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- Design 1st Champions Sustainable Design at the 2025 ACIDO Rocket Awards
Design 1st Champions Sustainable Design at the 2025 ACIDO Rocket Awards
- Last updated :
- June 2, 2025
- 2026-02-21 12:18 am
As a Gold Sponsor of the 2025 ACIDO Rocket Awards, Design 1st proudly presents the Sustainability Award to Carleton University’s Benjamin Chinn for Hazina, a project that reimagines rural Tanzanian classrooms with locally sourced, play-based learning materials.
June 2, 2025, Toronto, Canada – We’re big believers in pushing the boundaries of product design, so every year we step up as a Gold Sponsor at the ACIDO Rocket Awards. It’s where Ontario’s newest industrial design grads get to show off what they’ve got—and the creativity and innovation on display always blows us away.
One way we give back is by sponsoring the Sustainability Award. This award highlights projects that think beyond the first prototype, considering the entire lifecycle of a product and how it interacts with the enviornment
Design 1st 2025 Rocket Sustainability Winner: Hazina - Interactive Play Station Using Found Materials
This year, the award went to Benjamin Chinn from Carleton University for his project Hazina: Learning Through Play Using Found Materials. In Tanzania’s rural schools, resources are scarce and kids face huge challenges. Hazina reimagines these classrooms by turning found, local materials into playful, interactive learning tools that fit seamlessly with what’s already there.
Why We Love It
Hazina isn’t just a creative twist on play—it’s a thoughtful approach to making education more accessible and joyful in tough conditions. Benjamin didn’t just design a product; he designed a better experience for teachers and students by working with what’s available, not fighting against it. It’s a perfect example of how industrial design can meet real needs with awareness of the environment, and re-use of materials.
About ACIDO and the Rocket Awards
The ACIDO Rocket Awards, run by the Association of Chartered Industrial Designers of Ontario, shine a light on Ontario’s best graduating talent. It’s a place where ideas come together, skills grow, and everyone leaves feeling inspired—including us.
You can view all ACIDO 2025 Rocket Winners and explore their innovative products here.
Congrats to Benjamin and to everyone who shared their bold ideas this year. You’re showing the world what design can do—and we’re all in.
About Design 1st
Design 1st is one of the most trusted full-service product design firms across North America, with a seasoned team consisting of diverse technical expertise, over 1,000 projects developed, and 130 client patents secured. From Startup to Enterprise, we enable companies to quickly scale capabilities throughout their new product development programs by leveraging our core competencies in industrial design, mechanical engineering, electronics engineering, embedded firmware, and manufacturing setup. Design 1st’s plug-in experienced team has helped clients transform their physical ideas into commercialized hardware products across a variety of industries and influenced millions of people globally. To learn more, visit www.design1st.com.
Media Contact
Joan Highet
jhighet@design1st.com
+1 (613) 620-3243
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