Onisim Adriel Coptil, Romania, 2026
Nominator: Mihnea Ghilduș
Nominator's statement
I am pleased to nominate Onisim Adriel Coptil for BIG SEE Perspectives, a platform dedicated to identifying and supporting the most promising emerging talents in European design.
I have closely supervised Onisim during the development of his Bachelor’s thesis, a project centred on the idea of play as an instinctive human behaviour expressed through everyday objects. His work explores a simple but powerful insight: a child can transform any mundane object into a playful tool. Building on this, Onisim investigates how ready-made, non-playful objects can be creatively reinterpreted to spark imagination and interaction. Through this research, he developed a series of objects inspired by these spontaneous transformations — a broom that becomes a sword, a coffee table that becomes a wheel, an egg carton that turns into a handbag. His approach blends childlike curiosity with analytical rigour, producing a body of work that questions conventions, celebrates imagination, and opens new perspectives on how we relate to the objects around us. Now a Master’s student, Onisim continues to demonstrate exceptional creativity, conceptual clarity, and the ability to translate intuitive insights into sophisticated design outcomes. I am confident that he has the potential to become one of the most innovative and visionary European designers of the near future.
For these reasons, I strongly recommend Onisim Adriel Coptil for BIG SEE Perspectives.
LEARNING THROUGH EVERYDAY OBJECTS
My project aims to highlight the importance of curiosity, play and exploration in the development of children; it is an in-depth research on the role of objects and environments as formative forces in children’s evolution, as well as how interactions with these elements influence our cognitive and socio-emotional development in early childhood. My object collection’s purpose is to cultivate children’s curiosity and exploratory spirit, as well as to dissolve the barrier between play and real life. The objects - reinterpretations of household items or packaging, basic items that we encounter in our everyday life - allow for associations, call for imagination and encourage engagement in limitless play based on creativity.
Onisim Adriel Coptil
My name is Onisim-Adriel Coptil and I am currently pursuing my master’s degree in Design at the University of Art and Design Cluj-Napoca, specializing in product design. I create objects inspired mainly by mundane experiences, interactions with everyday objects and spaces – elements that shape our lives as well as my way of creating innovative products. In my designs my main focus is creating a unique encounter between the user and the object by introducing memorable, surprising, even humorous details in the objects that I create. I like working hands-on on my projects, from sketch to prototyping, to finding materials and, last but not least, creating the finished product, as the process of creating gives me more insight on how the finished product must work, feel and look in the end.
Contact
adriel.coptil.d@uad.ro
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