Unique Christmas tree from the Bucharest Design Center

2013 was the first year when the Bucharest Design Center (platform for promotion of the product/industral design) participated with a tree in this Festival.

The Design Center noted that “we, the industrials in boots and T-shirts are fighting with the glamourous fashion designers”. They wanted to show that product design in Romania is worth your attention — and the only way they could get attention was to create a tree so spectacular that companies fought for it.

But how could companies fight for it? Make it modern, contemporary, make it create JOY — for a company secretary as well as for the CEO. Keep it simple, for the joy of Christmas is also simple and authentic. Make it design-ish, but at the same time don’t overthink it. Give it the light it needs from the interior, for Chrismas is about light and warmth.

The minds behind the tree were Anca Fetcu (designer, age 28) and Simona Buta, one of the founders of the Bucharest Design Center. It all happened in about 3 weeks — when they refined their project so that it brought JOY both to them and their sponsors, who agreed to provide their free materials, their work and their time — this includes Dupont (they used white corian as base material), Ekero Concept (local producing studio) and Forbes Magazine Romania (who helped them with local communication targeted to the business sector).

The president of the Save the Children Organization later told the Design Center that they are “of those artists who really understood the purposes of the event, not only created a designish object, but fullfilled the entire purpose of the event”.

Tech details: 2 meters height, white corian with colored poliester globes.

Its name is actually “Design Your Christmas! Colors suspended in corian”.

The result: Their tree gathered all the event and media attention and was auctioned with the highest score during the Festival, -6.300 EUR, which went to children who never have a happy Christmas :) The tree is now in a design-ish hotel reception in Romania — Privo Hotel, who won