The winners of the tenth edition of the National Design Awards were announced April 30 by the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. The recipients were selected from nominations submitted by a nationwide committee of more than 2,500 designers, educators, and others with links to design professions. Winners will be honored at a gala in New York on October 22.
New York firm SHoP won this year’s architecture award. SHoP partner Gregg Pasquarelli, AIA, says he and his firm are “thrilled to be recognized by our peers.” He stressed his firm’s collaborative and flexible process: “It’s not only about making beautiful design objects, but buildings that engage politics, finance, community, program, and materials in a new way.” Jury member Marc Tsurumaki, AIA, partner at Lewis Tsurumaki Lewis Architects (winner of the 2007 interior design award), describes SHoP as “one of the firms that is changing the contour and shape of the profession, both in its innovative integration of technology and project delivery and in terms of an economic acumen.” Projects cited by the jury included the Hangil Book House in Korea, the Porter House apartments in New York City, and Mitchell Park in Greenport, New York.
The interior design award was given to New York-based Tsao & McKown Architects. Partner Zack McKown, FAIA, says he is “honored and delighted,” adding that his firm “believes there are no rational boundaries between the design disciplines. The design of anything can benefit from an understanding of criteria across all scales and addressing a full spectrum of human needs.” While recognized for its interiors work, Tsao & McKown’s portfolio includes a range of projects, from a large public square in Singapore to a design for a transparent lipstick case. McKown says that his firm’s practice is always “interiors-centric, in that we often find that forms and thinking from the interior emerge on the exterior.”
This year’s award for landscape design was given to Oakland, California-based HOOD Design. Partner Walter Hood, ASLA, says he was “ecstatic” to be involved in “Cooper-Hewitt’s mission of bringing design to the public.” He says he is fortunate to have a practice that “has the ability to address questions of design within various communities, not just dealing with one group or set of environmental conditions.” This variety was represented in HOOD’s entry, which included a large park next to the de Young Museum in San Francisco, a small project under a freeway in Oakland, and an installation at MoMA. Juror Tsurumaki cited HOOD’s engagement of “underserved communities, dealing with neighborhoods, and issues of ethnic and cultural identity” as rare within the field.
Other award winners were:
- Bill Moggridge, lifetime achievement
- Amory B. Lovins, design mind (affecting design through research and scholarship)
- The Walker Art Center, institutional achievement
- The New York Times Graphic Department, communication design
- Francisco Costa, fashion design
- Boym Partners, product design
- Perceptive Pixel, Inc., interaction design (a new category that focuses on digital platforms)
John Maeda, president of the Rhode Island School of Design, chaired the jury. Other members were Stephen Frykholm, Michael Maharam, Marissa Mayer, Sigi Moeslinger, Monica Ponce de Leon, Ralph Rucci, Margaret Stewart, Marc Tsurumaki, and Michael Van Valkenburgh.
