Case Study: Bitpanda Hamburg Open 2026 — A Trophy for 134 Years of Tennis

Table of Contents

• The Commission
• The Design Challenge
• The Making
• The Object

The Commission

The Bitpanda Hamburg Open is not a young tournament finding its identity. First contested in 1892, it is one of the oldest events on the ATP circuit — 134 years of competition played on the same red clay, in the same city, before the same faithful crowd.

Its home, the Am Rothenbaum stadium, has stood since 1924. The 2026 edition marked the 120th running of the men's draw. The commission was precise: design four trophies that could belong to this tournament and no other.

The Design Challenge

Award design succeeds when it resolves multiple references into a single coherent geometry rather than illustrating them literally, and the brief for Hamburg arrived with unusual clarity: a vertical totem, its body built from irregular geometric facets, crowned by a form that could stand in for the stadium's own dome.

To build that meaning into the object without resorting to illustration or literal metaphor, we worked with designer Laura Talaya to identify three structural references that would govern every formal decision:

• The red clay surface that defines the tournament's character and pace of play
• The tensegrity roof of Am Rothenbaum — a system of cables under tension and rigid bars under compression that produces one of the most distinctive stadium silhouettes in European tennis
• The visual identity of Bitpanda, the tournament's principal sponsor, whose digital-native aesthetic demanded integration without dominance

The conceptual phase moved quickly — two or three directions were enough to fix the totem's logic — but translating that logic into a coherent 3D form proved harder: six successive modelling iterations were required to resolve facet angles and volumetric transitions across all four versions.

Four versions, one visual language.
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The Making

We produced this collection in polyamide — a nylon-derived material — through selective laser sintering (SLS), fusing successive layers of powder with a laser until each piece was complete. Custom trophies built from scratch around a single faceted geometry leave no room for a mould; the SLS process was the only route capable of matching the design's angular cuts across all four versions.

The key design decisions were resolved in sequence:

• Structure: a truncated-conical form, narrowing at the centre to emphasise verticality and produce an unmistakable silhouette
• Upper section: angular cuts and projecting volumes that translate the tensegrity roof into physical form — architectural in reference, precise in execution
• Colour gradient: deep cobalt at the base references Bitpanda's digital identity; red at the midpoint evokes the clay court; white at the crown captures the brightness of a Rothenbaum afternoon
• Four versions: Champion, Runner-Up, Doubles Champion, Doubles Runner-Up — each adapted in height and proportion, unified by the same formal language

The Champion trophy stands 50cm tall and weighs 4kg. The gradient proved the hardest stage to resolve: achieving a uniform transition across a body built from dozens of irregular facets, each catching light and paint differently, required repeated calibration until the colour read consistently from every angle.

The Object

Four versions, one visual language. A bespoke commission is not simply an aesthetic exercise — it is an act of institutional memory. When the final point is played and the crowd has left, the object that remains in a champion's hands should be capable of telling the story of the event to anyone who has never witnessed it.

A second version of the same design, reduced to black and white, remains on permanent display at the offices of Tennium, the tournament's organiser.

Four versions, one visual language.
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Request your custom trophy