W Hotels Worldwide has unveiled the works of the 2013 W Hotels Designers of the Future Award winners. Now in its fourth year, the collaboration between W Hotels and Design Miami/ Basel gives emerging designers a global platform from which to showcase their work.
For the first time this year, the three winning designers were sent to specific new or renovating W Hotels to solve a particular design challenge or need. In addition to being showcased at Design Miami/ Basel, the works will later be installed at W Hotels in Verbier, Switzerland, Bangkok, and Mexico City.
“Design has been core to the DNA of the W Hotels brand since our inception in New York City nearly 15 years ago,” says Paul James, global brand leader, W Hotels, St. Regis and the Luxury Collection. “The W Hotels Designers of the Future Award allows us to work with the best emerging design talent from around the world, while providing a global platform of exposure for these young talents during Design Miami/ Basel and beyond.”
For this year’s commission, the winners-including Seung-Yong Song (Korea), Jon Stam (Canada) and Bethan Laura Wood (UK)-have unveiled their interpretation of the brief, entitled “Making Connections.” The goal of these projects is to deepen the appreciation for the distinct regional characteristics found in each destination.

Created for the W Bangkok, Seung-Yong Song takes inspiration from the fluidity and flexibility of the city’s street food carts. Song’s collection takes the street cart concept and transforms it into an adaptable object suited to the user’s needs and modified into various forms and sizes.
Designed for W Verbier, Jon Stam’s Claude Glass is an abstract timepiece that captures the landscape of the small Swiss village throughout the seasons. Stam collaborated with a local photographer to capture Verbier within a digitized black mirror-where one can speed up or reverse time by turning the object. This provides a medium for the ski resort to showcase the locale all year long.
Bethan Laura Wood’s Crisscross is a glass fixture created for W Mexico City and designed to evoke a cascade of floating flowers. The work takes inspiration from colorful markets, graphic displays of flowers, Aztec-meets-Deco architecture, and triple-relief Baroque detailing. Wood enlisted the specialist skills Italian artisan Pedro Myver and Mexico-based Nouvel Studio to create the globally influenced design.
