Highlights of the 2013 Green Good Design Awards
The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and the European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies have announced the 100 recipients of the 2013 Green Good Design Awards. The program, now in its fourth year, is an outgrowth of the Good Design awards, founded in 1950 by Eero Saarinen and Charles and Ray Eames to promote groundbreaking, global product design.
Hundreds of architecture, design, and urban planning projects were submitted under this year’s theme of “Build a Better World Now”, along with plans from leaders, foundations, and governments from 35 countries around the world. The winning entries were selected by juries from the International Advisory Committee at the European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies.
“Green Good Design celebrates architectural projects and industrial design products that are the result of a thoroughly integrated approach to design, natural systems, and technology,” says Christian Narkiewicz-Laine, museum president of The Chicago Athenaeum. “The goal is for a totally integrated green environment—not just in pieces or in fragments, but for commercial, private, and public buildings, transportation systems, and consumer products.”
This integration can be seen in projects like Sean Godsell Arhitects‘ and Peddle Thorp Architects’ Design Hub for RMIT University in Melbourne, which is cloaked in a skin of more than 16,000 glass cells that move with the sun to shade the building, then turn translucent when the sun moves behind clouds. And Vietnam’s Ta Phin Community House, designed by 1+1>2 International Architecture JSC, features a rooftop solar panel, rainwater harvesting system, energy-efficient fireplace, and locally-sourced, recycled building materials.
Winners in the product design category include Stéphane Maupin’s St. Clair lamp, with a base of solar-energy gathering photocells that can attach to windows via suction cups. Hiroom Tahara’s beguiling Fruit Bowl collection for Yamakawa Rattan Industry includes a sofa, low tables, and poufs, all handmade from sustainable rattan.
Brühl’s Kati Meyer-Brühl won five awards—for her Avec Plaisir and Belami ranges; her Dive armchair; the Edouard chair and armchair; and the Lemon stool. Meyer-Brühl’s products all combine eco-friendly materials and fabrication with forward thinking designs.
Beyond energy conservation and locally-sourced materials, says Narkiewicz-Laine, “the selected and honored products and buildings have made and will make a positive contribution to communities, [as they] reduce environmental impact through renewable and efficient energy strategies, such as the reuse of existing structures, the connection to transit systems, and low-impact and regenerative site development.”
Narkiewicz-Laine also hopes that, by training a spotlight on governments and institutions including Architecture for Humanity and Seoul’s Ministry of Land, Transport, and Maritime Affairs, Green Good Design will promote “an overall design that improves the quality of life for all peoples.”
