The Italian Association for Industrial Design ADI has selected SDS faculty, Christian Schneider’s Art Object of Rather Critical Thought, YOUCRUX (design development by Arch. Federico Lardera), currently shown at the Salone del Mobile in Milan, to their 2014 election of “Best of Italian Design put into production” for the prestigious “Compasso d’Oro” 

Youcrux ® merges the icon of the Christian cross with typically contemporary design themes and concepts. The object is made entirely of ash wood and distributed in a compact kit that contains the instructions for use on the outside (with the slogan: “Fix up your cross on the wall”), and screen-printed on two MDF lacquered panels. Inside, the pack contains a pair of parallelepipeds of ash wood in different lengths, which form the vertical arm (stipes) and the horizontal (patibulum) of the cross. Once assembled, the three essential elements form a crucifix, to be nailed to the wall by means of three iron carpenter’s nails included in the package. The tablets are pre-machined with three countersunk holes, positioned where the stigmata would be in the original model. The intention of the designers is that the assembly of the pieces and the placement of the cross on the wall are a domestic and individual re-enactment of the Passion, which symbolically undoes the distance from the original event, turning “users” of the crucifix into “actors” in the first person. From the iconographic point of view, Youcrux® combines three models: cross without corpus of the Church Fathers, a painful Franciscan- influenced crucifix and a glorious Byzantine model.