A $3100 chair, a peep show website and a new take on the barbell were among the winning Christchurch designs at the 2012 Designers Institute of New Zealand best design awards in Auckland on Friday night.

Christchurch design consultancy 4ormfunction won a purple pin - a supreme award - for its reinvention of a barbel, called the SmartBar, for Les Mills.

Les Mills and 4ormfunction, headed by David Lovegrove, developed an ergonomic design for barbells that speeds up changing plates.

The SmartBar has a head with retractable teeth at each end, that can hold up to three weight plates in place. To change plates the user pulls a release lever and slides them off, making it easier to change weights. The plates also have multiple grip options.

Judges described it as an "exceptional, international quality piece of product design work".

Christchurch agency Sons & Co won the interactive design supreme award for its Silo Theatre website design using a pink screen revealing parts of faces or protruding limbs on different landing pages within the site.

Treology, the new luxury brand of Christchurch family business Davies Furniture, won a gold pin in the product design category for its Umber chair. The smooth timber chair's design was inspired by the contrasting angles of the Southern Alps. It retails for about $3100.

The judges described the chair as a "beautifully proportioned and elegantly constructed piece of timber furniture that has the potential to go on to become a New Zealand design classic that would be passed down through the generations."

Treology uses ancient timber reclaimed from lakes and rivers to create bespoke pieces of furniture.

Other local winners included Strategy Design & Advertising, Luke Wood, Q Brand Agency, Alt Group, Matthew Galloway, and NV Interactive.

- © Fairfax NZ News

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