won the design for the craft for a project on ‘Bidriware Collection’, Toile Indienne won the textile design for its collection while design thinking award was given to Greensole. Award for furniture and interior accessories was presented to Baro Furniture Collection by Baro/Siddharth Sirohi.
“We are absolutely thrilled with the outcome of the first LDAI. The volume and quality of the entries surpassed our expectations. The entries truly reflected the spirit of imagination, craftsmanship and design on which the Lexus brand is built,” said PB Venugopal, President of Lexus India.

LDAI was judged by a panel of design industry luminaries, chaired by Neelam Chhiber. LDAI will be held annually hereafter.