The 2026 Core77 Design Awards Emerging Technologies Winners (opens in new tab)

The Professional Winner in the Emerging Technologies category this year is The Anemoia Device by Cyrus Clarke, Nomy Yu, Melo Chen, Yuen Zou, Hiroshi Ishii at the MIT Media Lab. The Anemoia Device is a scent-memory machine that distills archival photographs into bespoke fragrances using generative AI, inducing anemoia—nostalgia for a time one has never lived—by engaging the nose in a way that most AI systems, focused on eyes and ears, do not. Users upload an analog photograph, which a vision-l...