Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum Director Caroline Baumann announced the winners of the 2016 National Design Awards, recognizing excellence and innovation across a variety of disciplines in 11 categories. Now in its 17th year, the annual awards were established to promote design as a vital humanistic tool in shaping the world. The award recipients will be honored at a gala dinner Thursday, October 20, at the Arthur Ross Terrace and Garden at Cooper Hewitt. 

Moshe Safdie. Image © Stephen Kelly

This year’s recipients are Moshe Safdie for Lifetime Achievement; Make It Right for Director’s Award; Bruce Mau for Design Mind; Center for Urban Pedagogy for Corporate & Institutional Achievement; Marlon Blackwell Architects for Architecture Design; Geoff McFetridge for Communication Design; Opening Ceremony for Fashion Design; Tellart for Interaction Design; Studio O+A for Interior Design; Hargreaves Associates for Landscape Architecture; and Ammunition for Product Design. 

National Gallery of Canada, the permanent home of the world’s most comprehensive collection of Canadian art containing over 130,000 square feet of exhibition space on two levels, seminar rooms, a reference library, an auditorium, two restaurants, a bookstore, and a major curatorial and conservation wing (Ottawa, Canada, 1988). Image © Malak

''The National Design Awards are a vibrant component of Cooper Hewitt's education arm through which the museum engages year round with design lovers of all ages across the United States and throughout the world,” Baumann said. “This year's class of winners reflect design's remarkable empathy for contemporary social concerns: from promoting workplace productivity to preserving vernacular traditions to encouraging civic engagement. These designers and design firms cross disciplinary boundaries, explore innovative materials and develop new models of problem-solving in pursuit of these goals.'' 

Director’s Award: Make It Right 

Exterior of Make It Right’s first home, a 1,780-square-foot duplex with LEED Platinum certification (New Orleans, Louisiana, 2012). Architects: Frank Gehry and Gehry Partners. Image © Chad Chenier

Founded by Brad Pitt in 2007, Make It Right is a nonprofit organization that builds homes, buildings and communities for people in need. All Make It Right projects are LEED Platinum certified and Cradle to Cradle inspired to meet the highest standards of green building. 

Design Mind: Bruce Mau 

Bruce Mau. Image © Dave Gillespie

Bruce Mau is a world-renowned visionary, innovator, author and designer, now living in Evanston, Ill. Twenty-five years in the business of design gave Mau the practical and holistic insights to establish his consulting firm Massive Change Network in 2010.

Bruce Mau Loves Books, an installation of 200 books authored and/or designed by Mau as part of the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s 2014 Work on What You Love: Bruce Mau Rethinking Design exhibition (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 2014; Books: 1985–present). Various clients and collaborators. Image © Timothy Tiebout, courtesy of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

In doing so, he laid the foundation for the new discipline of enterprise design, successfully applying his design thinking methodology to economic, cultural, governmental, environmental and social change for internationally celebrated designers, leading companies and countries around the world. 

Corporate & Institutional Achievement: Center for Urban Pedagogy 

Sewer in a Suitcase, a workshop tool and working model of New York City’s combined sewer system that demystifies the hidden workings of the city’s water infrastructure by following the journey water takes beyond the drain and allowing participants to explore what this mean for their health and environment (New York, New York, 2010). Project partners: Chris Specce, Rachel Gottlieb, Damien Correll, and Kate Zidar. Image © The Center for Urban Pedagogy

The Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP) is a New York City-based nonprofit organization that uses the power of design and art to increase meaningful civic engagement, particularly among historically underrepresented communities. Founded in 2001, CUP’s work addresses the need of communities struggling to understand the complex public policies and decision- making processes that impact their lives, from affordable housing to labor rights. 

Architecture Design: Marlon Blackwell Architects 

Marlon Blackwell. Image © Mark Jackson/CHROMA

Marlon Blackwell is one of the nation’s most respected regional modernist architects. His Fayetteville, Ark.-based practice, Marlon Blackwell Architects, combines vernacular traditions with rigorous formalism to create architecture that responds to the physical and cultural eccentricities of a place. In addition to his professional practice, Blackwell serves as the E. Fay Jones Distinguished Professor at the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design at the University of Arkansas. 

Saint Nicholas Eastern Orthodox Church (Springdale, Arkansas, 2010). Image © Timothy Hursley

Blessings Golf Clubhouse (Johnson, Arkansas, 2005). Image © Timothy Hursley

Communication Design: Geoff McFetridge 

Geoff McFetridge. Image © Erik Schaetzke

Geoff McFetridge is a graphic designer and artist based in Los Angeles. Through his design studio, Champion Graphics, McFetridge has created works for international brands, Hollywood films and local bike shops that have a uniquely human touch. He has taken a singular and entrepreneurial approach to design that values looking inward more than problem solving. 

In The Mind, Seattle Art Museum Olympic Sculpture Park Pavilion, an installation consisting of an oversized bulletin board made up of posters fabricated out of bent plywood and then painted, a large horn amplifying the visitor’s voice, a poster serving as a secret door leading into a room with two small books encasing screens playing a series of animations of fantastical scenes within McFetridge’s studio (Seattle, Washington, 2008). Image © Andrew Paynter

Warby Parker mural, a mural transforming the store facade (Venice, California, 2015). Image © Warby Parker

Fashion Design: Opening Ceremony 

Carol Lim and Humberto Leon. Image © Sebastian Kim

Carol Lim and Humberto Leon founded Opening Ceremony in 2002, with the idea of bringing their love of travel and fashion to a concept boutique. The company has grown to encompass the Opening Ceremony ready-to-wear, accessories and footwear collections for men and women; retail outlets in New York, Los Angeles, Nagoya and Tokyo; a wholesale showroom in New York; and a comprehensive online platform at openingceremony.us

Spring/summer 2016 campaign (New York, New York, 2016). Image © Hart+Lëshkina

Interaction Design: Tellart 

Matt Cottam and Nick Scappaticci. Image © Tellart

Tellart is an international design studio that creates interactive objects, immersive spaces and digital experiences for brands, museums and multinational companies. Founded in 2000 by Matt Cottam and Nick Scappaticci, Tellart is headquartered in Providence, R.I., and has offices in San Francisco, New York and Amsterdam. The studio’s designers, engineers and filmmakers drive ideas from concept to final execution. 

The Museum of the Future, an annual speculative design project to forecast and inspire the future of government, immersing government leadership in a vision of the future drawn from current political, technological, and societal trends. An augmented reality plinth displays data and resources moving in and out of the “smart city of the future,” depicted as an immersive city environment with individual exhibits inside unique building pavilions (Dubai, UAE, 2014–2016). 2014 project partners: Fabrica, IFTF, Superflux, Near Future Laboratory, PublicisLive, and Atelier F. 2015 project partners: Specular, SOFTlab, Bompas & Parr, Octo, Carlo Ratti Associati, Idee und Klang, Future Cities Catapult, PublicisLive, and Projex. 2016 project partners: Marshmallow Laser Feast, SOFTlab, Idee und Klang, Lust, Octo, Blue Zoo Animation, and Fantazm. Image © Tellart

Tellart’s projects synthesize the digital and physical through embodying and embedding data, networks and sensors in beautifully crafted objects, art and architecture. 

Chrome Web Lab, the first museum exhibition dedicated to serving online visitors as fully as in-person visitors, where each robotic experiment allowed visitors to collaborate with visitors online in the making of original creations, which were kept in the form of digital takeaways (London, United Kingdom, 2012–2013). Project partners: Google Creative Lab, BReel, Universal Design Studio/MAP, Karsten Schmidt, Biblioteque, and Fraser Randall. Image © Andrew Meredith

The Coffee Connector, a beautiful object and social experiment brewing cups of coffee only when conference attendees engaged with one another to interact with the machine (New York, New York, 2014). Project partner: The Secret Little Agency. Image © TSLA

Interior Design: Studio O+A 

Perry Stephney, Primo Orpilla, and Verda Alexander. Image © Ben Krantz

For 25 years, Studio O+A has been a creative force in workplace design. What began as a two-person space planning operation in Silicon Valley in 1991 is today a San Francisco-based design firm with more than 40 employees and clients that are some of the most dynamic companies in American business, including Facebook, Uber, Cisco Systems and Yelp. Led by principals Primo Orpilla, Verda Alexander and Perry Stephney, O+A built its reputation on understanding how the next generation of entrepreneurs is changing the work environment and how those changes are abetted by design. 

Yelp offices, abstracting the visual patterns of Dutch tulip fields as seen from the air and turning them into Mondrian-like wall art in a simple space (San Francisco, California, 2015). Image © Jasper Sanidad.

Kimball’s NeoCon 2015 showroom, a spiral staircase creates the visual template for a room without walls (Chicago, Illinois, 2015). Image © Jasper Sanidad

Uber headquarters, fifth floor office where a colonnade of mirrors turns a corridor of meeting spaces and open lounge areas into a light-bending, perspective-defying souk (San Francisco, California, 2016). Image © Jasper Sanidad

Landscape Architecture: Hargreaves Associates 

George Hargreaves. Image courtesy of Hargreaves Associates. Mary Margaret Jones. Image © Geordie Wood. Gavin McMillan courtesy of Hargreaves Associates.

Hargreaves Associates has been at the forefront of landscape architecture for more than 30 years and is globally renowned for the transformation of neglected urban sites, waterfronts and campuses into memorable places that have become icons for their cities. Led by George Hargreaves, Mary Margaret Jones and Gavin McMillan, the firm has offices in San Francisco; Cambridge, Mass.; and New York City. 

Louisville Waterfront Park, representing a major reclamation of land formerly used for industry and now comprising eighty acres of environmentally sensitive parkland, a great lawn, and festival plaza (Louisville, Kentucky, 2003). Client: Louisville Waterfront Development Corporation. Image © John Gollings Photography

Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, formally a neglected post-industrial landfill site, the 274-acre park allows the river to expand, restoring ecological functions, bringing the River Lea corridor to the foreground, and reconnecting neighboring boroughs (London, United Kingdom, 2010). Client: Olympic Delivery Authority. Image © Olympic Delivery Authority

Product Design: Ammunition 

Robert Brunner, Brett Wickens, and Matt Rolandson. Image © Ammunition

Ammunition is a studio dedicated to putting design talent at the center of imagining, creating and operating new product and service ventures. Founded in 2007 and based in San Francisco, and Brooklyn, N.Y., the studio is led by partners Robert Brunner, Matt Rolandson and Brett Wickens. Noteworthy projects include Beats by Dr. Dre, June Intelligent Oven, Lyft Glowstache, Polaroid Cube, Square Stand and UNICEF’s Kid Power Band.

Beats by Dr. Dre, a line of high-performance headphones and speaker systems in partnership with hip-hop artist and producer Dr. Dre and Chairman of Interscope Geffen A&M Records Jimmy Lovine (2008–present). Project partner: Beats by Dr. Dre. Image © Beats by Dr. Dre

Obi Worldphone SF1, beautiful and high-quality smartphones for consumers in rising markets around the world (2015). Project partner: Obi Worldphone. Image © Ammunition

June Intelligent Oven, the first truly intelligent countertop oven that uses sensors and a library of recipes to detect the type of food, its weight, appearance, and internal temperature to cook food perfectly (2015). Project partner: June. Image © Ammunition

First Lady Michelle Obama serves as the Honorary Patron for this year’s National Design Awards, which was first launched at the White House in 2000 as a project of the White House Millennium Council. A jury of design leaders and educators from across the country reviewed submissions resulting from nominations submitted by the general public. Winners are selected based on the level of excellence, innovation and public impact of their body of work. Unlike the jury-selected awards, the Director’s Award is chosen by Baumann and given to an individual or organization in recognition of outstanding support and patronage within the design community. 

The winners will be honored at a gala during National Design Week, October 15–23. Launched in 2006, this educational initiative makes great design widely accessible to the public through interactive events and programs for students, teachers, corporate professionals, designers and Cooper Hewitt’s dedicated audience. Programs will be posted at Cooper Hewitt's events page.

On May 13, many of the winners will attend the DC High School Design Summit hosted by Cooper Hewitt and provide short mentoring sessions to hundreds of students interested in pursuing design as a career. The Summit, held at the Smithsonian Arts & Industries Building (900 Jefferson Dr. S.W., Washington, D.C.) from 9 a.m.–12:30 p.m., will also engage students in real-world design challenges and includes a keynote lecture by Tim Gunn. 

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