Rado Star Prize winner announced in Mexico City

At Mexico Design Week, against the backdrop of the year-long programme of events being held to celebrate Mexico City as this year’s World Design Capital, Rado has announced the winner of its inaugural Rado Star Prize Mexico.

As a partner of World Design Capital and renowned for promoting the work of young designers across the globe through the Rado Star Prize, Rado is uniquely placed to help local designers showcase their unique vision of sustainable design.

Under the theme ‘Design Inspired by Nature’, Ericka Edith Martinez presented her project – a new material – that impressed the judges and saw her win the MXN $100,000 prize and a watch from the Rado True Thinline collection.

Ericka’s project replaces the wood in MDF with corn leaf, solving two problems at the same time. Firstly, it means that fewer trees need to be felled to create this versatile industrial material, and it makes use of the corn leaf that is Mexico’s largest agricultural waste product.

The Rado Star Prize Mexico jury for 2018 comprised renowned Mexican industrial designer Jose De La O, Jaime Hernandez, co-founder of Mexico Design Week, Graciela E. Kasep Ibanez, curator and cultural investigator and Hakim El Kadiri, Vice President of Product Management at Rado.

Ericka joins a long list of 2018 Rado Star Prize winners following those already announced in the UK, Italy, USA and France, with the winners of the Taiwan and Hong Kong competitions still to be decided.

Learn more about the Rado Star Prize here