 Welcome to the 20th annual National Design Awards. Please give a warm welcome to John Davis, Provost and Undersecretary for Museums, Education, and Research of the Smithsonian Institution. Good evening. Good evening and welcome. Welcome to the 20th anniversary celebration of the National Design Awards. I'm delighted to be here at Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum to celebrate this landmark occasion with you. Since its launch as part of the White House Millennium Council, the National Design Awards have come to reflect the remarkable progress achieved in design and through design over the past two decades and our incredible capacity for ambition and creativity to face the challenges and opportunities of tomorrow. Cooper Hewitt continues to advance the values of the Smithsonian to achieve in the words of our new secretary, Lonnie Bunch, greater reach, greater relevance, and a more profound impact. The National Design Awards embody these goals by broadening public access to design, education, and inspiring people everywhere to understand design's capacity to transform everyday life. On behalf of the Smithsonian, congratulations to this year's award winners. Thank you also to our honorary patron, First Lady Melania Trump, who continues the tradition of serving as the honorary patron of this event. And I finally want to make a special thank you to the board of Cooper Hewitt and the staff of Cooper Hewitt who continue to serve this institution so well and so ably. And now, please enjoy a short film by Radical Media, capturing the breadth of the award winners' work for the last 20 years. The score for this film, an original composition by the talented Juilliard alumni, whose performances we've been enjoying so far tonight will be something special. So without further ado, it's my pleasure to introduce this 20th anniversary film. Winners of the past 20 years whose work was represented in that video, Cooper Hewitt, who has been a driving force in elevating the museum as a beacon of the future of design. Good evening, everyone. You did it again, capturing 20 years of visionary design in this brilliant, brilliant film homage to all winners of the National Design Awards to date. That's 213 honorees, folks. So huge thanks to Cooper Hewitt trustee, John Cayman, and your fantastic team. This moment truly represents the spirit of Cooper Hewitt. In the first six days of National Design Week, we have welcomed over 6,000 visitors of all ages to experience the power of design through free education programs inspired by the impactful work of past and present honorees. We wrap on Saturday when thousands more will join us for a full day of hands-on activities led by some of the award winners in this room tonight. Massive thanks to Cooper Hewitt trustee, Todd Waterbury, and the whole target team for your partnership over the many years and for everything you do to support Cooper Hewitt, including providing free admission all week long. Thank you. This week is a befitting cap to an extraordinary year at Cooper Hewitt. From our home here in New York City to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, to Title I schools in Oakland, California, we have propelled forward our goal of being a platform for design, inspiring important conversations across the globe on critical topics ranging from accessibility and inclusivity to climate change. We will continue to extend our reach nationwide through the NDA Cities Program, starting with Detroit next month and San Francisco in February. Tonight, we gather to celebrate the best design minds of our time. All of you here understand that design is a force for change. From everyday objects to entire cities, thoughtful design enables humanity to be more sustainable, inclusive and imaginative and vastly improves the way we live. That is why we are here as we mark the 20th anniversary of the National Design Awards to celebrate the immeasurable significance and impact of today's design pioneers and to imagine what we can achieve together through design in the next 20 years and well beyond. So that we may recognize the exceptional talent of those who have paved the path to where we are today, will all past and present award winners please stand. Our journey over the last two decades could not have been possible without the passion and support of all of you. I would like to take a moment to acknowledge past winners who are sadly no longer with us but have left a lasting impression on all of us and on the world. Thank you all for being here on this momentous occasion. This Scala is Cooper Hewitt's most important fundraising event of the year and your support enables us to fulfill our mission of educating, inspiring and empowering people through design every day. 2019 winners, congratulations. Award you are receiving not only recognizes your distinguished achievements but also symbolizes the public's trust in your vision of a better world. Thank you for your lasting contributions to society. 2019 jury, we are so grateful for your invaluable expertise in selecting this year's class of stellar winners. And the 38 alumni who served as 20th anniversary co-chairs, your guidance all along the way has catapulted this year's program to its strongest yet. Thank you. And our phenomenal, phenomenal board of trustees, your profound dedication to Cooper Hewitt is felt throughout the museum every day. Please do stand so that we can recognize your immense impact, Cooper Hewitt trustees. I would particularly like to acknowledge Trustee Emeriti, Rick Smith and K. Allaire, as well as former director, Diane Pilgrim, who were responsible in great part for the launch and growth of the awards program. We would not be here tonight without their vision back in the year 2000s. So thank you. And Cooper Hewitt staff, thank you for your incredible, incredible dedication to our mission. And a huge thank you in particular to Vaso Genopoulos, manager of the National Design Awards for nine years of making the awards program sing. Thank you again to Target for your tremendous support of Cooper Hewitt and your continued partnership in bringing design to all. And thank you to Design Within Reach, who have been critical to the national expansion of the program. I can't see you, but I know where you are. Thank you as well to Facebook and Bloomberg Philanthropies for your vital support of the National Design Awards. Radical Media, two by four, David Stark, K.M. Productions, GE Current, and Lake County Press, thanks to your contributions tonight is spectacular. Huge thanks to the Corning Museum of Glass, who has handcrafted the trophies since 2011 and designed beautiful special edition trophies for this milestone year. Thank you. So I look forward to celebrating with all of you tonight, enjoy your dinner, and we will be back soon for the awards ceremony. Thank you. Again. Thank you. It is my great honor to present the Directors Award, which recognizes an individual or organization's outstanding accomplishments and support of the design community. This year, it is my enormous pleasure to bestow the award to Mark Chambers. Mark is an avid interpreter of how we live in dense cities. He is an architect, an urbanist, and the Director of Sustainability for New York City. He leads the design and development of policies and programs to draw a line from where we are right now to where we need to be in the next 20 years. This spring, he spearheaded and passed the world's first mandated cap on greenhouse gas emissions from large buildings. Also passed legislation that every single new building in New York City must have a green or solar roof effective next month. Together, these laws represent some of the most aggressive work of any city in the world to help fight climate change. Go, Mark. Mark's impact is felt right here at Cooper Hewitt where we are partnering with him and his team to educate the public and reduce our buildings' carbon footprint even further. Mark often says that we designed ourselves into this mess so we can and we must design ourselves out of it. He is leading the way towards a greener future by creating essential awareness of the difference we can make as a city of 8.6 million New Yorkers. Here is a short film highlighting the breadth of Mark's impact. I'm delighted to honor Mark Chambers with the Director's Award. Thank you. I am both humbled and grateful to accept this award this evening. Thank you Caroline for your unyielding leadership and of course, thank you to the American design treasure that is the Cooper Hewitt. So make no mistakes. Yes. Absolutely. Make no mistakes. As we pivot and turn towards confronting the climate crisis head on, we find ourselves at a defining moment in the story arc of our species. And as a public servant and as a policymaker, I've always felt that it's incumbent upon me to try to create an environment where inclusive, impactful and intentional design can actually take place and can be pushed forward. So it is with that urgency that I accept this award and accept this honor and I'm grateful to all of you, the creatives and to the institutions that serve them. As we turn ourselves towards this challenge, I will just say what we do right now to be as directional and be as impactful around facing the climate crisis will not only define us, it will determine us. So thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you Mark and sincere congratulations. Mark's life work is perfectly aligned with Cooper Hewitt's core belief that design creates change from the everyday to the monumental. I do hope you are all able to explore our sixth triennial which examines the ways in which designers are collaborating across multiple disciplines to reimagine our relationship with nature. The New York Times Review cites that the triennial quote shows us a post consumption future in which the urgency of restoring ecological function trumps the allure of the latest gadget. This is not just an exhibition but a call to action. Climate change is one of the most pressing consequential challenges of our time. We will be returning to Davos next year, this time bringing projects from the triennial that address this global emergency. I'm pleased tonight to be joined by National Design Award alumni Eve Bihar and Ben Watson of Herman Miller and welcome Mark back on stage for an important announcement. Good evening everybody. To paraphrase Yvonne Schrinard, there is no rainbow trout on Mars. And I would say there's also no beautiful blue wave to surf on Mars. So our planet Earth doesn't need us. It's hard to realize, it doesn't. We need it and our children need it. Throughout history, design has always responded to the challenges of its time. And today, conscious consumption by consumers needs to be preceded by more conscious creation by designers. This is the most exciting job I think that we can do. Most exciting job for us. So my question is to you all, can we do this? Say yes. All right, thank you. I believe we all share a responsibility and we share a responsibility to make the world a better place for the people, the communities and the planet that we all share. At Herman Miller, we believe that corporations share that same responsibility. And I think also really importantly, we believe that design is the most important and maybe the most powerful tool that we have to solve that problem together. We're all in this together. As America's design museum, Cooper Hewitt is uniquely positioned to value and champion the crucial efforts of people who are working hard to design a more sustainable, regenerative future. We join hands with the next generation to save our planet. I'm incredibly excited to announce a new climate action category for the 2020 National Design Awards, which will recognize a design project for advancing our work in confronting our global climate crisis. So many of you here are part of the sustainability revolution. Please join us in advocating for this all important effort by making climate action a priority in everything you do. Thank you Caroline. Thank you for demonstrating that everyone has a role to play in fighting climate change. It's heartening to see Cooper Hewitt partnering with the great American city that is New York and working alongside all of these other key organizations to protect our shared future. Thank you. Thank you Eve, Ben and Mark. Thank you. And now on with the show. Please welcome 2017 National Design Award winner, Susan Sinasi. So I wrote this thing and then I crumpled it up because it was not alive as Patty Moore is alive. Patty Moore has taught me how to think about design very early on. I remember coming to Metropolis, the first story I ever worked on was her story at age 26, dressed up as an 84 year old woman, not just dressed but really disabled like an 84 year old woman and walking and using urban streets, using products and really understood what life was about as we aged. And don't forget she's an industrial designer. She didn't have to do this. She didn't have to do the urban realm. She went and went across the scales. So Patty essentially taught me everything I know. So it is my honor to introduce Patricia Moore, my dear friend Patty. Thank you Susan. Thank you everyone. I'll just quickly note, I was struck by a car in New Zealand. So I'm not doing secondary research. I've had a lot of questions tonight. I'm actually an injured person, so people please stop looking at your phones when you're driving. I'm delighted if design describes my mind, but I'm made hopeful if empathy and inclusivity define my heart. Thank you all from its bottom for this humbling honor and for the most wonderful birthday celebration I've ever had. Please welcome MIT D-Lab alumni and co-founder of SATI, Kristin Kagetsu. Good evening. Design through co-creation is at the core of D-Lab's work. I remember even before I went to MIT that I wanted to take Amy's class and be part of D-Lab because I was inspired not only by the co-creating solutions for communities, which empowers them to create the solutions for their own issues, but also because D-Lab was a practical application of engineering that directly impacted lives where it was needed most. D-Lab was a huge part of my life at MIT and one of the reasons that I'm working on a social enterprise in India for the last five years. What makes D-Lab special is the passionate people who encourage you to explore and tackle challenges across the world, from Ghana to India. Thank you for inspiring us to improve quality of life through design. I'm honored to present the 2019 Cooper Hewitt National Design Award for Corporate and Institutional Achievement to my mentor and inspiration, Amy Smith, and the brilliant team at MIT D-Lab. Congratulations. Thank you so much. It's an honor and a pleasure to receive this award on behalf of MIT D-Lab. We're very excited and it's also gratifying that it is an award for design because at D-Lab we believe that design can have a transformative effect on poverty and we believe that everyone can be a designer regardless of their education, regardless of where they came from and regardless of their opportunities. And so we believe that it's not only the products that we produce that can have an impact on poverty but also the process of solving problems that you face directly. And so we are particularly honored to receive this award because we feel like it exemplifies the power of design to change the world for a better place. And I believe that it is fundamental to the way that we approach the challenges that affect us on a global level with the creativity and inspiration that design brings us. So thank you very much. Thank you to the... to Cooper Hewitt and to all of the people who supported the National Design Awards. And I'd especially like to acknowledge and appreciate the entire D-Lab community, our students and our staff, our community partners and friends all around the globe. So thank you, Shukran, Jam Jam, Asante Sana. Gracias. Merci. Keleboha or Foyo. And as I say this to all of our partners around the world. So thank you very much. Please welcome co-founder of the Glenstone Museum, Emily Raels. Years ago, when we began a search to find and architect to design our new museum, we had a pretty good idea of the qualities we were looking for. It was someone who could create architecture that was in harmony with a natural environment. Someone with a bold, distinctive approach who nonetheless understood that a great museum building could never overshadow the artworks that it contained. We were looking for a partner who could challenge us to think big but also obsess over the tiny details like we did. We were lucky to have found Thomas Pfeiffer, the recipient of this year's National Design Award for Architecture Design. I'm supposed to place this properly here. Thank you, Emily, for those kind words. It means so much to have you and Mitch here with me. It was such a privilege to bring your vision to life. I've always loved this amazing quote by Mark Rothko, and he wrote this in a letter to Dominique de Menil during his work on the paintings for the Rothko Chapel, and it so beautifully expresses my gratitude. And this is the quote, the magnitude on every level of experience and meaning of the task in which you have involved me exceeds all of my preconceptions, and it is teaching me to extend myself beyond what I thought was possible for me. And so for this, I thank you. Tonight, I also want to thank my entire studio, particularly my fellow directors. I share this amazing honor with them. Steve Dayton, who's been with me from the beginning, Gabe Smith, Katie Bennett, Andy Mazer, Dave Iver, and Michael Trudeau. I work with them every day, and they are remarkable, so I stand up here with them. And now I'm going to leave the script a little bit, because when I arrived here this evening, I got a big dose of nostalgia when I saw Mitch and Emily here. And I remembered that life is full of these kind of remarkable symmetries and memories. When I moved to New York back in 1981, I moved here through the generosity of Todd Williams and Billy Sin. They had introduced me on the only afternoon that I had ever been in New York to Charlie Guathamie. He hired me right away, and I began this journey in New York way back when. And during the time I was with him, he nurtured me and guided me, coddled me, yelled at me, everything he could do to encourage me and become a mentor like I'm sure so many of you have been. Every Thursday night during the summer, he would load us all into his green station wagon, and we'd go down to Chinatown for a dinner. It was memories like that where he just welcomed me to New York. And then when I started my own practice, he was the one that found the client and made the call and got me my first commission. And then later, symmetry occurred again, where in 2010, Mitch and Emily commissioned me to work on Glenstone. That's a project that Charlie had started, and I was taking over after his passing. And so to follow him, to have that sense of symmetry with him is so, so meaningful, and tonight is particularly meaningful to have both of you here. So thank you. Please welcome partner at Pentegram, Eddie O'Para. The first time I heard of Tobias was in 1995. I started my first graduate year at Yale. I heard words like boy genius, prodigy, the best. I was pretty intimidated. I took his class, but the intimidation turned into trepidation. He was going to rip my Frankenstein-esque type of design apart, which he did, but in a nice way. I don't know if he remembers that, but I pretty much do. What I can say about Tobias now is while the boyish and placid charm are still there, and the genius and prodigy have turned into full-blooded demigod of type design. Right? With fonts that we notice, observe, respect, and cherish every day and say to ourselves, I wish I could have done that, but I'm not Tobias. So without further adieu, I would like to represent Tobias, Fred Jones. So it's really a tremendous honor to receive this award. The best word that comes to mind is gobsmacking. I want to express my heartfelt thanks to the Cooper Hewitt and also to this year's Jerry for deciding that I was the one who ought to have this award among all of the people who were nominated. I also want to thank my wife Christine, most of all, who makes all of this possible. I got the news about this award several months ago, and I think it's taken that long for this idea to sink in, for what this award really means. I was a writer who wanted to be a painter, and I found this improbable combination of these two disciplines in typeface design. So it means that I get to do the work that fits me perfectly, and I've received this in response. And I'm usually pretty good with words, but I don't actually know what words ought to go here. But it's something between blessed and lucky and very, very grateful. Thank you, all of you. Please welcome artist Amy Sherrill, and Executive Fashion Director of Vanity Fair, Samira Nasser. Good evening, everyone. It is my great pleasure to stand before you tonight alongside this phenomenal woman to present my friend Derek Lam with his award. I've had the great fortune of knowing Derek for almost a decade, and what I can say about his design process is that he is not creating for a singular moment or occasion. Derek creates pieces that are instantly desirable, perfectly relevant, and yet still feel timeless. I can personally attest because we are both wearing his designs right now. He is constantly exploring the balance between form and function between shape and proportion. His clothes make women feel bold and powered and seen as the best, most stylish versions of ourselves. So we both are very honored and very excited to present the Cooper Hewitt National Design Award for Fashion Design to the one and only Derek Lam. Good evening. This night is so exciting for me. I've always been attracted to clever people, and I always made a B-line for anyone who's bright and shiny, and tonight I think I hit the jackpot. Honored, but also intimidated, meeting my fellow honorees. Congratulations to you all. And everyone here who supports and celebrates the work of the Cooper Hewitt Museum and the National Design Award. Thank you Caroline and the entire museum team for giving me this honour. I get easily overwhelmed so I knew I needed the support of two friends tonight, Samara and Amy, who are indeed so clever, ever bright and deeply talented, and they're here to make me look good and feel confident in this crowd. For sure. And an applause for their runway. Thank you both for your kind words and your friendship and your constant inspiration. Thank you so much. To me, great design is finding the perfect balance between subjective and objective. While I'm personally being honoured tonight on the stage, the stage gives me the opportunity to say thank you to everybody who has been my collaborator, my colleagues, and the team of friends and my colleagues, and the team of talented people I get to run to work and play with every day. My designs come from my culture, experiences and what technique I have picked up over the years. But those around me inspire my empathy for the wider world to consider beyond just the personal, to fully consider and create for others. Lastly, I would like to thank Jan Hendrick, my husband and co-founder of 16 years of our brand together. I get to take this award home. It will be on the side of my side of the bed. But I always share it with you. Thank you. Please welcome Godfrey Datich Partners Company, CEO and Netflix Abstract Executive Producer Scott Datich. Tonight, 20 years into the 21st century, we still interact with computers using keyboards patterned after machines invented in the 19th. Old paradigms stubbornly resist their own overturning. But the imagination of Ivan Poparev promises to pry us loose from these habitual ways of thinking. His work challenges our beliefs about what computers are, what they can be, and how we interact with them in ways that feel more human and humane. It is my distinct pleasure to present the 2019 National Design Award for Interaction Design to Ivan Poparev for enabling this better future. Thank you. It's an honor. So 20 years of awards, I was trying to remember what I was doing and 20 years ago, I actually was finishing my PhD, my doctorate in Japan and it was an interaction design for virtual reality and augmented reality systems. It was 20 years ago. And I was, anybody who did PhD understands me. I was sick and tired of my PhD and all its alternative digital realities and I swear to myself I will never do anything like this again. And then the dot-com burst was 20 years ago and I was thinking while I'm done with this all this nonsense about cyberspace and internet and all this digital stuff, I do something simple. But at the end I could not resist and I still spent 20 years trying to develop, explore these alternative digital realities and you can call them the internet, you can call them interface, you can call them virtual reality or cyberspace here now. In these 20 years, since the world started and I started my work, the boundary between physical and digital is disappearing and we are spending now more time in cyberspace in the real world. Everything is becoming virtual. And although we created the cyberspace and been working this for 20 years I realized I don't fully understand what it means to us as a society as a state around the world of technology companies in our life which is a proof of that how little we understand what cyberspace means for us. Now I don't want to go back to agrarian society, I cannot live without Netflix for example. Instead I think we should embrace what we build, it's our child, it's our creation and we have a lot of work to do to create fully seamless, helpful, human and inclusive that makes us better as humans and as a society. So in 20 years I hope some kids are going to be standing here and getting awards for doing that. It's a huge honor to accept award and I would like to thank all my collaborators. Some of them are sitting here, thank you guys. And I would like to say thank you to my family, friends and team at Koopa Hubert for their support, I'm truly honored. Thank you. Please welcome co-founder and host Evan Sharp. My first approach in 2014 the brief I brought with me was in retrospect hilarious. We needed a space for our company that was dense and flexible that was comfortable and familiar yet very distinctive and that needed to be done right away on a very small budget. In other words I was a typical client but what they delivered was anything but typical. An engineer's skill set and a theorist's intellect and a doctor's empathy and a park ranger's love of the environment and an artist's sensitivity. And they didn't just design our space they sculpted it with volume and light and parametric software and physical materials and the coolest staircases you've ever seen. But all that aside the thing I love the most about them is that the hundreds of people I know in my life who live and work in their buildings truly love doing so. And so it's my privilege to introduce this year's winners of the National Design Award for Interior Architecture Lisa Iwamoto and Craig Scott. To Lisa height not Evan height. I guess if there's anything that we've learned over the years practicing architecture and interior design it's that it is a collaborative effort visioning with clients like Pinterest and Google who are here tonight thank you so much for entrusting us with your vision collaborating with builders furniture makers furniture specialists other artisans and other architects and designers who make the work come to life and most of all working with our incredibly talented and amazing team of designers in San Francisco both past and present we could not do a fraction of what we do without them. So both and proposition how do we love to think both through conceptual strategies and smaller human scale moments coming up with material solutions for complex functional problems we're so thankful to be able to do this work and so appreciate it to be honored here tonight thank you to the Cooper Hewitt for having us join this incredible family of designers thinkers and makers and thank you to Craig for being our partner in life and crime for over 30 years a few more words of gratitude to thank both the amazing clients we've been able to work with to the Cooper Hewitt to the National Design Award team to the jury this year to our amazing staff and to my wife and partner Leafs the Evil Moto who none of this design work could happen without thank you. Good evening everyone recently a climate scientist explained to me that years ago that the climate science world used to think that the best thing to do about climate change was to leave untouched nature alone but the more recent realization is there's no such thing as untouched nature and so what he explained to me is that now the entire science community believes that nature is actually a design problem that we all have to think about nature as something that we now need to design to get out of the crisis we're in I can think of no group of people, no firm and no person that understood this that was more prescient about this than the firm Scape and their founder my friend whom I've known since the days of 9-11 K-Dorf these people ask us occasionally a designer comes along that doesn't just change the course of design but changes the conversation about design for whom do we design for what planet do we design what do we do in the face of climate crisis and environmental injustice I can think of no people who can address that future better than the folks at Scape and K-Dorf and her partners thank you Thank you so much Vishan I'm honored to be a colleague of yours and to accept this award on behalf of the Scape team particularly the dedicated principals with me here tonight and the 50 plus talented people back in the office at Scape Magic we've we've tried to push the boundaries of what beautiful landscape design is more than pleasing scenery or groomed estate grounds landscape design for the next century must be deeply rooted in a new activist aesthetic that builds out from the fundamental beauty of the thriving and biodiverse natural world one currently and rapid and almost irreversible decline moving forward into decades that will surely bring increased climate shocks designing the social landscape may be paired with new forms of formal expression like subtracting decarbonizing, tearing out ripping up, replanting softening and connecting the act the act of unmaking the systemic environmental errors of the past and of recognizing each other and the earth as worthy of deep care is one of the most profound design challenges before us thank you so much for this award please welcome academy award-winning filmmaker Spike Lee hello how's everyone doing doing alright Yankees are losing 3-1s I'm kinda like I've been blessed I'm very fortunate to work with two goats two goats the greatest basketball player of all time Michael Jordan who was born in Brooklyn, New York thank you very much and the greatest sneaker designer ever my brother think a half of that's it! that figures he's in the world of entertainment I have to tell you that I want to first of all thank Spike for taking his precious time and coming here tonight and he is a long term long time and dear friend thank you, thank you brother thank you I can't believe I've been on the stage here with Spike but also Derek Lam I can't believe it I'm on the same stage as Derek Lam where is Derek? I mean pretty off the charts for me and I want to also thank Caroline and the Cooper Hewitt organization because give them another round of applause because design is ever changing design is something that is moving hopefully keeping up with the pace with the culture and the changes in the world and I think that's true but the Cooper Hewitt I have to say is doing the same is keeping pace with what's going on with the world and with young people and with culture and with everything that's changing and all the new design and materials and all of the intricacies of this business the Cooper Hewitt is doing a wonderful job of the time being spent I've just spent a couple days with this crowd here at the Cooper Hewitt and by the way I do not want to go without mentioning that Caroline's team is almost all women yes and I have to tell you that that is very very encouraging for all of us who speak up for equal rights and equal opportunity and I just love that so thank you again Caroline so I can't leave the stage without thanking my family and friends but most importantly my wife Jackie and I would like Jackie to stand up because she has the coolest gown on of all time right there she has in the red she has to put up me on a daily basis and she keeps me grounded and straight and she nourishes me in so many ways and I also want to thank the fact that my entire well not my entire family but two of my daughters Casey and Kirby please stand up and their husbands and all of my family that's here just everybody stand up and friends Dick, Tom please stand up, please stand up we do not do any of this stuff on our own it takes an ecosystem speaking of ecosystems I would like to point out that all of these Air Jordans that I've worked on and a lot of other projects couldn't have been done without a lot of extra help and a lot of great creativity additional work it's just like making a movie you know Spike has to really sort of he's that he's maybe this got the idea and is trying to run the ship but there's a lot of other people that contribute the same as true in sneaker design I want to thank Mark Smith please stand up Mark Smith, stand up oh yeah for that was quick but Mark Smith has been a tremendous collaborator over the years especially on Air Jordans and I just couldn't go on without mentioning him my brother Toby is like incredible designer over there kind of runs in the family I guess although he's better looking, smarter, taller, younger all that stuff and then the rest of Nike we have a bunch of people here from Nike and I want to thank Tom Clark and John Hoke in particular for basically essentially buying a table and then bringing all these and then a lot of friends and collaborators again it takes a lot of people to do all this stuff please stand up, John John, Tom everybody that's here from Nike please because you know what I draw lots of silly sketches but you know it takes a lot of people to make this stuff work so the last thing I want to talk about is actually I'm going to come back to Spike I'm glad he's up here come on over here so Academy Award winner Oscar winner Spike Lee let's give him a hand alright but before all that happened before all that happened he called me a couple of months before and I remember picking up the phone and this is going to be a terrible you know kind of I'm going to try and mimic Spike a little bit it's going to be terrible but I'm going to try so Tinker Hat Tinker Hatfield MJ said I could call you and we can do a shoot together because I'm going to be in the Golden Globes I'm going to be in the Golden Globes and I'm like cool what's interesting because we're a sports performance company we work with disadvantaged athletes and we do a lot of important work around just human performance and yet sometimes these calls come in like it's super fun so Spike is talking to me like take a hat I'm going to be on a red carpet I need some sneakers and there's no R when he says sneakers he says sneakers that's Brooklyn so Spike says I need some sneakers I go cool I can do you some sneakers and he goes but they need to be gold gold sneakers that's a little more difficult but we'll try and figure it out and he goes and you know what I'm pretty sure I've got this movie Black Clansman you seen it Black Clansman fantastic movie and he's a tremendous number of awards in the Cannes Film Festival Golden Globes and so we did the Golden Globes and he's like I need some sneakers for the Oscars no R again what happened to the R in Brooklyn just public school public school in Brooklyn he has 20 so then I'm like okay well alright now this is getting complicated we've got to do two sets of cool sneakers for Spike to be on the red carpet and God willing we do right so we do it and Spike he gets Academy Award for best screenwriting or adaptive screenwriting and should have won the best director but we're not going to go over there not tonight I didn't bring that up but I just want to simply say that the world of design is all about trying to make the world a better place trying to make people feel better trying to make people be able to do things they couldn't do before but it's also about joy it's about happiness it's about celebration and I want to just simply say that one of my more recent stories is my relationship with Spike goes way back and you know what I'm proud to be up here to accept this award and I also just depart by saying that you know what design is actually fun too so thank you very much please welcome MoMA Senior Curator and 2006 National Design Award winner Paola Antonelli I heard the first Macintosh has muggled it was 1989 and I was coming back from New York and I landed in Malpains and Milan with a big bag with a big rainbow apple in front of it a bite chewed on and I walked through customs and they asked me anything to declare I said no and I walked home I got home and I turned it on and sure enough it was a gorgeous piece of hardware all of a sudden I saw a little smiling computer inside the computer and all of a sudden I realized there was not a tool there was a pet there was a new partner that object had a soul and my love for design was cemented in that moment forever and it was not only the little smiling computer it was also the annoying bomb it was the little suitcase with the fonts it was the fonts that came with it Chicago, Monaco, Geneva my whole world was taken over by not only Apple not only Steve Jobs by Susan Care yeah every self-respecting designer definitely Tinker and everybody else has one ambition that of touching everyone on earth being influential really being part of people's lives and nobody in this hall I believe has not been touched by Susan Care that's why giving her tonight her lifetime achievement National Design Award is a delight, an honor a privilege and also a duty please skip the warmest welcome to the fine goddess Susan Care you are such a hero to me I just want to say thank you and also thank you to Caroline and Vaso and everyone else at the Cooper Hewitt who's worked so hard to support and celebrate design I feel so lucky and fortunate I'm grateful for parents who encouraged my interest in art and Harry, Ned and Jack who inspire me all the time I'm also grateful to my high school friend and star programmer Andy Hertzfeld who made it possible to interview at Apple and to Steve Jobs for so much freedom to design and Paul Rand who taught me when to fuss and when to leave it alone and thank you to Evan Sharp and Ben Silverman at Pinterest where I'm able to work on cool design projects every day and for all the work really and the small and simple things thank you please welcome writer and activist Shanaid Burke I live in a world that's not designed for me it's designed for many if not most of you there's been much discussion and conversation tonight quite rightly with the power of design that it can change the world but for who and by who tonight's award celebrating an emergent designer is the first time that the Smithsonian and the Cooper Hewitt has celebrated this moment and it couldn't go to a more deserving winner when we talk about the intersection between design and disability historically we have only looked at it from a medical lens bringing form and function together but embodying it within education is something that we have not seen before Open Style Lab is extraordinary for many reasons but one of the things that it needs to continue and not just be an emerging designer but in 50 years to be winning the Legacy Award is the support of all of us that those of us with power and influence in this room needs to ask who's not here whose voices are not being considered and how can we bring them to the table those are questions that have been at the very beginning of Open Style Lab and if you are not familiar with their work take a moment research participate learn be inspired and be engaged as a disabled woman I could not be more proud and honored to present the emerging designer award to Grace John and the entire team at Open Style Lab Wow what an honor to be here today and thank you so much for the Cooper Hewitt and National Design Award juries to recognize Open Style Lab this celebration is not only for us but our friends and many of our families and the disability communities that have collaborated with us each year this award also gives us access it continues to give us access to make style, self-expression and design inclusive of all people and we are acknowledged here tonight for what we do best to bring forth emerging and new designs with a touch of universal principle inclusion and multi-generational making that is really fostered around creative thinking I really believe art and design humanize us when we find ourselves in situations and environments that dehumanize our character as we've seen today with climate change and human rights there is a potential that we could help inspire everyone and therefore it is a pleasure to bring that inspiration and we dedicate this award to our diverse team many who have disabilities and come from different practices and cultures to pull together what is Open Style Lab today and most importantly to my board members here Pinar and Christina whom I would not be standing here without their love, expertise and exceptional dedication to what has become to me and to the students of the college congratulations Open Style Lab for being our inaugural recipient of the Emerging Designer Award and congratulations again to the entire class of 2019 thank you to all of you for being here tonight to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the awards and the future of design let's raise a glass please to the next 20 years and now please join me in the Great Hall of Fame