As the design arm of the Smithsonian Institution, the Cooper Hewitt Museumconfers annual awards in ten categories, covering just about everything American designers can accomplish. The criteria are concisely – almost eloquently – stated as “excellence, innovation and enhancement of the quality of life.” Here, as elsewhere in today’s design world, it’s not enough to dazzle your fellow professionals.
While most of these honors name a particular field of design, three of them are open to just about anything we officeinsight readers may call “design.” And none are for single products or projects, but rather for sustained accomplishment (at least seven years of practice for all honorees, minimum of 20 years for Lifetime Achievement).
Each year, nominations are solicited from acknowledged experts nationwide, then selections are made by a panel of nine distinguished designers meeting for two days at the Cooper Hewitt in New York. While these ten awards cover a lot of ground, there is actually an 11th annual honoree, the recipient of the Director’s Award, chosen by museum director Caroline Baumann and her staff, which will recognize an individual or organization for “outstanding support and patronage within the design community.”
As in past years, all of these honors will be bestowed at the museum during National Design Week, scheduled this year for October 13 through 21. A variety of public educational programs – panel discussions, workshops and other special events for students, professionals and the public – will take place at the museum and at other sites throughout the country. These programs will be posted at www.cooperhewitt.org/events.
Throughout its history, and particularly this year, the program has been eager to honor designers whose efforts span more than one particular discipline – architecture or sculpture with landscape, for instance, or design practice combined with teaching and/or publishing.
And the current nationwide concern for diversity is also apparent in this year’s list of awardees, in which women slightly outnumber men. The choice of Gail Anderson for Lifetime Achievement Award and the unlikely inclusion of two women with the surname Kim among the ten honorees encourages those of us rooting for ethnic diversity among designers.
Lifetime Achievement: Gail Anderson
Anderson’s principal design field is graphic design, but she has extended the boundaries of that through more than 25 years of teaching and leadership at New York’s School of Visual Design, plus authorship of some 14 books about design and popular culture. She became known initially for her many earlier years as Senior Art Director of Rolling Stonemagazine and is now a partner in the graphic design firm Anderson Newton Design.
Design Mind: Anne Whiston Spirn
An award-winning landscape architect, photographer and author, Spirn is a professor of landscape architecture and planning at MIT. Her many books, other writings, and videos are dedicated to the integration of city and nature. For 30 years she has directed the West Philadelphia Landscape Project, which has won national and international honors for teaching people of all ages about the urban-natural interface and enlisting them in environmental actions.
Architectural Design: Weiss/Manfredi
Weiss/Manfredi designs fine environmentally sensitive buildings, of course, but it is especially notable for projects that integrate buildings with landscape, art and infrastructure. Its most prominent achievement to date is the Seattle Art Museum’s Olympic Sculpture Park, for which it won a design competition with an arrangement of landscaped planes ingeniously interwoven with a freeway and a rail line. At a somewhat smaller scale, its visitor center at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden integrates built volume into the planted terrain. Campus buildings at Kent State, Barnard College and the University of Pennsylvania are sensitively related to their sites and users. Like a number of notable female-male design partnerships (Venturi and Scott Brown, Williams and Tsien, Diller and Scofidio), Weiss and Manfredi are joined in marriage as well as in practice.
Corporate and Institutional Achievement: Design for America
Design for America (DFA) is identified as “a national network of innovators working together to improve their local communities through design.” This network comprises mainly groups of college and university students with faculty members, undertaking projects that may or may not fall within traditional definitions of “design.” DFA was initiated in 2009 by Northwestern University faculty member Liz Gerber and three of her students, and it now involves over 4,000 students, faculty, alumni and design professionals nationwide. Their efforts address challenges including healthcare, water supplies, voter turnout and sustainable development. Members have designed products such as a stuffed bear that helps explain medical treatment to diabetic children. It is indicative of our times that the jurors have interpreted “institutional” broadly in this case to include a present-day “network”.
Communication Design: Civilization
That’s right; the design studio’s name is Civilization. Founded in Seattle in 2007 by Corey Gutch and Gabriel Stromberg, the firm is recognized for outstanding graphic design that creates “meaningful connections,” often in support of progressive social movements. Civilization’s clients have included the National Head Start Association and The Nature Conservancy, and its work is in the permanent collection of SFMOMA. The studio won the 2017 Webby Award for Best Activist Website.
Fashion Design: Christina Kim
Kim is the co-founder and designer of the Los Angeles company dosa, which produces clothing, accessories and housewares. Its focus is on rethinking fashion-industry production and sustaining artisanal cultures. A principal goal is the efficient use of natural resources and creative recycling. The company engages local artisans and communities in long-term collaborations that draw on traditional handwork techniques, notably in Mexico, Colombia and India. Among Kim’s awards to date: she was named one of Timemagazine’s Innovators of the Year in 2003 and received an honorary doctorate from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in 2017.
Interaction Design: Neri Oxman
Probing the intersections of scientific research and applied arts, Oxman combines the roles of architect, designer, inventor and professor at MIT, where she is the founding director of The Mediated Matter Group. This experimental group explores the ways computational design, robotic fabrication, materials engineering and synthetic biology can advance the interrelationship of natural and built environments. Oxman coined the term “material ecology” to describe the study, design and digital fabrication of products from micro to building scale. The team’s work has been presented at the White House and the World Economic Forum and is in the permanent collections of the Cooper Hewitt, MoMA, SFMOMA, Centre Pompidou and other museums.
Interior Design: Oppenheim Architecture + Design
Founded in 1999 by Chad Oppenheim, this multidiscipline firm is based in Miami, with offices in New York and Basel. Its practice includes residential, retail, mixed-use and hospitality commissions worldwide, with projects to date in 25 countries. Inspirations derived from local resources and vernacular styles are subtly incorporated, and designs are sensitively integrated with their sites. Notable works include the GLF Headquarters in Florida, the Enea headquarters in Switzerland, and Ayla Golf Academy and Clubhouse in Jordan.
Landscape Architecture: Mikyoung Kim Design
Mikyoung Kim has brought a background in both design and sculpture to two decades of work since the founding of her Boston landscape architecture practice. The multidisciplinary firm’s projects blur the boundaries between landscape architecture and environmental art, with the objective of memorable placemaking and capturing the public imagination. Its works include: the ChonGae Restoration Project, reopening an underground river through Seoul, Korea; Alexander Park in West Palm Beach, FL, which combines sculptural forms with rain retention devices; and the Crown Sky garden, an indoor landscape at a children’s hospital in Chicago.
Product Design: Blu Dot
“Economy of means” and “a playful sensibility” are two objectives of the furniture produced by Blu Dot. Founded in 1997 by college friends John Christakos, Maurice Blanks and Charlie Lazor, the company is located in Minneapolis. Its mission is to bring good, affordable furniture to as many people as possible through the inventive use of materials, fabrication technologies and assembly methods.
