Cooper Hewitt National Design Award winners embrace the creative spirit
Winners of the 2017 Cooper Hewitt National Design Awards discuss the impact of design. L-R: Susan Chin, Mary Ping, Susan Szenasy, and Caroline Baumann.
Members of the design community welcomed three of the winners of the 2017 Cooper Hewitt National Design Awards to the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery in Washington, DC, for a panel discussion on the importance and impact of design.
The awards program, now in its 18th year, honored 11 winners, including panelists Susan S. Szenasy, editor-in-chief of Metropolis Magazine, who won the Director’s Award; Mary Ping, founder of New York-based label Slow and Steady Wins the Race, for fashion design; and the Design Trust for Public Space, for corporate and institutional achievement, represented by executive director Susan Chin, FAIA.
The National Design Awards underscore the significance of design in an era where arts funding is increasingly at risk. According to Smithsonian Secretary David Skorton, the awards program is “a chance for solutions or optimism at a time when optimism toward seemingly intractable problems seems elusive.”
Elaborating upon that sentiment, Szenasy spoke of design and architecture as acts of hope: “Whatever you put out there is about future use of something,” she said. “The creative spirit in human beings is the most important spirit alive.”
Read the full story at Topic Architecture.