NURA Wins the 2026 RIMOWA Design Prize by Redefining Mobility
The 2026 jury rewarded mobility without vehicles: one project addresses conversation, the other productive work on restored peatland.
Quick answer
Samuel Nagel and Paul Feiler won €20,000 with NURA, a forearm wearable proposing two-way communication between deaf and hearing people through EMG sensing, audible speech and visible text. Niklas Henning received the €10,000 special mention for Paludi Harvesters, an autonomous reed-farming system for rewetted peatland. The jury chose ambitious systems, not market-ready products; their value is the breadth of the mobility problems they frame.
NURA treats conversation as a mobility problem
Nagel and Feiler, students at Hochschule für Gestaltung Schwäbisch Gmünd, propose reading electromyographic signals from the forearm as a signer moves. The wearable would convert those signals into audible speech; in the opposite direction, spoken language would appear as text. Mentor Tim Richter, head of industrial design at Siemens Healthineers, supported the project through the competition.
The design argument is stronger than the current evidence of performance. Sign languages have grammar, spatial expression and facial components that forearm signals alone may not capture, while EMG systems require calibration across bodies. NURA's merit is to reject the appearance of a clinical appliance and to frame communication access as something people may choose to wear with pride. The €20,000 prize gives that proposition room to be tested.
- Designers: Samuel Nagel and Paul Feiler; mentor: Tim Richter
- Award: €20,000 first prize
A harvesting system for land that must remain wet
Henning's Paludi Harvesters responds to a practical conflict in peatland restoration. Drained peat can support familiar agriculture but releases stored carbon; rewetted ground is environmentally valuable yet difficult for conventional heavy machinery. His autonomous system proposes cultivating and harvesting reeds for insulation and roofing while reducing pressure on fragile terrain.
The project, developed at Hochschule Magdeburg-Stendal with mentor Stefan Daniel of Leica Camera, received €10,000. Its systems thinking is persuasive because it joins ecology, labour and a saleable material. Claims about climate impact, wildlife protection and farm income remain design hypotheses until field trials establish energy use, yield, maintenance and effects on a specific peatland.
- Designer: Niklas Henning; mentor: Stefan Daniel
- Award: €10,000 special mention
The result expands mobility beyond transport
The international jury included Stefan Daniel, Farah Ebrahimi, Konstantin Grcic, Matylda Krzykowski, Clemens Poloczek, Tim Richter and Hanne Willmann, with RIMOWA CEO Beatrice Monguidi as honorary member. More than forty institutions participated in the fourth edition, and the five other finalist teams were each due €5,000.
Our verdict: the two selected projects make a coherent pair. NURA asks who can participate in conversation; Paludi asks how work can continue when land use changes. The prize is most credible when RIMOWA funds that wider definition of movement without forcing a suitcase connection. The next editorial test is follow-through: prototypes, field evidence and user feedback matter more than another ceremony film.
- Seven finalists presented in Berlin on 11 May 2026
- Best next step: publish testing and user feedback from both projects
Frequently asked questions
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