Lifetime Achievement
Gail Anderson Gail Anderson is a New York–based designer, writer, and educator. Anderson serves as creative director at Visual Arts Press, the in-house design studio for the School of Visual Arts, where she has been teaching design for more than 25 years. She is also a partner at Anderson Newton Design. Previously, she served as...
Director’s Award
Darren Walker Darren Walker is president of the Ford Foundation, overseeing an international social justice philanthropy with a $13 billion endowment and $600 million in annual grant making. For two decades, he has been a leader in the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors. Walker led the philanthropy committee that helped bring a resolution to the city...
Design Mind
Anne Whiston Spirn Anne Whiston Spirn is an award-winning author, landscape architect, photographer, and the Cecil and Ida Green Distinguished Professor of Landscape Architecture and Planning at MIT in Cambridge, MA. Her writings and action research have brought forth a new state of mind among designers and the general public—provoking the integration of city and...
Corporate & Institutional Achievement
Design for America Design for America is a national network of innovators working together to improve their local communities through design. DFA began as the brainchild of Northwestern University faculty member Liz Gerber and three of her students in 2009. Gerber saw how design could be used to bring new solutions to seemingly intractable social...
Architecture Design
WEISS/MANFREDI Founded by Marion Weiss and Michael A. Manfredi, WEISS/MANFREDI expands the territory of architecture by connecting landscape, art, infrastructure, and architecture. The New York firm’s projects, including the Seattle Art Museum’s Olympic Sculpture Park, Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s Visitor Center, Penn’s Nanotechnology Center, Cornell Tech’s Tata Innovation Center, and the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi,...
Communication Design
Civilization Civilization was founded by Michael Ellsworth, Corey Gutch, and Gabriel Stromberg in Seattle. Since the studio’s inception in 2007, it has built identity systems, digital experiences, printed materials, environmental graphics, and exhibitions that are engaging, empathetic, sustainable, and create meaningful connections. Working with those committed to creating positive change, the studio’s clients include the...
A photograph of designer Christina Kim smiling at the camera. She wears a button-up shirt with a necklace made with large green and black stones.
Fashion Design
Christina Kim Christina Kim is the co-founder and designer of dosa, a Los Angeles–based clothing, accessories, and housewares company established in 1984 with a focus on rethinking conventional fashion industry production and sustaining artisan cultures. In-house production enables an evolving system for efficient use of natural resources, recycling, and creative reuse. Kim draws on traditional...
Interaction Design
Neri Oxman Neri Oxman is an architect, designer, inventor, and professor at MIT, where she is the founding director of The Mediated Matter Group. An experimental design practice, the group combines commissioned work with scientific research exploring ways in which digital design and production techniques can enhance the relationship between built and natural environments, operating...
Interior Design
Oppenheim Architecture + Design Founded in 1999 by Chad Oppenheim, Oppenheim Architecture + Design is an architecture, planning, and interior design firm specializing in hospitality, commercial mixed-use, retail, and residential buildings worldwide. Based in Miami with offices in New York and Basel, Switzerland, the firm creates spaces that evoke the senses, catering to both pleasure...