2024 Metropolitan Design Challenge

This year, the challenge took inspiration from Metropolitan’s Clean Floors program, a forest-to-floor quality assurance and environmental compliance program. The theme of the challenge, coined “Crafted with Conscience,” challenged participants to design an installation that gives both meaning and life to the phrase and incorporates Kentwood’s latest flooring designs.

Open to Ontario students enrolled in a post-secondary interior design program, the 2024 Metropolitan Design Challenge offers students the chance to win fifteen hundred dollars and have their design constructed and showcased at Metropolitan Floors’ booth (#710) during the Interior Design Show (IDS) from January 18-21 in Toronto, Ontario.

We are thrilled to announce the winners of the Metropolitan Design Challenge is Origins: Crafted with Conscience by Gigi Lombardo-Dybalski, Natalie Guberney, and Jenny Bae Huggon, of Sheridan College. 

Three distinct flooring products from Metropolitan’s Kentwood Collection were used to create layers of depth, guiding the audience toward the central point of the installation. Each panel is vertically mounted in multiple tiers to form a gentle arch over the world map. The overlapping lines in this design narrate the intricate connections we share with our planet and our communities, emphasizing the bond we share with the environment. The warm backlight adds clarity and represents the certainty of our collective existence with each other and the Earth.

IDS visitors are invited to place a pin on the map to show us where they come from. Our goal is to craft an interactive experience that presents a captivating visual statement, paying conscious tribute to our origins and the deep connection we hold with our environment.

On behalf of Metropolitan Floors, we would like to thank all the students who participated in this year’s Design Challenge. The entries were spectacular, your hard work does not go unnoticed. See you next year!