-- Wilsonart Laminate Challenges Parsons’ Furniture Students; Winning Design
to be Displayed at ICFF and in Wilsonart Ad Campaign --

TEMPLE, Texas, March 2, 2005 – Wilsonart® Laminate proudly announces that Rebecca Lui, a junior at New York’s Parsons School of Design and a resident of Dix Hills, N.Y., is the winner of its Laminate Chip Chair Design Contest.  The contest challenged third year students enrolled in the school’s Furniture Design course during the fall 2004 semester to design a laminate chip chair.  This is in keeping with the theme of the Wilsonart advertising campaign, which features laminate chips in thought-provoking ways.  The winning chair resembles three laminate chips that are falling at increasingly steeper angles.  The hole at the top of the laminate chip that allows it to hang on a wallboard or fit on a chain is visible on the backs of the chair in Lui’s design.  Twenty-three   students participated in the contest. 

The winning design will be featured in the company’s May 2005 two-page-spread ad, which will run in Metropolis, Interior Design, Contract and Azure.   Lui will be credited on the ad and the chair will be on display at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair at the Jacob Javits Center in New York, May 14 to 17.  Lui also received a $1,000 scholarship.  Wilsonart hopes to make this an annual contest and is exploring working with other design schools.

Some of the interesting ways in which Wilsonart showcases laminate chips in it’s “Make a Statement” ad campaign each month include rock concert attendees holding lighters overhead in the configuration of a giant laminate chip, a wooden snow sled that resembles a chip and a woman receiving a facial with pale green laminate chips over her eyes instead of cucumber slices.

Wilsonart will showcase the work of all student design entrants in its online magazine, The Statement, during the month of May.  Please visit www.wilsonartlaminate.com/happenings/may to view the designs. 

Contest History

In 2004 and 2003 a different avant-garde laminate chip chair was featured in one ad each year.   After each ad ran, Wilsonart received numerous calls asking where the chair could be purchased.  “This got us thinking about what we could do to take the chair concept to the next level,” says Ron Gagnon, Wilsonart Vice President of Design and Marketing.  “We are interested in communicating to young designers who will soon be entering the workforce how exciting laminate can be and we thought this was an ideal project for them.  We challenge them to think out of the box and welcome their fresh ideas.” 

Contest Parameters

Students had to design a chair that met the following criteria:

• The chair can actually be built and work as a functional chair.

The chair design must incorporate the image of a laminate chip.   The image must be recognizable as a chip and can not be too abstract or artistically interpreted beyond recognition.

The body of the chair must use Wilsonart Laminate as its primary surfacing material and the laminate pattern(s) must come from the Wilsonart Standards Line.

Says Judson Beaumont, owner of Straight Line Designs in Vancouver, B.C., who fabricated the chair, “What I like about Lui’s chair is that it is more like a piece of functional art that you can sit on.   I was intrigued as a builder because the chair is all compound angles.  At first glance, the design appears to be simple.  Upon closer examination you realize that these intricate angles take a simple design to a sophisticated and complex plane.”

Wilsonart International, based in Temple, Texas, is a leading manufacturer of decorative surfacing products, including Wilsonart® Laminate.  The company’s laminate was a nominee in the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum’s National Design Awards.  For more information about Wilsonart Laminate or any Wilsonart product, please call the Customer Service Hotline at 800-433-3222, or visit www.countertop.com

# # #

LHA020405

	Chair designed by Rebecca Liu		Chair designed by Rebecca Liu