Pakistan’s YOCA wins big at world’s most influential design awards competition

Home couture brand YOCA and the Najmi Bilgrami Collaborative have won the prestigious “Gold A' Design Award” and “A' design Award in Furniture, Decorative Items and Home-ware Design” at the A’ International Design Award and Competition 2018 in Italy.

Architects Sarah Najmi Bilgrami, Zayd Bilgrami and Ahsan Najmi were honoured with two big awards — “Golden A’ Design Award” and “A' design Award in Furniture, Decorative Items and Home-ware Design” — at a prestigious ceremony held in Como, Italy.

YOCA and the Najmi Bilgrami Collaborative are the only Pakistani brands to win the prestigious awards which are deemed the most influential design awards in the world.

However, this is not the first time the home couture brand has been honoured by the A’ International Design Award and Competition. Last year, Yoca won the "Silver A’ Design Award" at the competition.

This year, the brands received “Gold A' Design Award” for the Gul Ahmed office design and “A' design Award in Furniture, Decorative Items and Home-ware Design” for their unity center table.

“To receive this recognition from such an innovative and internationally acclaimed awards competition for the second time is huge; most especially to win the most coveted gold award. We are humbled to represent Pakistan at a platform that essentially sets the tone for design excellence worldwide,” the architects said in a statement.

Further, Ziad Bashir, Executive Director Gul Ahmed Textile Mills, told Geo.tv, "We are delighted that Najmi Bilgrami won an award for their creative work on our corporate offices. We were always very happy with the result but winning an award recognises their whole team's collective effort and we look forward to working with them again."

The A' Design Awards is a premier annual jury design competition that honours the best designers, architects, engineers, design studios, brands and design oriented companies worldwide.

The awards highlight the excellent qualifications of best designs, design concepts and design oriented products worldwide in all creative disciplines and industries.

Award recipients are selected from thousands of nominated projects from around the world by an international jury panel comprising prominent scholars, members of the press, creative design professionals and experienced entrepreneurs.

Established in 2006, YOCA, or Young Collective Artists, is a luxury home furnishing brand that surfaced from the synergies between three architects — Zayd Bilgrami, Ahsan Najmi and Sarah Najmi Bilgrami.

The three founders Zayd Bilgrami, Ahsan Najmi and Sarah Najmi Bilgrami together bring with them a combination of inspirational creativity, seasoned industry exposure and academic design credentials from the coveted Rhode Island School of Design.

The three artists represent a second generation of experts, whose predecessors have to their credit the 35 year architectural practice, Najmi Bilgrami Collaborative Ltd (NBCL), where all three team members are also partners. 

With a firm understanding of architectural and interior design and scales, YOCA takes pride in producing unique pieces as their own with no compromise on aesthetics and design, the core elements for any piece of furniture.