Interior Design’s Best in 10 Projects and Products Winners
To honor stellar projects and products, Interior Design launched the Best of Year Awards in 2006. For the milestone 10th annual edition, we therefore searched for what editor in chief Cindy Allen calls the Best of the Best, the winners that continue to shine for their game-changing design and pure wow factor.
Project Winners
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| Category | Project | Designers | Year | Standout |
| Bar/Lounge | Conga Room, Los Angeles | Belzberg Architects | 2009 | Traditional ornament, inspired by the rumba, morphed into abstract pattern, most spectacularly with a canopy of acrylic-coated composite triangles. |
| Institutional | Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust | Belzberg Architects | 2011 | A poignant nonlinear journey, through subterranean galleries, both begins and ends in a park filled with daylight and children’s laughter. |
| Exhibition/ Installation | Out of Memory, Los Angeles | Patrick Tighe Architecture | 2011 | Digitally mapping music generated the pattern CNC-carved into polyurethane foam that was then embedded with speakers and LEDs. |
| Kitchen/ Bath | Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto | Superkül | 2014 | A single swoop of solid-surfacing integrates trough sinks, at adult and child heights, while faucets double as air jets for drying hands. |
| Communal Space | Nanchang Insun International Cinema, China | One Plus Partnership | 2013 | Books, not movies, were the inspiration, as witnessed in a theater wall’s spinelike angles upholstered in acoustical material. |
| Hotel | Fontevraud L’Hotel, Fontevraud- l’Abbaye, France | Jouin Manku | 2014 | A medieval abbey’s vaulted chapel became the hotel’s iBar, where touch-screen tabletops epitomize the designers’ concept of “monk tech.” |
| Fine Dining | Pump Room, Chicago | Yabu Pushelberg | 2012 | A constellation of 500 individually custom-cast resin orbs updates a fabled celebrity haunt, now part of an Ian Schrager Company hotel. |
| Education | Hatfield- Dowlin Complex, University of Oregon, Eugene | ZGF Architects and Firm 151 | 2013 | The lobby’s 64-screen video wall, displaying Ducks football scrimmage and game-day action, is just one enticement to high-school stars to sign up. |
| Beauty/Spa | Private sauna, Sans Souci Island, Ontario | Partisans | 2014 | A freestanding structure’s grottolike interior was sculpted from laminated white cedar to emulate glacier-formed rocks nearby. |
| Office | Macquarie Group, Sydney, Australia | Clive Wilkinson Architects | 2010 | Jutting out from all 10 levels of the central atrium, boxy meeting pods reference the shipping containers along the city’s harbor. |
| Healthcare | South Australian Health & Medical Research Institute, Adelaide | Woods Bagot | 2014 | Because an ordinary curtain wall couldn’t negotiate the curves of the building, glass triangles do the job, aided by triangular sunshades. |
| Retail | Guerlain, Paris | Peter Marino Architect | 2014 | An expansion in honor of the cosmetics brand’s 100th anniversary features a glass-mosaic mural of eyes, peering over a polished-nickel vitrine. |
| Cafeteria | Der Spiegel, Hamburg, Germany | Ippolito Fleitz Group | 2012 | Since the newspaper’s name means mirror, the showstopping ceiling boasts a 4,230 reflectors in micro-perforated satin-polished aluminum. |
| Showroom/ Manufacturer’s Headquarters | Steelcase, Grand Rapids, Michigan | Shimoda Design Group | 2012 | To serve 10,000 employees visiting from six continents, a concierge desk sits right at the bottom of the staircase in solid walnut. |
| Apartment | New York apartment | David Hotson Architect and Ghislaine Viñas Interior Design | 2012 | At a four-level penthouse, a steel column is reimagined as a climbing wall, rising to pierce a balcony with chintz-upholstered seating. |
| House | Southampton, New York house | Shelton, Mindel & Associates and Reed Morrison Architect | 2007 | Impeccable mid-century furnishings make a statement in concrete surroundings that verge on the austere. |
| Casual Dining | Pops, Arcadia, Oklahoma | Elliott + Associates Architects | 2008 | Circles of color-changing LEDs create a soda bottle sculpture, signaling the reinvention of the roadside burger joint along Route 66. |
Product Winners
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| Category | Manufacturer | Product |
| Contract Textile | Maharam | Layers Garden Double |
| Kitchen Product | Bertazzoni | Professional |
| Contract Accent | Humanscale | Quickstand |
| Contract Guest Seating | Janus et Cie | Forest |
| Outdoor Furniture | Dedon | Orbit XXL |
| Contract Task Seating | Haworth | Zody |
| Architectural/Building Product | Sun Valley Bronze | Sliding Barn Door Hardware |
| Soft Flooring | Tandus Centiva | Full Volume |
| Residential Textile | Sahco Hesslein | Orchidea |
| Wall Covering | Maya Romanoff | Flexi Mother of Pearl Mosaic |
| Contract Furniture | Herman Miller | Public Office Landscape |
| Lighting | Vibia | Ameba |
| Bath Product | Hansgrohe | Axor Massaud |
| Residential Furniture | B&B Italia | Husk |
| Hard Flooring | EGE | EGE Atelier by Jean-Paul Gaultier |
