ASID ANNOUNCES 2006 DESIGN AWARD WINNERS
Honorees Feted at Celebration: The ASID Design
Awards
May 2007
– The American Society of
Interior Designers (ASID) is pleased to announce the 2006 ASID 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 bestowed a Special
Citation on a design visionary.
This year’s honorees were feted at the Society’s
annual awards gala, Celebration: The ASID Design Awards, on Saturday,
March 17, at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco, during
INTERIORS 07: The ASID Conference on Design.
Designer of Distinction
Penny Bonda, FASID, LEED AP
, is the 2006 Designer of
Distinction. After a noted 27-year career in interior design, Bonda
now focuses exclusively on communicating the urgency of environmental
issues and educating design professionals on how to incorporate
sustainability into their practices. A past president of ASID and a
former U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) board member, Bonda sits on
the LEED Steering Committee and committees for LEED Core & Shell,
and is chair of the LEED for Commercial Interiors Committee. Bonda
also serves on the CIDA Standards Council, Antron Sustainability
Advisory Council, Greenguard Advisory Council, the USGBC LEED training
faculty and is a past chair of the ASID Sustainable Design Council.
She is the recipient of the 2003 USGBC Leadership Award. With degrees
in education and interior design from The American University in
Washington, D.C., she has headed her own firm and served as the
interior design director for leading design and architectural firms,
and is currently eco-editor for Interior Design
magazine. Recognized as a gifted leader and consensus builder, Bonda
has been a driving force in bringing sustainability issues to the
forefront of the interior design industry, inspiring new generations
of interior designers to take up the torch of the sustainability
movement.
Design for Humanity
The Robin Hood Foundation
and the New York City
Department of Education formed a partnership to address low literacy
and improve student performance among underprivileged children by
re-imagining public school libraries and transforming them into
vibrant learning centers, through the L!brary Initiative. Working with
a team of designers and architects, the project seeks to reverse
patterns of low literacy skills and underachievement by working with
community school districts and public elementary schools to design,
build, equip and staff new elementary school libraries, fundamentally
transforming school libraries into vital resources for the whole
school community—students, teachers and parents —that will
contribute to improved student performance. The libraries created
through Robin Hood’s L!brary Initiative are well-designed,
reflecting the creativity and whimsy that children respond to while
incorporating the design strategies necessary for a successful library environment. Thirty-one libraries are now open, with
25 more slated to open later this year.
Educator of Distinction
Janine Benyus provided the
impetus for the development of biomimicry with the 1997 publication of
her renowned book, Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature. Benyus’
name is nearly synonymous with the concept of biomimicry, which has
been particularly embraced by the sustainability movement. An educator
at heart, she believes that as people better understand the genius of
the natural world, the more they will want to protect it. Ask almost
any designer who has participated in one of Benyus’ programs and
they will attest to her power as an inspiring speaker, providing
life-changing insights and experiences for the thousands of people who
learn from her around the world.
Patron’s Prize
The U.S. Green Building
Council is the nation’s foremost coalition of leaders from every
sector of the building industry, working to promote buildings that are
environmentally responsible, profitable and healthy places to live and
work. Through its more than 7,500 member organizations and a network
of more than 75 regional chapters, the USGBC is united to advance the
mission of transforming the building industry to sustainability. The
organization’s core purpose is to transform the way buildings and
communities are designed, built and operated, creating an
environmentally and socially responsible, healthy and prosperous
environment that improves the quality of life. The USGBC LEED rating
system for developing high-performance, sustainable buildings has
provided the basis for implementing state-of-the-art strategies for
sustainable site development, water savings, energy efficiency,
materials selection and indoor environmental quality in all types of
buildings throughout the country. The USGBC has educated tens of
thousands of built environment professionals through education and
advocacy initiatives, and national events such as Greenbuild, changing
the face of interior—and sustainable—design in the United States.
Product Prize (corporate)
Founded in 1902, Maharam,
Industry Partner of ASID, originally set up shop selling commodity
textiles in New York City. By 1940, Maharam had showrooms in New York,
Los Angeles and Chicago, and had expanded their line of theatrical
fabrics, becoming an internationally renowned resource for set and
costume designers. In the late 1950s, Maharam sensed new opportunity
and began supplying textiles for commercial interiors, helping pioneer
the concept of contract textiles. The company has flourished through a
commitment to performance, value and service. Since 1997, the fourth
generation of the Maharam family has brought new definition and
direction to the company, focusing on design and technology, and
marrying past and present with textiles drawn from the archives of the
twentieth century’s greatest creative talents (including Charles and
Ray Eames, Verner Panton and Arne Jacobsen), rich natural fiber
textures and next generation synthetics. In recent years, Maharam has
launched a continuing campaign for sustainability. Maharam’s Web
site marks any green product as "reduced environmental
impact" and provides details of what makes it eco-friendly.
Product Prize (individual)
Vladimir Kagan has been
described as "the creative grandfather of a whole new generation
of designers," and is one of today’s most enduring designers of
modern furniture, with a career that has spanned more than 55 years.
He started designing in 1947 and by the early 1950s, his innovative
sculptured designs created a new look in American furniture. Today,
his creations are on the cutting edge of the 21st century, leading
designs for hotels, furniture, textiles and home furnishings.
Alongside a long list of famous collectors and high-profile
installations, Kagan’s designs have been published internationally
and are in the permanent collections of the V&A London, the
Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, San
Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Pasadena Art Institute, Baltimore
Museum of Fine Arts, Chicago's Athenaeum and The Metropolitan Museum
of Art. Kagan has received many honors, including the Lifetime
Achievement Award from the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Pinnacle Award
and Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society of Furniture
Designers, and in 2004 was a nominee in the Lifetime Achievement and
Environment Design categories of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design
Awards. A past member of ASID, Kagan served as president of the ASID
New York Metro Chapter in 1990.
Special Citation
John Hutton’s signature
style combined contemporary flair with a classical foundation
producing truly original designs that are at once current, yet
timeless; he was perhaps most celebrated for his Anziano and Ghost
chairs, which were widely copied and mass-marketed. All of Hutton’s
designs—which include interiors, furniture, textiles, hand-blown
glass and lighting—reflect this philosophy in their unsurpassed
quality, elegant simplicity and ultimate comfort. A graduate of the
Fashion Institute of Technology, Hutton designed for Louis Maslow
& Sons in New York, and Randolph & Hein in San Francisco, but
spent most of his career with Angelo Donghia, for whom he produced
more than 200 designs. Since 1998, Hutton acted as head of his own
business (John Hutton International), designing furniture for other
companies and famous clientele; more recently, he also began John
Hutton Textiles. Hutton, who passed away in August 2006, was declared
a national treasure by The New York Times, and his designs have
received more than 200 awards and are represented in prestigious
museums throughout the world.
The members of the 2006 ASID
Awards Jury were Eleanor Brydone, FASID, chair; Deborah Lloyd Forrest,
FASID; Skip Sroka, ASID; Jennifer Busch, editor, Contract magazine;
and Dakota Jackson, furniture designer/founder, Dakota Jackson Inc.
For more information about
Celebration and other special events that took place at INTERIORS 07,
March 15 – 18, 2007, please visit http://www.asid.org/interiors07.
