ASID Announces 2005 Design Award Honorees

Furniture World News

The American Society of Interior Designers (ASID) announcd its 2005 design award honorees. A jury of esteemed members of the design community selected winners in five categories: Designer of Distinction, Design for Humanity, Educator of Distinction, Patron’s Prize and Product Prize (corporate and individual). The jury also decided to bestow a Special Citation on a design visionary. With the exception of the Design for Humanity award recipient, the honorees will be feted at the Society’s annual awards gala, Celebration: The ASID Design Awards, to take place at the Renaissance Nashville Hotel in Nashville, Tenn., on Saturday, March 18. The Design for Humanity honoree will be recognized during a special luncheon on Friday, March 17, during INTERIORS 06: The ASID Conference on Design. Designer of Distinction: Barbara Barry, ASID, is the 2005 ASID Designer of Distinction. An interior design icon of the late 20th century, Barry has designed timeless residential and commercial interiors—restaurant, spa, retail and office environments—for the most refined and prestigious of clients. She says that her designs convey a sense of “calm haven in a hectic world.” Barry’s signature design style—influenced by the casual elegance of 1940s Hollywood tempered by a modern sensibility—is now being offered to a wider audience by a variety of fabric and furnishings collections under her name. Barry has created signature collections for Ann Sacks Tile and Stone, Baccarat Crystal, Baker Furniture, Bloomingdales, Blueridge Carpets, Boyd Lighting Company, Havilland Limoges, HBF, Kallista, McGuire, Sferra Bros., Tufenkian Rugs and Wedgwood, among others. In 1985, Barry founded Barbara Barry, Inc., a full-service interior design firm based in Los Angeles. During her prestigious 20-year career, she has been honored with numerous awards and accolades, including induction into the Interior Design Hall of Fame, and being named one of House Beautiful magazine’s Giants of Design and its 100 Best Designers, Elle Décor International’s Designer of the Year, a member of Architectural Digest magazine’s AD 100, and Designer of the Year by Traditional Home magazine.. She also was honored as a Star of Design by the Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles. Barry trained at the Academy of Art College in San Francisco. Design for Humanity: Patricia Moore, Ph.D., FIDSA, is the 2005 Design for Humanity honoree. A founder of the universal design methodology, Moore is president of Moore Design Associates, is an adjunct professor of industrial design at Arizona State University, and is a sought-after speaker and author. Her client list includes 3M, AT&T, Baxter Healthcare, Corning Glass, General Electric, Johnson & Johnson, Johnson Wax, Kraft General Foods, NASA, Norelco NA, Merck, Marriott, Maytag, Monsanto, OXO, Procter & Gamble, Sunbeam NA and Whirlpool, among others. From 1979 through 1982, Moore, disguised as a woman in her 80s, traveled through more than 100 U.S. and Canadian cities to study how senior citizens—“our elders,” according to Moore—are treated. The result of her experiment was the book, Disguised: A True Story. Internationally honored for her work with OXO Good Grips™, Moore was named by I.D. magazine as one of “The 40 Most Socially Conscious Designers in the World,” selected by a consortium of editors as one of the 100 most important women in America and chosen by ABC News “World News Tonight” as one of 50 Americans defining the new millennium. She holds undergraduate degrees in graphic and industrial design from the Rochester Institute of Technology and in biomechanics from the School of Medicine and the Institute of Rehabilitation at New York University, and post-graduate degrees in psychology and counseling and social gerontology from Columbia University. Moore also will deliver the INTERIORS 06 opening keynote, “Design Revolution,” on Friday, March 17, from 9 – 10 a.m. Her talk will inspire conference attendees to rethink what “inclusive” and “accessible” mean and explore the critical role design plays in people’s lives. Moore’s keynote is sponsored by Metropolis magazine. Educator of Distinction: The Rural Studio at Auburn University’s School of Architecture (Auburn, Ala.) has been honored with the 2005 ASID Educator of Distinction award. Established in 1983 by Dennis K. Ruth and the late Samuel Mockbee, the Rural Studio, based in Newbern, Ala., has become a visionary and effective provider of innovative, dignified and low-cost housing and community projects that have served the residents of some of the poorest regions of western Alabama. The Rural Studios’ “context-based learning” program places 15 second- and fifth-year architecture students in residency in Hale County, Ala., one of the poorest counties in the nation with more than 1,400 substandard dwellings, during each academic quarter to find solutions to the needs of a community within its own context—not from outside it. Rural Studio also offers an outreach program to non-Auburn University graduate students to work on joint and individual community outreach projects in their own areas of study. Rural Studio not only has provided hands-on, worthwhile training to hundreds of Auburn architecture students and raised the students’ collective social conscience, it also has improved the quality of life of thousands of the neediest individuals in the United States. ASID Patron’s Prize: Edward A. Feiner, FAIA, is the recipient of the 2005 ASID Patron’s Prize. Formerly chief architect with the Public Building Service, U.S. General Services Administration, Feiner is being honored for his work during his tenure as chief architect, including being the mastermind behind the “Design Excellence Program,” which has changed the form and function of government buildings in Washington, D.C., and across the nation. Upon making their decision, the award jurors noted, “Feiner’s vision of public architecture (interior and exterior) is to give wonder, dignity and humanity back to the places where people meet authority.” An employee of the federal government for 35 years, Feiner recently moved to the private sector, accepting a position as director of operations with the Washington, D.C., office of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. He is a 2004 inductee in the Interior Design Hall of Fame. ASID Product Prize: The 2005 ASID Product Prize honorees are Humanscale Corporation (corporate) and Suzanne Tick (individual). The category honors individuals, organizations or manufacturers that have contributed a significant and lasting body of work relating to the products of interior design. Founded in 1983, Humanscale is the visionary manufacturer of highly innovative, ergonomic products that are designed to improve the health, efficiency and quality of work life. With a focus on design, Humanscale has become known for its functionally-driven products that combine ease-of-use and unparalleled performance with an elegant and timeless aesthetic. Humanscale’s products, which include seating, monitor arms, lighting and other ergonomic work tools, have consistently been honored for their design and performance. The Freedom chair, by legendary industrial designer Niels Diffrient, has won 10 design awards since its introduction in 1999 and, quite literally, changed the course of task seating design. The Liberty chair, also by Diffrient, won the prestigious Best of NeoCon® 2004 & 2005 Gold Awards and an I.D. magazine 2005 Design Distinction Award among many others. In just the past two years, Humanscale has been honored with a total of 23 product design awards and recognitions. In 2004, I.D. named Humanscale as one of the “10 Best Companies” worldwide that are helping to “push design forward.” Tick is a great American textile designer and artist. Internationally known for her extraordinary textiles and floor coverings that reflect sensitivity to nature and use new and innovative materials, Tick is the design director of Tandus. Along with Terry Mowers, business partner in their company, Suzanne Tick, Inc., she oversees Tandus’ strategic direction. Tick previously was the creative director of KnollTextiles and still designs for the company. While at Knoll, she created a great number of textiles, including the Imago™, Una, Silver Screen, Forza, Extreme Velvet and Resolution lines. Tick’s work has been displayed in several museum exhibitions and has been honored with numerous awards, including finalist in the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum’s product design category, several “Best of NeoCon” awards, and two Good Design Awards, bestowed by The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design. She received her bachelor’s degree in woven design from the University of Iowa (Iowa City) and an associate degree in applied arts from the Fashion Institute of Technology (New York, N.Y.). Special Citation: The 2005 ASID Awards Jury also bestowed a Special Citation on Christopher Alexander, Ph.D., author of A Pattern Language, the seminal book on humanizing the designed environment, and one of the most important architects of the 20th century. With the recent release of the four-volume The Nature of Order, he has expanded his original arguments even further through careful observations of holistic, systems-based thinking about how the designed environment coexists with the natural environment. In announcing their decision, the awards jurors commented, “As the design community shifts its focus to health, safety and welfare issues, Alexander’s groundbreaking works will be important teaching tools for a new ecological thinking and systems approach to problem solving.” Alexander is a professor in the graduate school and emeritus professor of architecture at the University of California at Berkeley. In 2000, he created PatternLanguage.com—“a community-based Web site dedicated to supporting all efforts to rebuild the earth and care for it as a living structure”—and in 1967 founded the Center for Environmental Structure, where he continues as president today. Among numerous honors, Alexander is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the Swedish Royal Society; the first recipient of the AIA Gold Medal for Research; and a trustee of the Prince of Wales’ Institute of Architecture. He received his bachelor’s degree in architecture and master’s degree in mathematics from the University of Cambridge (U.K.) and his doctorate in architecture from Harvard University (Cambridge, Mass.). The members of the 2005 ASID Awards Jury were Nila Leiserowitz, FASID, chair; H. Don Bowden, FASID, AIA; David Michael Miller, ASID; and Susan Szenasy, editor in chief, Metropolis. Tickets for Celebration are available for $150. In addition to the awards program, the ticket price includes fine hors d’oeuvres, cocktails, dinner, dessert and entertainment. To order tickets online or for more information about this very special evening in Nashville, visit www.asid.org/events. To learn more about the ASID awards, please visit www.asid.org or e-mail communications@asid.org. ASID is a community of people—designers, industry representatives, educators and students—committed to interior design. Through education, knowledge sharing, advocacy, community building and outreach, the Society strives to advance the interior design profession and, in the process, to demonstrate and celebrate the power of design to positively change people’s lives. Its more than 38,000 members engage in a variety of professional programs and activities through a network of 48 chapters throughout the United States and Canada. To learn more about ASID, visit www.asid.org.