2026 Diplomas – Master Product Design

PRODUCT DESIGN

Omar Bassil – Esplanade

by Omar Bassil

Esplanade is an exploration of how a flat-cut piece of leather can be transformed into a slip-on shoe through folding, wrapping, gathering, and minimal joining using simple tools. Stripping leather shoemaking down to its essentials, form emerges through tension and wear. Referencing the carbatina, a Roman shoe typology constructed from a single piece of leather, the design adapts its pattern principle to a contemporary slip-on. While the construction is reduced to a few essential operations, the making process still relies on the expertise of leather workers and techniques specific to their craft. This approach yields a simple, relaxed, and enduring object as a reflection on craftsmanship and material honesty.

PRODUCT DESIGN

Ehrat Lee – Lightworks

by Ehrat Lee

Lightworks is a lighting system that gives images a fixed place in the home. Photographs, graphics and drawings are saved constantly but mostly stay hidden on phones, in books or in drawers. Built around existing industrial processes, a single UV-printed sheet of paper forms the curved shade, held by a lightweight aluminium structure and fixed with magnets. The lamp disassembles flat and ships inside its own print tube, the image rolled within. Available in three sizes, it turns each print into an illuminated object. Prints can be exchanged in seconds, from personal images to commissioned work.

PRODUCT DESIGN

Moritz Engel – CALYX

by Moritz Engel

CALYX is a minimalist climbing sandal. Designed for optimal hygiene and maintenance, it reduces the conventional mixed-material, climbing shoe to a textile-free exoskeleton. It is built around a durable rubber core with replaceable, wear-indicating Vibram soles and features "Debond-on-Demand" adhesive, which allows for resoling during use and separation for downcycling at the end of its life. While the sticky climbing shoe rubber soles provide the usual performance, a secure and adjustable fit is made possible by easily interchangeable laces. Thanks to its foldable and packable design, CALYX is ideal for the purist climber who strives for maximum feel and feedback with minimum weight.

PRODUCT DESIGN

Carl Johan Jacobsen – Vaev

by Carl Johan Jacobsen

Vaev is chair made from a simple rigid frame that supports a custom made net. Normally used for fences, this net becomes a seat providing comfort while maintaining a light and open expression. The combination of these elements creates a chair that feels visually light yet structurally defined, allowing light, air and rain to pass freely through it. Durable enough for outdoor use and subtle enough for interior spaces.

PRODUCT DESIGN

Carolien Janssens – Alpen

by Carolien Janssens

Alpen is a trail running vest designed for runners with breasts. A trail running vest is a lightweight garment used to carry water, nutrition, and equipment during mountain runs while fitting tightly against the body. However, current products continue to be engineered with a single body type in mind: a relatively flat torso. Even women's models remain a shrunk version of men's products, causing pressure points across the bust. This project starts from a feminine body geometry. Conceived by experimentation with paper modelling and the 3D pattern-making software CLO, Alpen offers a volume-creating front panel, a dual closure system that allows independent adjustment above and below the bust, and a dual sizing system combining torso size and bust volume, similar to bra sizing.

PRODUCT DESIGN

Finn Johnson – Draft – 2026 #1

by Finn Johnson

Draft is a sheet metal bicycle frame developed in collaboration with EPFL's Geometric Computing Laboratory. The frame is drafted from a flat pattern and assembled from six pieces of laser-cut aluminum. The shape is created through a computational tool that generates complex freeform geometry from flat sheet material. The bicycle is a medium to showcase this method, realized as a functional object for the first time.

PRODUCT DESIGN

Gunnar Kähler – Meadow Furniture

by Gunnar Kähler

Meadow Furniture sits directly in the garden, present in the wild green around it. Surrounded by tall grass and flowers, the objects belong to the landscape. Sun, air and rain pass right through them, reducing their impact on the ground and the plants below. The welded assembly of steel rods makes for a lightweight and resistant structure: easy to carry around or to leave in a favourite spot for the season. For storing the pieces during winter, the chairs and table stack onto each other for a shared footprint. Meadow Furniture proposes an interface for the untamed garden, where a quiet human presence is welcomed and the landscape is allowed to remain itself.

PRODUCT DESIGN

Wouter Kellens – SETA

by Wouter Kellens

As healthcare increasingly moves from the hospital into the home, patients are asked to accommodate complex medical equipment within their everyday lives. SETA is a home hemodialysis machine developed with NextKidney's dialysis technique that addresses this challenge by rethinking the relationship between treatment and the domestic environment. Functioning as a discreet side table when inactive, it unfolds into a complete dialysis station where all components are neatly organiseed. By reducing visual clutter and creating a more familiar presence within the living room, SETA aims to make long-term treatment feel less clinical and more compatible with daily life.

PRODUCT DESIGN

Xose Lois Piñeira – Stay Still

by Xose Lois Piñeira

Fatigue has become a background condition of contemporary life. While working environments tolerate resting in principle, they make it impossible in practice, with no room, nor object to perform it. Stay Still is a low chair designed for twenty-minute naps in productive environments. An injection moulded chair, it sits below standard office furniture height, holds the body in a position calibrated for brief conscious rest, and stacks flat when not in use. It is affordable to produce, avaliable and efficient, although its geometry is deliberatly purposeful, and generic enough to avoid belonging to a particular kind of worker. Stay Still assumes a culture of rest and productive procrastination is forming, and offers an honest object in return.

PRODUCT DESIGN

Paul Quentin – Drapé

by Paul Quentin

Convertible sofas are transformed from a seating area into a sleeping area within a living room. While the furniture changes function, the room itself remains unchanged, often leaving guests feeling both exposed and intrusive to the host's daily routine. Drapé addresses this tension by reimagining the sofa's backrest as a spatial element rather than only a structural component. When the sofa is unfolded, the backrest pivots upward to become a support frame for a textile divider. The quilt, typically used as bedding, is repurposed as a curtain that drapes from the frame, creating a soft wall between the guest and the surrounding living area.

PRODUCT DESIGN

Cody Ramseyer – 1/2 Round

by Cody Ramseyer

1/2 Round is a material-led exploration developed from a single off-the-shelf timber profile: a half-round wooden bar measuring 8 cm in diameter and 5 m in length. Through a process of cutting, joining, balancing, and repetition, this common construction material becomes a series of objects that exist between tool, furniture, and sculpture. Inspired by the straightforward logic of farm and workshop structures, the project investigates how a single element can generate a diverse body of forms while maintaining a coherent visual language. Rather than prescribing a specific use, the objects suggest actions such as supporting, containing, carrying, and separating.

PRODUCT DESIGN

Luc Reinacher – Feltform

by Luc Reinacher

Feltform is a series of upholstery pieces exploring wool felt, a material with roots stretching back to the earliest known textile traditions. Drawing on a wet-felting method practised by Turkish shepherds to craft coats from loose wool fibres, the project translates an ancient craft into a contemporary design practice. Loose wool is felted around flat stencils, creating hollow cavities that allow the textile to wrap around volumes without any cutting or sewing. The resulting cushions achieve shapes and surfaces difficult to reach with conventional upholstery techniques.

PRODUCT DESIGN

Julia Siebert Cáceres – abril

by Julia Siebert Cáceres

abril is a raincoat that transforms into a full rain suit for cycling commuters. Driven by environmental and economic reasons, urban biking is booming, yet increasing unpredictable weather remains a constant obstacle. Traditional rain pants are awkward to change into publicly, visually out of place in professional environments and are an extra piece to carry. Crafted from natural Ventile cotton, abril features a hidden leg extension in the back and a two-layer construction that protects critical seams while ensuring freedom of movement. abril blends watertight functionality with an elegant aesthetic, acting as a personal shelter that integrates socially and visually into everyday city life.

PRODUCT DESIGN

Diego Soria – Plano

by Diego Soria

Plano is a pair of furniture pieces exploring how simple, hand-operated actions can change an object's function. Made from Valchromat with aluminum and steel hardware details, the project consists of a shelf and a chair that transform through basic manual mechanisms. The furniture pieces can be used in different ways: either traditionally as a regular storage shelf and a relaxed lounge chair, or reconfigured into a small home office for light work, featuring a small desk and a task chair. Plano focuses on creating straightforward, adaptable pieces that let you easily adapte how you use your immediate space.

PRODUCT DESIGN

Hugo Von Hofsten – The Office Lamp

by Hugo Von Hofsten

What if, sitting at a desk, you had to build a lamp from what was around you? The Office Lamp is inspired by office objects that you can find on your desk. It is made from a 3 mm steel rod bent into a shape borrowed from a paper clip and connected through an eraser. The bulb hangs freely inside, suspended by rubber bands that hug the metal structure and connect to a socket modelled after a scotch tape roll. The Office Lamp comes in an envelope and is easy to assemble.

PRODUCT DESIGN

Timothy Widmer – Soft Response

by Timothy Widmer

Soft Response explores the emotional and tactile potential of soft materials through a series of liquid-filled silicone objects inspired by the aesthetics of soft robotics. Beginning from a fascination with softness and the growing popularity of fidget toys, the designer questions how tactile objects could encourage calmness rather than constant stimulation. Through material experimentation, this project offers a collection of soft, deformable forms that respond slowly to pressure and movement. Soft Response investigates how softness, fluidity, and delayed reaction can create soothing sensory experiences and proposes a new approach to tactile interaction within contemporary product design.

PRODUCT DESIGN

Motong Yang – Terms of Trade

by Motong Yang

From 17th century tea and porcelain to contemporary supply chains and social media feeds, China has been encountered through objects that circulate globally. These objects do not simply reflect this country; they produce ideas about it. Terms of Trade consists of lacquered cardboard boxes imposed with imagery assembled from export paintings, propaganda posters, and news media. By transforming disposable packaging with lacquer — a material historically associated with permanence, value, and decoration — Terms of Trade draws connections between crafts techniques and contemporary systems of circulation, asking how images of China are produced, consumed, and continually reconstructed.