2026 National Design Award Winners

Collage of architectural spaces, artworks, furniture, installations, and various creative design elements

The National Design Awards honor innovation and impact and recognize the power of design to change the world. Established in 2000 as a project of the White House Millennium Council, the National Design Awards bring national recognition to the ways in which design enriches everyday life.

Meet the 2026 Winners

Robert Earl Paige

Design Visionary

Robert Earl Paige in his Hyde Park Art Center Studio in 2021. Photo: Tom van Eynde

Robert Earl Paige is an artist, designer, and educator whose work disregards boundaries between fine art, craft, and design. After earning a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and working for Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, Paige transitioned to creating commercial objects and fashion, partnering with Fiorio and Sears to produce scarves and interior décor. In the 1970s, his signature Dakkabar Collection, home furnishings inspired by West African textiles, was sold in over 100 Sears stores nationwide, introducing Black visual culture into mainstream design. A participant in the Black Arts Movement, Paige champions community engagement in art and culture, and his practice reflects a love of color, a commitment to design principles, and a belief in making art accessible for everyday people. Repurposing is central to his work, transforming found fibers, cardboard, and paper into new creations that invite others to embrace curiosity and making. His works have been exhibited at Salon 94 Design, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, and the SMART Museum of Art, and he has held residencies at the DuSable Museum of African American History, Schomburg Center, and Hyde Park Art Center.

Room with colorful patterns on the walls, a geometric carpet, a purple room in the center, and decorated tables. — Robert Earl Paige, Installation view of United Colors of Robert Earl Paige, on view at Hyde Park Art Center (Chicago, Illinois, 2024). Photo: Tom van Eynde

Geometric textile design featuring red, black, brown, and gray triangles outlined in white. — Robert Earl Paige, Composition #2. Hand-painted and dyed jacquard silk; 22 x 32 inches (1997). Photo: Tom van Eynde. Courtesy of Hyde Park Art Center

Ornate wooden staircase with a black and white geometric carpet, with a decorative wooden ceiling and large chandelier. — Robert Earl Paige, Fahara: Chicago in View, on view at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum (New York, New York, 2024–2025). Photo: Nikola Bradonjic Photography

Magazine ad showing a man in a suit sitting on bedding, curtains, and pillows with bold African inspired patterns — Robert Earl Paige, Dakkabar Collection. Digital scan of archival advertisement (1973). Photo: Courtesy of Robert Earl Paige

Square decorated with waves colored red, cream, and pink with different size dots of those colors and blue. — Robert Earl Paige, Homage to Milano. Silk-screen-printed scarf; 30 x 31 inches (1964). Photo: Tom van Eynde. Courtesy of Hyde Park Art Center

Rectangle with geometric borders of patterns, stripes, and checks, with large florals all in bright orange, green, blue, and yellow — Robert Earl Paige, City in a Garden. Hand-painted and dyed wool challis; 104 x 54 inches (1987). Photo: Tom van Eynde. Courtesy of Hyde Park Art Center

Black background square with central white oval design, tan rectangles with oval cut outs of various sizes cover the square — Robert Earl Paige, Composition in Elementary Form #2. Linen on board; 20 x 20 inches, unframed (1990). Photo: Tom van Eynde. Courtesy of Hyde Park Art Center

Colorful textile featuring a grid of abstract shapes, zigzag patterns, circles, and bold lines. — Robert Earl Paige, In Reverence to Ndebele. Hand-painted and dyed crepe de chine silk; 36 x 35 inches (2003). Photo: Tom van Eynde. Courtesy of Hyde Park Art Center

Vibrant abstract textile with curved shapes and bold color blocks in turquoise, pink, yellow, and orange. — Robert Earl Paige, Rhythmic Patterns. Hand-painted and dyed crepe de chine silk; 34 x 44 inches (1992). Photo: Tom van Eynde. Courtesy of Hyde Park Art Center

Rectangle of overlapping blue, black, brown, and purple half circles, top has a blue border and colored shapes on beige — Robert Earl Paige, Power to the People. Hand-painted and dyed, using the gum resist technique, on charmeuse; 62 1/2 x 45 inches (1999). Photo: Tom van Eynde. Courtesy of Hyde Park Art Center

UCSD Community Stations by Estudio Teddy Cruz + Fonna Forman

Climate Action

Left: Teddy Cruz. Right: Fonna Forman. Photo: Courtesy of Estudio Teddy Cruz + Fonna Forman

The University of California San Diego (UCSD) Community Stations are a collaborative network of civic spaces along the U.S.–Mexico border, designed to advance climate resilience and social equity. Developed by Estudio Teddy Cruz + Fonna Forman, an internationally recognized research-based design practice, the stations support cross-border dialogue, participatory design, and research focused on regional migration and ecological interdependencies between San Diego and Tijuana. Located on both sides of the border wall, the stations are each co-designed and programmed with local partners to leverage university resources for climate adaptation strategies, including housing, public space, and environmental conservancy projects. By integrating cultural programming with scientific research and close community engagement, the stations aim to generate actionable knowledge for communities to address climate vulnerability and strengthen collective capacity for resilience. Cruz is an architect and serves as professor of spatial practice in the Department of Visual Arts, and Forman is professor of political science and founding director of the Center on Global Justice, both at the University of California San Diego.

Aerial map visualization showing overlapping zones, pin markers, and labeled corridors across a landscape. — Estudio Teddy Cruz + Fonna Forman, UCSD Community Stations. A network of four field stations located in low-income neighborhoods on both sides of the San Diego–Tijuana border, designed and built for collaborative research and education, linking university researchers and students with urban youth and community leaders, to increase community capacities for climate action through cultural mobilization (San Diego, California, 2023). Photo: Courtesy of Estudio Teddy Cruz + Fonna Forman

Modern white building with red arched doorway, trees in front, and people nearby outdoors. — Estudio Teddy Cruz + Fonna Forman, UCSD-Casa Community Station. The adapted reuse of a historical church as a community theater anchors this station, giving shape to Living Rooms at the Border, an affordable housing pilot project in San Ysidro, California, co-developed with the NGO Casa Familiar, to explore the intersection of social housing, public space, and participatory climate education (San Diego, California, 2020). Photo: Stephen Whalen

Community workshop with participants seated at tables, facilitator speaking, and discussion boards lining the room. — Estudio Teddy Cruz + Fonna Forman, UCSD-Casa Community Station. Once the spaces of a community station are built, they are activated with cultural and educational programming. Small coalitions of local artists, promotoras, and neighborhood youth collaborate with university poets, playwrights, and visual artists, and convene at this station’s community theater to co-produce a collective project to archive neighborhood memory, and document the intersection of the migration experience and climate change (San Diego, California, 2025). Photo: Jonathan Maier

Group of people dancing outdoors on a tiled plaza beside colorful buildings and trees. — Estudio Teddy Cruz + Fonna Forman, UCSD-Casa Community Station. This station links affordable housing and public space, summoning San Ysidro residents to perform oral histories on outdoor stages and in neighborhood pavilions, re-enacting social and environmental conflicts and providing opportunities to increase public knowledge and advocate for policy transformation (San Diego, California, 2025). Photo: Jonathan Maier

Large crowd gathered outdoors under a canopy in front of a multi‑story building. — Estudio Teddy Cruz + Fonna Forman, UCSD-Alacrán Community Station. This Station in Tijuana seeds an evolving sanctuary neighborhood, the largest migrant shelter in the border region, providing housing, economic incubators, social and health services. Its epicenter is a Food Hub that spills into a civic plaza, where the migrant community participates in habitat restoration programming. Migrant shelters can be urban engines to develop the city from below and tackle the impacts of climate change on the region’s most vulnerable people (Tijuana, Mexico, 2023). Photo: Paúl Moscoso Riofrío

Large open dining hall with long tables, people eating together, and sunlight streaming inside. — Estudio Teddy Cruz + Fonna Forman, UCSD-Alacrán Community Station. Over the years the studio has experimented in Tijuana with factory-made prefabricated systems as structural scaffolds for informal housing. Adapted shelving materials shape a dining hall for migrant families, including a kitchen incubator that the migrant community calls the “Mesón del Pueblo” (Tijuana, Mexico, 2025). Photo: Onnis Luque

Interior of shared sleeping area with bunk beds, colorful bedding, and perforated metal railing above. — Estudio Teddy Cruz + Fonna Forman, UCSD-Alacrán Community Station. Retrofitted prefab scaffolds shape housing envelopes, leaving the interiors as “planned open systems,” equipped with utilities to support live-work configurations. Roofed by lightweight plastics, shading and insulation, the flexible frameworks transform through time into a diverse ecology of housing environments and working spaces, infilled incrementally by the migrant community (Tijuana, Mexico, 2023–25). Photo: Camila Falquez (left); Onnis Luque (right)

Hillside complex with modular glass buildings, rough terrain foreground, and scattered construction materials. — Estudio Teddy Cruz + Fonna Forman, UCSD-EarthLab Community Station. With our community partners Groundwork San Diego and a local School District we are transforming a 4-acre vacant parcel into a living laboratory for climate action, equipped with outdoor informal learning habitats that explore energy and water conservation, food justice and community science. Experiential climate education is a civic framework to inspire a new ecological imagination among urban youth (San Diego, California, 2024). Photo: Courtesy of Estudio Teddy Cruz + Fonna Forman

Person standing in front of a large wall map showing river networks and highlighted route. — Estudio Teddy Cruz + Fonna Forman, MEXUS: A Geography of Interdependence. A visualization project that investigates the collisions of natural and political systems along the continental border between the U.S. and Mexico and imagines a new cross-border zone of interdependence. The project is an example of collaborative research that emerged from pedagogical processes in the UCSD Community Stations (Chicago, Illinois, 2019). Photo: Tom Harris

Mattaforma

Emerging Designer

Lindsey Wikstrom. Photo: Guarionex Rodriguez

Founded by Lindsey Wikstrom, Mattaforma is a New York–based architecture and research studio redefining sustainable design through mass-timber innovation and healthy materials. Every Mattaforma project begins with field research: locating nearby forests, quarries, and farms, and drawing from their material networks, histories, and knowledge. The studio’s restorative approach creates classrooms, homes, and community venues designed for disassembly and reuse, ensuring flexibility and resilience. Projects often cross disciplines, from timber pavilions built in forty-eight hours to open-air classrooms and structures that serve as music venues in the summer and become plant nurseries in the winter. Through writing, teaching, and advocacy, Mattaforma invites policymakers, schoolchildren, and neighbors to co-author plant-based futures where climate action is tangible, communal, and joyful.

A serene, shaded outdoor nursery made of smartly recycled materials. — Mattaforma, The Nursery at Public Records is a community space that celebrates the spontaneous. Functioning as a music venue during the summer and a nursery for plant life during the colder months, The Nursery is designed to be deconstructed and reconstructed, extending the material lifespan of all off-the-shelf elements used (Brooklyn, New York, 2023). Landscape Architecture: Cactus Store, Acoustics: Arup, Interior Design: Space Exploration, Sound System: OJAS and NNNN. Photo: Ill Gander

A group of landscape workers erecting an evergreen tree. — Mattaforma, The Nursery at Public Records (Brooklyn, New York, 2023). Landscape Architecture: Cactus Store. Photo: Chloe Ball.

A stack of three identical books with green spines and muti-colored covers. — In Designing the Forest and Other Mass Timber Features, Wikstrom retraces wood’s passage from stewarded seed to laminated walls, pausing at each step to examine labor, economies, and ecological impacts (Routledge, 2023). Graphic Design: Elana Schlenker Studio, Forward: Kenneth Frampton, Copyediting: Madeleine Compagnon. Photo: Courtesy of Mattaforma

A view from inside of a wood-paneled structure facing a tall rectangular window to the snowy outside. — Mattaforma, Parkview Mountain House. The cedar-clad, three-story building brings guests into an intimate relationship with the trees surrounding the site (Park City, Utah, 2024). Client: Globizen. Photo: Brandon Donnelly

Exterior of a wood paneled side of a house with square window. — Mattaforma, Parkview Mountain House (Park City, Utah, 2024). Client: Globizen. Photo: Lauren Kerr

Carved wooden topographical model of Rancho Almosomos with visible wood grain and grooves. — Mattaforma, Rancho Almasomos Site Strategy. On 131 acres of biodynamic farm with 26 keys, a wellness center, bistro, farm store, event venue, meditation center, barns, greenhouses, orchards, and labyrinth in Spring Creek Valley, visitors reconnect with desert ecology, care for ancient agave, and experience harmonic resonance among all living things (Yavapai County, Arizona, 2025–ongoing). Photo: Courtesy of Mattaforma

Section of kitchen counter made of polished wood with visible wood grain. — Mattaforma, Rugby Duplex is an adaptive reuse project that incorporates a reused bowling alley from one of the first bowling alleys in the nation. Bowling alleys are uniquely equipped for reuse in that they combine hardwood maple and softwood pine together to form a cost-effective, durable surface (Brooklyn, New York, 2024). Millwork: Cornell Design Build. Photo: Angela Hau

A model made of angular pieces of sanded wood assembled together at different angles to create an abstract take on a traditional pavillion. — Mattaforma, Tilt Pavilion. Tilt is a gravity-defying project sponsored by the Softwood Lumber Board to inspire U.S. architecture and engineering faculty to integrate mass timber into their curriculum (Eugene, Oregon, 2024). Project partners: Softwood Lumber Board, Tallwood Design Institute. Participants: Hannibal Newsom, Xijin Emma Zhang, Ziyu Jin, Christian Ayala Lopez, Akram Jawdhari, Pedram Mortazavi, Yilei Shi, Nicole Ellison, Omar Dhia Al-Hassawim, Vineeth Dharmapalan. Photo: Courtesy of Mattaforma

Birds eye view of construction workers assembling human-sized diagonal pieces of wood on top of larger flat rectangular piece. — Mattaforma, Tilt Pavilion (Eugene, Oregon, 2024). Project partners: Softwood Lumber Board, Tallwood Design Institute. Photo: Tallwood Design Institute

Neat rectangular wooden model of Monospace with visible woodgrain. — Mattaforma, Monospace. In Chattanooga’s industrial ruins, Monospace blends Tennessee’s natural textures—river rock and hemlock—with immersive sound, hospitality, and curated experiences. Designed as a platform for artists, chefs, DJs, and makers, it fosters community, culture, and discovery (Chattanooga, Tennessee, 2025–ongoing). Photo: Courtesy of Mattaforma

Frida Escobedo Studio

Architecture

Frida Escobedo. Photo: Alex Trebus

Founded in 2006, Frida Escobedo Studio works across architecture, art, design, installation, research, and academia. Each project sets forth from overlooked aspects of the built environment, using simple forms to reveal the forces shaping collective identity and public space. The studio’s practice, with offices in Mexico City and New York, spans a range of scales and territories, from multistory residential buildings to temporary art installations, adaptive reuse renovations, public sculpture, book publications, and object design, often pushing the conventional boundaries of architecture. Recent commissions include Escobedo’s appointment as lead designer of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s new Modern and Contemporary Art Wing (2022), her selection as co-designer, following the lead architectural team Moreau Kusunoki, for the renovation of the Centre Pompidou in Paris (2024), and her selection as the lead designer of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Doha (2025).

Outdoor pavillion with towering abstract mural panels. — Frida Escobedo Studio, La Tallera. The pivotal transformation of David Alfaro Siqueiros’s former studio and residence into a contemporary art museum hinges on the rotation of the site’s twin murals to embrace the adjoining plaza (Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico, 2012). Photo: Rafael Gamo

Dark brown metal pavillion with rectangular reflecting pool. — Frida Escobedo Studio, Serpentine Pavilion. Two nested rectangular volumes, made of locally sourced roof tiles and aligned to the Prime Meridian, form courtyards, where a reflective canopy and a water mirror invite visitors to reflect on time’s passage (London, United Kingdom, 2018). Photo: Rafael Gamo

Outdoor passageway between two modern concrete buildings. — Frida Escobedo Studio, Mar Tirreno. In this multifamily housing project, each unit has a private patio screened by a lattice, while a central corridor provides space for social interaction, striking a balance between privacy and conviviality (Mexico City, Mexico, 2018). Photo: Rafael Gamo

Concrete courtyard softly decorated with a few trees, a life-size sculpture, and many lush potted plants. — Frida Escobedo Studio, Galerie Nordenhake. An abandoned warehouse was retrofitted to accommodate the renowned Swedish art gallery Nordenhake in Mexico City, with two affixed interludial courtyards that bracket space and time for meditation (Mexico City, Mexico, 2022). In collaboration with Mauricio Mesta Arquitectos. Photo: César Béjar

A dark brown slatted wood large bungalow building on stilts, surrounded by a lush landscaped jungle. — Frida Escobedo Studio, Boca de Agua. Boca de Agua is a sustainable hotel comprising 22 FSC-certified wood stilt–elevated villas and an integrated wildlife corridor that keeps 90 percent of the site’s natural habitat intact (Bacalar, Quintana Roo, Mexico, 2023). Photo: César Béjar

An outdoor rounded concrete ramp that surrounds a circular pool of water in front of the City Ballet of San Francisco. — Frida Escobedo Studio, Otis Plaza. Blending the dual nature of the public plaza as a space for both action and quiet refuge, the project creates a series of pockets that accommodate multiple uses. Inspired by navigation maps, the geometry subtly guides pedestrian movement (San Francisco, California, 2024). In collaboration with Fletcher Studio, supported by Multistudio. Photo: Rory Gardiner

A towering terracotta colored building with smartly-placed cutouts and lush rooftop greenery. — Frida Escobedo Studio, Ray Harlem. A 21-story residential and mixed-use building—and the new home for the historic National Black Theater—designed toward making art accessible for everyone (New York, New York, 2025). In collaboration with Handel Architects, Studio Projects, and the Ray in-house design team. Photo: Melanie Landsman

Modern multi-story building with glass atrium connecting two terraced structures on a city street — Frida Escobedo Studio, Bergen Brooklyn. The façade design for this 105-unit condominium uses an undulating structure of brick modules that breaks up monumentality, while offering textural interest that extends into select units (Brooklyn, New York, 2025). In collaboration with DXA Studio; Workstead. Image: Courtesy of Frida Escobedo Studio

Rendering of a sand-colored, multi-story, multi-rectangular wing of The Met with elevated outdoor space. — Frida Escobedo Studio, Tang Wing, Metropolitan Museum of Art. The largest transformation in the Met’s history, and its first ever woman-designed building, the Tang Wing will expand 20th- and 21st-century art gallery space by nearly 50 percent (New York, New York, ongoing). Visualization: Filippo Bolognese Images

Digital rendering of a sprawling, industrial, open three-story lobby of Centre Pompidou lined with glass walls and exposed metal armature. — Frida Escobedo Studio, Centre Pompidou 2030. This renovation of the Centre’s public library and hubs is designed to repurpose spatial voids as generative fields that can accommodate diverse programmatic needs, activating civic engagement (Paris, France, ongoing). Lead architect: Moreau Kusunoki; co-designer: Frida Escobedo Studio. Visualization: Courtesy of Moreau Kusunoki and Frida Escobedo Studio

Thought Matter

Communication Design

Left: Tom Jaffe. Right: Jessie McGuire. Photo: Courtesy of Thought Matter

Thought Matter is a New York–based communication design studio founded in 2015 by Tom Jaffe and led by Jessie McGuire. Working at the intersection of design and civic life, the studio creates brand identities, campaigns, digital platforms, and installations that distill complex ideas, spark dialogue, and inspire participation. Thought Matter is deeply invested in art, culture, and change, using design to reframe narratives, shift perspectives, and shape the future. Collaborating closely with clients and communities, the team finds inspiration in uncovering untold stories and exploring forms, technologies, and mediums to merge the personal and the political. Key clients have included the Met, the New York Historical, the Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art, Misfits Market, and Thinx. The studio has partnered with the Times Square Alliance and the Street Vendor Project to advance civic advocacy, and has worked with Fortune 500 companies on sustainability and social impact projects.

A series of open pink and blue booklets tacked onto a wall. — Thought Matter, For the People Project. Presented as a typographic artifact and positioned as a living document, the redesigned United States Constitution sparks civic reflection and dialogue, expanding its role in American life (New York, New York, 2017). Project partners: The Cooper Union; Risolve Studio; Paul Buckley; Milton Glaser; Yue Chen; DJ Stout; Seymour Chwast; Jonathan Key; Mark Fox and Angie Wang; Jessica Hische; Kit Hinrichs; Elizabeth Resnick; Edel Rodriguez. Photo: Courtesy of Thought Matter

A bright red advertisement banner along street-facing windows that reads "Power" in a human-size font, and within the "o" in smaller font are the words "within and between us". — Thought Matter, Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art. Built on a patterned circle motif, exhibition graphics for Power: Within and Between Us reject top-down hierarchies and invite audiences to see power as dynamic, personal, and shared (New York, New York, 2019). Photo: Courtesy of Thought Matter

Five people standing along the pool of the Lincoln memorial displaying colorful, typographic protest signs advocating for women's rights. — Thought Matter, Women’s March. Protest posters with bold, type-led messaging lent the Women’s March a shared visual language carried by more than 15,000 supporters nationwide (Washington, D.C., 2017). Project partner: Nowhere. Photo: Courtesy of Thought Matter

Various Odds & Ends food products in color-poppy, playful packaging arranged in an artful grouping against a lilac background. — Thought Matter, Misfits Market: Odds & Ends, A private label that rescues imperfect ingredients to fight food waste and make sustainable groceries more accessible is supported by a playful, purpose-driven brand identity (2019–ongoing). Photo: Julia Parris

People gathered outdoors under bright flags and a banner reading “She Builds Power.” — Thought Matter, She Builds Power – Earth Island Institute. A bold identity and new name uplifted the multifaceted organization, elevating women’s leadership, boosting agency and resources, and instill across communities in sub-Saharan Africa (2025–ongoing). Photo: Courtesy of Thought Matter

A large pillar supporting a bridge overpass displays the human-size projected words "Covidity" in neon green. — Thought Matter, Covidity. Shaping collective anxiety into a public record of resilience, the immersive, six-part multi-location graphic video projection captured the uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic (Brooklyn, New York, 2020). Project partner: Nowhere. Photo: Courtesy of Thought Matter

A pile of overlapping discs in red, green, tan, and brown that all display an illustration of a wolf hound and display the words "New York brewed/ Irish Ingenuity". — Thought Matter, Wolf Hound – The Flagship Brewing Company. Bridging heritage and a modern aesthetic, the retro-inspired nitro beer identity links Irish pub nostalgia with contemporary taste, solidifying Wolf Hound’s place in New York City’s pub culture (2024–ongoing). Photo: Courtesy of Thought Matter

A close-up image of app icons on an iphone home screen including one titled "Blended", a red icon with a black rectangle and circle leaning into each other. — Thought Matter, Blended. Built on neutrality and shared responsibility, the digital-first brand identity gives co-parents clarity and confidence to navigate day-to-day financial decisions (2024–ongoing). Photo: Courtesy of Thought Matter

Large scale mural on the side of a building that features a painted image of a blurry, naked female body sprawled on a bed with the large words "Where Democracy Begins /Vote" covering the vagina. — Thought Matter, Where Democracy Begins. Repurposing Gustave Courbet’s revolutionary painting L’Origine du monde, the hand-painted mural puts design-forward activism in dialogue with art history, turning a high-traffic commuter space into a rallying ground for civic participation and reproductive rights (Brooklyn, New York, 2024). Project partner: Colossal Media. Photo: Courtesy of Thought Matter

A line of people in yellow t-shirts that say "support vendors" joyfully displaying picket signs that read "we are the strength of the streets". — Thought Matter, Street Vendor Project – Urban Justice Center. Inspired by the visual language of New York City’s streets, the brand identity highlights the essential role of the city’s street vendors and fuels their fight for visibility, dignity, and justice (New York, New York, 2024). Photo: Courtesy of Thought Matter

Laura Kurgan

Digital Design

Laura Kurgan. Photo: Courtesy of Kris Krüg

Laura Kurgan is a designer and educator who works in spatial computation, data visualization, and digital cartography at the intersection of technology and social justice. Trained as an architect, Kurgan has long pioneered creative uses of emerging technologies. From employing GPS as a design tool in the 1990s to leveraging declassified satellite imagery to map political conflicts, her projects help us to visualize systemic injustices, such as incarceration patterns in Million Dollar Blocks and migration flows in Exit. Kurgan’s work starts with the claim that working creatively and critically with data is essential to the pursuit of social justice, and that one must utilize new technologies to learn from them. At Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, she founded and directs the M.S. in Computational Design Practices program and the Center for Spatial Research, emphasizing hands-on critical engagement with digital tools to uncover hidden spatial logics of inequality. The author of Close Up at a Distance: Mapping, Technology, and Politics (2013) and co-editor of Ways of Knowing Cities (2019), Kurgan has had her work exhibited globally, from the Venice Biennale to the MoMA.

Black background with red dots making lines and shapes, pink dots make overlapping letters spelling “museo” with four green x’s — Laura Kurgan, You Are Here: Museu. A computer-based installation utilizing GPS mapping technology highlights that the totalizing system of the GPS network, a precise positioning machine, is scattered (Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, 1995–1996). Image: Courtesy of Laura Kurgan

Four rectangular photos of white, light blue, green with white spots, and yellow showing different natural landscapes with descriptions below. — Laura Kurgan, Monochrome Landscapes. High-resolution images from the Ikonos and QuickBird satellites display four vulnerable landscapes: a desert in Iraq, the rainforest in Cameroon, the tundra in Alaska, and the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Ghana. The images echo a certain minimalism, while their production highlights the political and ethical stakes of globalization (Whitney Museum at Altria, New York, March–May 2004). Image: Courtesy of Laura Kurgan

Black on grey map of Brooklyn with tons of bright red lines crossing and leaving the image. — Laura Kurgan, Million Dollar Blocks displays the uneven geographies of incarceration for five cities throughout the United States using rarely accessible data from the criminal justice system (Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2008). Project team: Laura Kurgan (project director); Eric Cadora (collaborator); Sarah Williams (associate research scholar); David Reinfurt (associate research scholar). Image: Courtesy of Laura Kurgan

Dark map of Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan with bright green and red pixelated dots. Curves of dots connect the countries. — Laura Kurgan, Exit. Statistics documenting population shifts are repurposed, creating a narrative mapping of global economic, political, and environmental reasons for human migrations in an immersive installation (Fondation Cartier, Paris, 2008–ongoing). Project team: Diller Scofidio + Renfro (Project lead); Mark Hansen, Laura Kurgan (collaborator), Ben Rubin (collaborator), Robert Gerard Pietrusko (collaborator) and Stewart Smith (collaborator). Image: Courtesy of Laura Kurgan

Dark topographic map of Colombia with orange lines connecting cities and two columns of thumbnails with descriptions on the right. — Laura Kurgan, Conflict Urbanism: Colombia. A multipart spatial visualization of Colombia’s internally displaced people results in a tool for transitional justice (Oslo Design Triennale, 2016). Project team: Laura Kurgan (principal investigator); Juan Francisco Saldarriaga (project lead, CSR); Dare Brawley (associate research scholar, CSR). Image: Courtesy of Laura Kurgan

White room with a glass wall and doors and a curved line of framed images on the right wall. — Laura Kurgan, The Brain Index. An initiative for the public communication of science at the Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute at Columbia University, this project translates images produced by scientists at the institute into a visual language accessible to a diverse audience (Jerome L. Greene Science Center, Columbia University, New York, 2017–2022). Project team: Mark Hansen; Laura Kurgan; Jochen Hartmann (project lead, CSR); Madeeha Merchant (graduate research assistant, CSR); Mondrian Hsieh (graduate research assistant, CSR). Image: Courtesy of Laura Kurgan

Two dark maps of the world with bright yellow dots representing areas with bright lights, and some written descriptions. — Laura Kurgan, In Plain Sight. Anomalies in population distribution presented in nighttime satellite imagery of Earth and census grid counts (La Biennale di Venezia, Italy, May—November 2018). Project team: Diller Scofidio + Renfro (project lead); Laura Kurgan (collaborator); Robert Gerard Pietrusko (collaborator); Grga Basic (associate research scholar, CSR); Dare Brawley (associate research scholar, CSR). Image: Courtesy of Laura Kurgan

Dark industrial room with a large screen showing a white circle with bright blue lines radiating from white dots — Laura Kurgan, Curse of Dimensionality. A video installation presenting and explaining three predictive AI models, exhibited in the Artificial Gallery at the Arsenale during the 19th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia (La Biennale di Venezia, Venice, May–November 2025). Project team: Laura Kurgan (project director); Adeline Chum (collaborator); Michael Krisch (collaborator); Adam Vosburgh (collaborator); Jia Zhang (collaborator). Photo: Courtesy of Laura Kurgan

Room with a long table under a large suspended black circle with a white ring and lines crossing and twisting — Laura Kurgan, Two Sides of the Same Coin uses data visualization to draw a parallel between the changing ecology of the Earth and the shrinking diversity of microbial life within human bodies (Triennale Milano, Milan, May–November 2025). Project team: Laura Kurgan (project director); Dan Miller (collaborator); Adam Vosburgh (collaborator). Photo: We the Bacteria, Installation view of the 24th International Exhibition Inequalities. Image © Alessandro Salettae Piercarlo Quecchia – DSL Studio, Courtesy of Triennale Milano

Josh Tafoya

Fashion Design

Josh Tafoya. Photo: Bonny Melendez

Josh Tafoya is a textile artist whose work explores Indigenous identity within Hispanic and Latino communities. Drawing on his Genizaro, Spanish, and Chicano heritage, Tafoya redefines the “Southwestern” aesthetic and American fashion from an Indigenous perspective, celebrating cultural heritage while embracing a raw, grungy spirit. Tafoya’s designs reflect the rich textile traditions of his heritage, blending knowledge passed down from his ranching grandfather and weaving grandmother with contemporary fashion innovation. After earning his BFA and working with various luxury brands in New York, Tafoya returned to Taos, New Mexico, in 2020 to launch his namesake brand. Infusing his ancestral knowledge of Rio Grande Valley weaving with his experiences, Tafoya works with the goal of ensuring the traditional cultural crafts of New Mexico live on in a contemporary world.

A model stands in a monastically-decorated concrete room dressed in a draped assemblage of striped cloth in many colors with fringe. — Josh Tafoya, Look from Spring/Summer 2025 Collection, Genízaro. A conceptual exploration of New Mexico’s layered colonial history and the evolving identities shaped by conquest, assimilation, and resistance. The term “Genízaro” refers to Indigenous people who were detribalized and who later formed unique communities along the frontier (2025). Photo: Courtesy of Josh Tafoya

A person wearing an ornate black garment with white embroidered details and a dramatic circular headdress. — Josh Tafoya, Look from Fall/Winter 2025 Collection. The Bruja Collection draws on familial folklore, regional histories, and cultural transformation. Inspired by a tale from Tafoya’s great-aunt, of a shape-shifting owl and the protective power of salt, the collection reclaims misrepresented traditions of Northern New Mexico (2025). Photo: Courtesy of Josh Tafoya

A model stands outside on a plain with a distant view of mountains dressed in a draped assemblage of geometric-patterned cloth in many colors with fringe. — Josh Tafoya, Look from Spring/Summer 2024 Collection, Riot. Fusing the visual language of traditional Rio Grande weaving with the spirit of rebellion, Riot is inspired by various historic uprisings in New Mexico (2025). Photo: Courtesy of Josh Tafoya

Two figures modeling avant-garde, handcrafted garments with bold textiles, masks, and dramatic fringe in a garage setting. — Josh Tafoya, Look from Spring/Summer 2024 Collection, Chola. Inspired by the lowrider culture of the American Southwest, Chola is a love letter to the many ethnic heritages and mixture of cultures of New Mexico (2024). Photo: Courtesy of Josh Tafoya

A person wearing layered patchwork garments, gloves, and a wide-brimmed hat beside a rustic wooden structure. — Josh Tafoya, Look from Spring/Summer 2023 Collection, Rancher. Drawing from Tafoya’s family history of weaving and ranchwork, traditional practices passed down from generation to generation are translated into abstract workwear (2023). Photo: Courtesy of Josh Tafoya

A person wearing layered, voluminous fringed garments in front of a black, draped background. The garments are a bright coral color. — Josh Tafoya, Ranchero La Bruja. A monumental woven work bridges two legacies from Tafoya’s lineage––the weaver and the rancher––merging the labor of the land with storytelling traditions. Weaving with coarse, utilitarian materials, Tafoya transforms elements of ranch life into cultural memory (2023). Photo: Courtesy of Josh Tafoya

A person wearing a black and white patchwork patterned woven coat stands in snow, overlooking a winter landscape. — Josh Tafoya, Look from Fall/Winter 2023 Collection, Tierra Blanca. Based on the “tierra blanca,” or white earth, that Tafoya’s family used to plaster the interior of their adobe homes, the collection tells the story of rediscovery and the family’s relationship with the land (2023). Photo: Courtesy of Josh Tafoya

A person draped in a pink, purple, and blue geometric woven blanket and wide-brimmed hat inside a weathered room. — Josh Tafoya, Deconstruct Reconstruct explores the transformation of traditional Rio Grande weaving into conceptual pieces, merging the traditional with high-end fashion (2021). Photo: Courtesy of Josh Tafoya

A woven geometric textile with fringed edges rests on stone beside dark, still water. The textile is white, black, brown, pink, and blue. — Josh Tafoya, Chimayó. An experiment in transforming traditional woven textiles into wearable garments, handwoven runners, and blankets are reshaped into contemporary clothing through cutting, stitching, and styling. Playful yet intentional, the fusion of contemporary garment language and New Mexican weaving challenges the boundaries between art and apparel, tradition and subversion (2020). Photo: Courtesy of Josh Tafoya

An up close detailed image of three strips of geometric woven textiles. The textiles are pink, blue, and purple. — Josh Tafoya, Woven. Embodying the ongoing commitment to honoring tradition while reimagining its future, handwoven headbands transform traditional weaving into a wearable form. Bridging the world of fiber craft and fashion, these woven headbands are more than accessories (2020). Photo: Courtesy of Josh Tafoya

Charlap Hyman & Herrero

Interior Design

Left: Adam Charlap Hyman. Right: Andre Herrero. Photo: Courtesy of Charlap Hyman & Herrero

Founded in 2014, Charlap Hyman & Herrero is an architecture and design firm with studios in Los Angeles, New York, and Mexico City. Principals Adam Charlap Hyman and Andre Herrero lead a multifaceted practice that considers all aspects of the built environment, from site plan to furniture, delving into a diverse range of media. They have designed sets for the Santa Fe Opera and the Juilliard School, retail spaces for Aesop and Moda Operandi, exhibitions for Jeffrey Deitch and Hauser & Wirth, and residential projects spanning from ground-up architecture to sensitive restorations of historic houses and interiors. The firm also produces an ever-growing line of textiles and rugs alongside collections of lighting and furniture. Confidently navigating a rich interdisciplinary trajectory, Charlap Hyman & Herrero has blurred the boundaries of their discipline and its traditional hierarchies. Through a rigorous creative process, the firm poetically engages with memory and the hidden histories of interiors, while producing radically striking, distinctly contemporary spaces.

A sunlit bedroom with yellow and green diamond-patterned wallpaper, metal bed frame, and textured green carpet. — Charlap Hyman & Herrero, Tivoli Farmhouse. European modernism fuses with the vernacular of the American Northeast, resulting in a psychedelic reinterpretation of the 18th-century farmhouse (Tivoli, New York, 2023). Photo: Blaine Davis

A bright living room with curved sofa, upholstered in light yellow floral fabric, eclectic art, tall windows, and colorful decorative accents. — Charlap Hyman & Herrero, Clinton Hill Townhouse. Exuberant finishes and furnishings refer to the building’s Victorian origins through period-appropriate pieces and bespoke commissions from contemporary artists. In the living room, the collection is curated as an homage to Gertrude Stein (Brooklyn, New York, 2024). Project partner: GRT Architects. Photo: Jason Schmidt

A theatrical stage set featuring forest mural walls, chandeliers, and dramatic lighting. A person stands in the center of the stage in a draped gown that matches the walls. — Charlap Hyman & Herrero, La Calisto. The intimate black box theater was transformed into a dynamic and expansive space for the performance of Francisco Cavalli’s baroque opera at the Juilliard School. The muraled walls were punctured with hidden doors through which performers came and went. (New York, New York, 2015). Project partners: Jenny Stanjeski (scenic designer); Misha Kahn (collaborator); Pilar Almon (collaborator). Photo: Andre Herrero

An elegant sitting room with arched windows, green window shades, carved moldings, and antique-style furnishings. — Charlap Hyman & Herrero, Upper East Side Apartment. A historic Upper East Side apartment was sensitively restored, furnished, and decorated, resulting in a carefully measured tension between period architectural details, significant pieces of design, and contemporary, bespoke furnishings (New York, New York, 2024). Photo: Sean Davidson

A contemporary green-walled room with a dark gray curved sofa, botanical floor cushions, sculptural lighting, and minimalist art accents. — Charlap Hyman & Herrero, VitraHaus Loft. In a meditation on the tensions between public and private, old and new, references to film and literature bind the range of design pieces collected throughout the VitraHaus Loft (Weil am Rhein, Germany, 2020). Project partner: Vitra. Photo: Clemens Poloczek

A mirrored retail interior showcasing sculptural displays of handbags on glass pedestals above a marble base. — Charlap Hyman & Herrero, MZ Wallace Flagship. A jagged, mirrored “cave” at the back wall of the space allows the bespoke, digitized marble pattern printed on the carpet, fabric, and wallpaper to reflect back across the space (New York, New York, 2022). Photo: Andre Herrero

A coral-colored hallway featuring a seashell encrusted doorway, with the door ajar. — Charlap Hyman & Herrero, Miami Beach Apartment. A bespoke wallpaper reminiscent of a sunset, and a door fully enveloped in shells found on the Miami coast, create a grotto of sorts in the entryway of a Miami Beach apartment (Miami Beach, Florida, 2023). Project partner: me she. Photo: Chris Mottalini

A minimalist gallery installation featuring a black four‑poster bed sculpture, stark white walls, and graphic floor elements. — Charlap Hyman & Herrero, House for the Inhabitant Who Refused to Participate. An homage to a project of the same name by the architect John Hedjuk, House for the Inhabitant Who Refused to Participate employs long, artificial shadows embedded into the felt carpet as a means of exploring the spatial quality of a single instant (New York, New York, 2022). Project partner: Tina Kim Gallery. Photo: Hyunjung Rhee

A refined dining room with a long stone table, carved wooden chairs, framed artworks, and glass partition walls. — Charlap Hyman & Herrero, SoHo Loft. Introducing antiques and art from many time periods and cultures, the curation created a compelling design language and palette that is both distinct and harmonious with the radical architectural qualities of the space (New York, New York, 2023). Project partner: Food Architects. Photo: Angela Hau

A softly styled bedroom featuring a weathered wall backdrop, blue bedding, mirrored accents, and delicate botanical details. — Charlap Hyman & Herrero, Ouvrez-Moi was Charlap Hyman & Herrero’s first solo exhibition, a site-specific installation in Venice, Italy. Located in a former Venetian mirror workshop, the installation comprised a bedroom fully furnished with works made by Charlap Hyman & Herrero in collaboration with DH Office and local craftsmen in Murano along with a textile created with Pilar Almon. (Alma Zevi Projects, Venice, Italy, 2019). Project partners: DH Office; Alma Zevi Projects; Clara Zevi. Photo: Enrico Fiorese

Ten Eyck Landscape Architects

Landscape Architecture

Christine Ten Eyck. Photo: George Brainard

Ten Eyck Landscape Architects (TELA) has spent nearly three decades creating ecologically restorative outdoor spaces that foster community healing. Based in Austin, Texas, with origins in Phoenix, Arizona, founder Christine Ten Eyck, FASLA and her fourteen-person studio take a regional approach to the landscapes of the American Southwest, sparking conversations around pressing ecological issues through people- and place-based design. Drawing from extensive experience and intimate environmental knowledge, TELA transforms overlooked landscape project sites into vibrant environments that stimulate the senses and unify communities, prioritizing native plant species, water harvesting technologies, and durable materials expressed through form, color, and texture. Their approach combines ecological sensitivity with beauty and inclusivity, creating landscapes that are resilient, accessible, and deeply rooted in history and community.

Birds-eye view of an outdoor courtyard with a seating deck, a natural pond, and surrounding desert flora. — Ten Eyck Landscape Architects, The University of Arizona Underwood Family Sonoran Laboratory. Functioning both as an outdoor laboratory and high-performance landscape, the reimagined former grayfield becomes a research-oriented public space that sustains urban wildlife amid the extreme conditions of desert geographies (Tucson, Arizona, 2007). Project partners: Jones Studio; Wass, Gerke & Associates; Carl Kominsky Irrigation; Lloyd Construction Company. Photo: Bill Timmerman

Outdoor courtyard with tables and chairs and decorated with desert fauna, walled in by a high fence made of stone pile and wire. — Ten Eyck Landscape Architects, The Capri. The Capri transforms a barren asphalt site into a vibrant, ecologically rich landscape, incorporating sustainable water management systems and flexible gathering spaces that connect the community to one another and the raw beauty of the West Texas desert (Marfa, Texas, 2010). Project partners: Scott Williams General Contractor; Tom’s Tree Place; Lake | Flato Architects. Photo: Caitlin Atkinson

Outdoor campus space with tree-lined walkways, desert fauna, sleekly modern buildings, and pedestrians. — Ten Eyck Landscape Architects, Arizona State University Polytechnic. A robust design initiative to transform the former Air Force base into an accessible, shade-forward, and sustainably designed environment, ASU Polytechnic is designed to protect the campus from seasonal flooding and allow outdoor student life to flourish (Mesa, Arizona, 2009). Project partners: Lake | Flato Architects; RSP Architect of Record; Aqua Engineering; DPR General Contractor; Grounds Control Landscape Contractor. Photo: Bill Timmerman

Lush green landcaped yard filled with towering trees and robust fauna that line a grass clearing next to a pond contained by a low moss covered stone fence with adjoining stone steps. — Ten Eyck Landscape Architects, Mill Spring Ranch. A model for environmental restoration in the American West, the revitalization of this historic ranch in the Sabinal River valley restores the ecological integrity of the site and introduces transformative water management and habitat restoration strategies, significantly improving water quality, reducing erosion, and increasing biodiversity (Vanderpool, Texas, 2012). Project partners: Duecker Construction Co.; Lake | Flato Architects; Studio Lumina; Dean Mitchell Masonry; Milberger’s Landscaping & Nursery. Photo: Bill Timmerman

Sprawling campus centering a circular grass lawn with tan and terracotta school buildings, lush desert trees and fauna, and sidewalks radiating out from the center. Tan desert hills dotted with green surround the campus. — Ten Eyck Landscape Architects, The University of Texas at El Paso Campus Transformation. In celebration of its centennial, the University of Texas El Paso commissioned the Campus Transformation Project to reimagine the car-oriented campus dominated by asphalt, sloped lawns, and clipped hedges into a universally accessible, pedestrian-oriented campus linked to its Chihuahuan Desert ecosystem (El Paso, Texas, 2012–2015). Project partners: Quantum Civil Engineers; Jordan Foster Construction; AEC; EEA Consulting Engineers; Aqua Irrigation; Rider Levett Bucknall; Altura Solutions; Lake | Flato Architects; Biohabitats; Regenerative Environmental Design; Yarnell Associates; LAS. Photo: Adam Barbe

Outdoor plaza filled with trees and large crowds of people attending a famer's market called Pearl Market and a large indoor food hall, a towering building overlooking the plaza with a red sign near its roof reading "Pearl". — Ten Eyck Landscape Architects, The Historic Pearl Brewery. As part of the Historic Pearl’s transformation into a bustling cultural destination, the four-acre landscape intervention unites the development’s diverse uses through a network of plazas, promenades, and gardens inspired by the site’s industrial heritage, creating dynamic gathering spaces (San Antonio, Texas, 2017). Project partners: Three Living Architecture; Don McDonald Architect; Campbell & Associates Structural Engineers; Pape-Dawson Engineers; Rialto Studio Irrigation Design; The Fountain People; Bos Lighting; Harvey-Cleary Builders. Photo: Laura Swimmer

Outdoor greenspace featuring a multi-tiered stone fountain that stretches along a wide walkway surrounded by towering trees. — Ten Eyck Landscape Architects, San Antonio Botanical Garden. Redefining the visitor experience with immersive, interactive outdoor spaces that celebrate the region’s diverse ecoregions and engage the community, the eight-acre expansion reinforces the Garden’s commitment to accessibility, education, and environmental stewardship (San Antonio, Texas, 2020). Project partners: Weddle Gilmore Architects; Pape-Dawson Engineers; Datum Engineering; Studio Lumina; Waterline Studios; SRI & Associates; Cleary Zimmerman; National Learning Initiative; Terra Design; Dyal & Partners; AzzanArts. Photo: Bill Timmerman

Campus greenspace with a grass and stone amphitheater, sprigs of yellow flowers and taller grass, and a series of angular cabin-like structures all connected by a curving wooden walkway. — Ten Eyck Landscape Architects, Holdsworth Center. Focusing on the restoration of the historic ecological character of the site, comprising 23 acres of preserved uplands, weaving new trails, circulation paths, rain gardens, meadows, and buildings, the redesign provides respite and increases visitors’ connection to nature (Austin, Texas, 2021). Project partners: Lake | Flato Architects; Looney & Associates Interior Design; Stantec; AEC; Integral Group; Hines Inc; Siglo Group; Waterline Studios; Mazzetti; Page/Dyal. Photo: Kristian Alveo

Outdoor circular campus courtyard made of light grey stone radiating from a central pond decorated with modern chairs and tables, recessed lighting, and towering trees. — Ten Eyck Landscape Architects, ITESM Mexico City Campus. Rebuilding and reimagining the campus following a devastating earthquake in 2017, this project focused on creating a more community-integrated, water-retentive, and disaster-resilient site for students and visitors (Cuidad de Mexico, Mexico, 2024). Project partners: Beck Architecture, LLC; Nolte de Mexico; ZVA Group; GHA y Asociados; Mazzetti; Hines, Inc; Biohabitats; Entorno Landscape Architect of Record. Photo: Mauricio Milenko

Birds-eye view of a sprawling outdooor greenspace that includes many activity centers, a large basketball court, and landscaped lush trees all bordered by an undulating white fence. — Ten Eyck Landscape Architects, Kingsbury Commons. Integrating mature vegetation with a diverse program of natural play areas, event spaces, and sustainable design features, the revitalization of Kingsbury Commons attracts community members of all ages to ensure that this historic park will serve generations to come (Austin, Texas, 2021). Project partners: AEC; Clayton Korte; ETM Associates; Garza & Associates; Greenscape Pump; Mell Lawrence Architects; Natural Learning Initiative; Page/Dyal; Regenerative Environmental Design; Siglo Group; Studio Lumina; Sweeney + Associates. Photo: Casey Dunn

Berea College Student Craft

Product Design

From left to right: Hunter Elliott, Director of Fellowships; Erin Miller, Director of Weaving and Assistant Creative Director of Student Craft; Emerson Croft, Weaving Manager; Cleo Lewis, Woodcraft Manager; Steve Davis-Rosenbaum, Director of Outreach; Aaron Beale, Associate Vice President of Student Craft; Amanda Lee Lazorchack, Director of Broomcraft; Rob Spiece, Director of Woodcraft and the Woodworking School at Pine Croft; Katie Bister, Pine Croft Manager; Philip Wiggs, Director of Ceramics. Photo: Courtesy of Berea College Student Craft

Based in Kentucky, Berea College Student Craft integrates design education with hands-on making, continuing a tradition that began in 1893 as part of the college’s tuition-free work program. Founded on principles of equity, inclusion, and justice, Berea was the South’s first coeducational and interracial college, and today its craft program provides experiential learning for students across all thirty-five academic majors. Foundational to the curriculum is the belief that every student in the program must feel safe and supported both to succeed and to fail, as most students have not had formal art and design education prior to arriving at Berea College. Students design, prototype, test, and market thousands of objects annually, gaining a deep understanding of the inherent qualities of the raw materials they work with through rigorous hands-on experience.

A white cloth striped with the colors of the rainbow hangs from a clothesline. — Berea College Student Craft, Rainbow Baby Blanket. Cotton; 47 x 35 inches. Designed by student Wes Hansen and Director of Weaving Erin Miller, this blanket was the first completed project under the current student-led design directive. The Rainbow Baby Blanket celebrates impartial love, the foundation on which Rev. John G. Fee created Berea College, and demonstrates Berea’s commitment to the kinship of all people and to gender equality beyond the binary (2019). Designers: Wes Hanson; Erin Miller. Photo: Justin Skeens

Two loosely rolled up fringed scarves bearing the same intricate woven pattern, one maroon, one teal, lie casually on top of each other. — Berea College Student Craft, Leeroy Mabvuta with Symphony Scarves. Cotton, bamboo, tensel; 80 x 11 inches. Designed by Leeroy Mabvuta, this scarf features a treadle pattern that is a translation of the melody of “A Beautiful Noise” by Alicia Keys and Brandi Carlisle into a woven design. The scarf collection urges everyone to use their voice and express their identity and values (2023). Designer: Leeroy Mabvuta. Photo: Sean Hall

A blanket-sized cloth filled with earthtone horizontal stripes of blue, yellow, green, orange, and pink hangs from clothespins. — Berea College Student Craft, Rise Throws. Wool, hemp; 46 x 60 inches. Inspired by blankets found in Berea College’s Appalachian Artifact Collection, these throws each feature a design whose unique arrangement allows students to make decisions on the color and placement of stripes, making each throw one of a kind. Creativity and critical thinking are crucial skills to develop, and these blankets encourage students to hone these skills while honoring the material (2021–ongoing). Designers: Erin Miller; students of the Weaving Studio. Project partner: Design Within Reach. Photo: Justin Skeens

Four equal-sized cutting boards in medium wood with visible woodgrain are each decorated with a different formation of the same dot pattern. — Berea College Student Craft, Intersections Cutting Board. Cherry, walnut, maple, mahogany; 18 x 12 inches. With lessons learned in Berea College’s women’s and gender studies program in mind, Sharon Ngassa led an exploration of intersectional feminism and gender equality in the woodshop (2021). Designer: Sharon Ngassa. Project partners: MillerKnoll; Design Within Reach. Photo: Justin Skeens

Angular, armless, wooden rocking chair with red back slats and red legs. — Berea College Student Craft, People Collection Rocking Chair and Stools. Ash, cherry, milk paint, lacquer. Continuing the work of students Rachel Bates and Zoe Cowley, student Katie Bister explored Windsor-style design, combining it with Bates and Cowley’s conceptual celebration of difference to examine the engineering challenges in designing stools and rocking chairs (2022–ongoing). Designers: Katie Bister; Rob Spiece. Photo: Justin Skeens

Black wooden dustpan and brush set. — Berea College Student Craft, Dustpan and Brush. Wood, copper, broomcorn, nylon; 14.5 x 10 inches. The dustpan and broom set is a collaborative design, developed by Broomcraft and Woodcraft students. Staff and students worked for more than a year to develop an elegant and functional design that pays gentle homage to the traditional Shaker box while retaining its own individual form. The rooster-tail-style whisk broom included with the cherry and walnut dustpans remains one of the most complicated hand brooms that the program has ever produced, requiring precise sizing and shaping to properly hold the dustpan in place while being displayed (2022). Designers: Broomcraft and Woodcraft student teams. Photo: Sean Hall; Evy Medley

Five textured ceramic vases in muted black, brown, orange, and blue tones. — Berea College Student Craft, Convergence Vases. Glazed, slip-cast ceramic; 13 x 7 x 4 inches. Designed as a partnership between visiting designer Norman Teague, visiting Craft Fellow José-Alfredo Ramos-Macias, and ceramics student Elsa Black, Convergence Vases focus on the college’s 5th Great Commitment to the kinship of all people as an exploration of beauty (2023). Designers: Norman Teague, José-Alfredo Ramos-Macias, Elsa Black. Project partners: MillerKnoll; Design Within Reach. Photo: Aaron Beale

Brown tiles decorated with many three-dimensional reliefs of daisy-like flowers assembled against a teal frame. — Berea College Student Craft, Flower Tiles. Black stoneware, unglazed; porcelain, celadon glaze; 10 x 10 inches. Representing the combined efforts of Craft students to explore the decorative traditions of tile and flower-making in the ceramic studio, these tiles provided a platform for student-led creativity and expression that pushed the clay studio traditions from functional ware toward site-specific tile decoration (2025). Designers: Alyzia; Maddie; Lihuen Rousseaux; Diliara; Faryal; Bayla. Photo: Sean Hall

A line of six brooms hanging from wooden pegs each with long squiggle-shaped handles. — Berea College Student Craft, Squibble Broom. Walnut, sorghum, nylon; 53 x 11 inches. An interdepartmental collaboration between Woodcraft and Broomcraft, this playful broom blends sculpture and tradition. The contemporary design keeps function intact while celebrating the often-misunderstood functions of playfulness and joy (2024). Designers: Rob Spiece; Amanda Lee Lazorchack; Hunter Elliott. Photo: Sean Hall; Evy Medley

Five identical hand brooms each featuring a gradient of the six traditional colors of the rainbow. — Berea College Student Craft, Rainbow Whisk. Sorghum, nylon; 13 x 10 inches. The Rainbow Whisk is a bright and flashy broom consisting of six distinct colors and an elegant, plaited handle. Helen Bowling was inspired by the work of fellow students Destiny and Alex as they worked to create their first new broom design and incorporated a silhouette reminiscent of indigenous brushes, materials associated with European settlers to the region, and engineering drawn from Japanese brush-making traditions (2025). Designer: Helen Bowling. Photo: Justin Skeens

Meet the Jury

National Design Award winners are selected by a multidisciplinary jury of design practitioners, educators, and leaders. Nominations are open to all and are also solicited from experts from a wide range of design and related fields. Jurors join from diverse locations to review submissions, resulting in a final selection of 10 category awardees.

Aric Chen, Jury Chair

Aric Chen is a curator, a writer, and the director of the Zaha Hadid Foundation, the London-based cultural foundation established by the late architect Dame Zaha Hadid. Chen previously served as general and artistic director of the Nieuwe Instituut, the Netherlands’ national museum and institute for architecture, design, and digital culture; professor and founding director of the Curatorial Lab at the College of Design & Innovation at Tongji University in Shanghai; curatorial director of the Design Miami fairs in Miami Beach and Basel, Switzerland; and lead curator for Design and Architecture at M+, Hong Kong, where he oversaw the formation of that new museum’s design and architecture collection and program.

Liz Danzico

Liz Danzico is a designer, educator, and writer whose work explores how technology and design shape human connection. As vice president of design at Microsoft AI, she leads teams creating new ways for people to search, learn, and discover in the age of AI. She is also founding chair of the MFA Interaction Design program at the School of Visual Arts, where she has guided a generation of designers. Previously, Danzico was senior vice president of Digital and vice president of design at NPR, uniting design with one of the most trusted news organizations. She has collaborated with the New York Times, “This American Life,” Teach For All, and the TED Prize, and her ideas have appeared in the New Yorker, Wired, Fast Company, and Bloomberg BusinessWeek. An advocate for design’s role in culture and society, she has been a founding member of Adobe’s Design Circle and a founding board member of Parsons’ Design + Journalism program and the Austin Center for Design, and a board member of AIGA NY.

Patricia Moore

Patricia Moore, president of MooreDesign Associates, holds an undergraduate degree in industrial design from the Rochester Institute of Technology, completed Advanced Studies in Biomechanics at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine, and earned graduate degrees in psychology and gerontology at Columbia University. Selected as one of the “40 most socially conscious designers” in the world, she has also been featured as one of “50 Americans defining the new millennium” (ABC World News). Moore was named one of the “100 most important women in America” (2000), inducted into Rochester Institute of Technology’s Innovation Hall of Fame (2012), and was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree at Syracuse University, for being a “guiding force for a more humane and livable world, blazing a path for inclusiveness, [and] a true leader in the movement of Universal Design,” in 2012. Hasselt University awarded Moore a PhD in 2019; Sheffield Hallam University, in 2021. Honored with the Cooper Hewitt’s prestigious National Design Award in 2019, Moore also was then bestowed the Center for Health Design 2020 Changemaker Award. In 2022, the National Association of Schools for Art and Design honored Moore with its Citation Award, and the World Design Organization selected her for the World Design Medal in 2022. The College of Creative Studies awarded Moore a PhD in 2022, and the Rochester Institute of Technology presented her with a Doctorate of Human Letters in 2024.

Henk Ovink

Henk Ovink is the executive director and founding commissioner for the Global Commission on the Economics of Water. He was the first global water ambassador, appointed in 2015 by the Dutch Cabinet as Special Envoy for International Water Affairs. As Ambassador to the UN on Water, Ovink led the second UN Water Conference in 2023, the first since 1977. He is also the chair of the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) Board of Governors. Ovink served on President Obama’s Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force, where he led the long-term innovation, resilience, and rebuilding efforts and developed and led the groundbreaking “Rebuild by Design” competition. Before joining the Task Force, Ovink was both acting director general of Spatial Planning and Water Affairs and director of National Spatial Planning for the Netherlands, after multiple roles in the private sector and academia. Ovink holds an honorary doctorate at Delft University, is associate professor at the University of Groningen of climate adaptation and water Management, and is visiting fellow at Professor Mariana Mazzucato’s Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose at UCL London. In 2023, Ovink was the tenth recipient of the Foreign Affairs Decoration of Honor in Gold for his global leadership on water diplomacy.

Valerie Steele

Valerie Steele is director and chief curator of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, where she has organized more than 25 exhibitions since 1997, including The Corset: Fashioning the Body; London Fashion; Gothic: Dark Glamour; A Queer History of Fashion: From the Closet to the Catwalk; Pink: The History of a Punk, Pretty, Powerful Color; and Paris, Capital of Fashion. She is also the author or editor of more than thirty books, including Paris Fashion, Women of Fashion, Fetish: Fashion, Sex & Power, The Corset, The Berg Companion to Fashion, and Fashion Designers A–Z: The Collection of the Museum at FIT. Her books have been translated into Chinese, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. In addition, she is founder and editor in chief of Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body & Culture, the first scholarly journal in fashion studies. Steele combines serious scholarship (and a Yale PhD) with the rare ability to communicate with general audiences. As author, curator, editor, and public intellectual, Valerie Steele has been instrumental in creating the modern field of fashion studies and in raising awareness of the cultural significance of fashion. She has appeared on many television programs, including The Oprah Winfrey Show and Undressed: The Story of Fashion. Described in the Washington Post as one of “fashion’s brainiest women” and by Suzy Menkes as “the Freud of Fashion,” Steele is listed as one of “The People Shaping the Global Fashion Industry” in the Business of Fashion 500 (2014 to the present).

Thomas Woltz

Thomas Woltz, senior principal of Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects (NBW), leads his firm in the artful creation and revitalization of public landscapes, working at the intersection of culture and ecology for the sustainability of the public realm. Through a collaborative and research-based approach, NBW’s designs reveal lost or erased histories in the landscape. The work of NBW now stretches across thirty states and twelve countries. In 2011, Woltz was inducted into the American Society of Landscape Architects Council of Fellows, among the highest honors achieved in the profession, and was named Design Innovator of the Year by the Wall Street Journal magazine. He has also been recognized as one of the most creative people in business by Fast Company, was given the Land for People Award by the Trust for Public Land, and was a 2025 Frederic Church Award honoree. Woltz currently serves as the board of directors co-chair for the Cultural Landscape Foundation.