 Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome back to the stage Caroline Bowman. We are about to meet some extraordinary designers who now join the pantheon of NDA winners. Before we begin our ceremony, I'd like to recognize these esteemed designers and the brilliant design minds who select them each year. Would the jurors of the 17th National Design Awards and all of our NDA winners and jurors, past and present, please stand up. It is my honor each year to select the recipient of the Director's Award, which recognizes an individual or organization's outstanding accomplishments and support of the design community. This year, I am delighted to present the award to Make It Right, the New Orleans-based nonprofit dedicated to building healthy homes for communities in need. Founded by Brad Pitt in 2007 in response to the devastating impact of Hurricane Katrina, Make It Right has become a national model of sustainable, community-driven design for affordable housing, and in the process demonstrated how good design empowers and restores dignity to residents in need. For 10 years, Cooper Hewitt's National Design Education Program has engaged New Orleans students and educators in design-based learning to inspire and prepare the city's next generation. Make It Right has been instrumental to this effort, serving as mentors, providing site visits, and sharing expertise. And now, please welcome Tanya Harris-Glasso. My name is Tanya Harris-Glasso, and I was born and raised in the Lower Ninth Board of New Orleans. I also work for Make It Right. Firstly, let me pass on a personal thank you to Caroline Bowman and Cooper Hewitt from our principal founder, Brad, for honoring Make It Right with this prestigious award. In 2005, I saw Katrina devastate my community. A decade later, working with the displaced residents there, we have 110 sustainably designed family homes. It has not always been easy, and we've had to learn some tough lessons from our successes and from our failures. But what is most important is our determination and our commitment to Make It Right every time. We want to thank each and every one of you, individuals and organizations who have supported us throughout the years. Once again, I say thank you. Tonight's award-winning designers very closely collaborated with the teams of BBDO New York and Radical Media to translate their personal creative process into cinematic form. I don't want to give away too much, but I will tell you that the films are a brilliant and beautiful fusion of technology and narrative. Tremendous thanks to trustees John Cayman of Radical Media, David Lubars of BBDO New York, and their extraordinarily talented teams who are here with us this evening. And now, on with the show. Here to present the Corporate and Institutional Achievement Award is journalist and visual op-ed columnist for the New York Times, Charles Blow. Hello everyone. As someone who has managed information design at a major newspaper and at a major magazine, I understand the importance of graphics and art in telling stories. And as someone who has dedicated much of my later work to issues of racial justice, I appreciate that there is an organization out there marrying those two through innovative tools for learning, helping thousands of New Yorkers participate in decision-making processes that impact them every day. Let's thank Cup for that and welcome Christine Gaspar Cup's Executive Director. Thank you. We brought some of the institution with us. Thank you so much to Cooper Hewitt for recognizing our work. It's just really hard to imagine a more meaningful honor in our field. I'd like to thank every member past and present of the Cup staff who have all worked so hard to make this body of work so impactful. And thank you to the designers who do so much for so little to make this work outstanding. We dedicate this award to the community organizers with and for whom this work is created. Every day, they're on the ground fighting for social justice and communities impacted by economic, environmental, and racial inequities. We're honored that our work can contribute to their efforts. And we look forward to the day when neither our work nor theirs is needed. Thank you. Joining us to present the Design Mind Award is former Chief Creative Executive for Walt Disney, Imagineering Bruce Vaughn. Thank you. So, Bruce and I have been friends for a long time. And when we're together, inevitably one of us gets called the other Bruce. Well, I'm honored tonight to clearly be the other Bruce. One of my favorite filmmakers, David Lynch, said, ideas are like fish. If you want to catch small fish, stay in the shallow water. If you want to catch big fish, you have to dive deep. Anybody who has worked with Bruce Maugh knows that he dives deep and he brings you with him. And those big fish represent ideas that are transformative, world-changing, and I think Bruce would agree, most importantly, very, very beautiful. It is my honor to present the Cooper Hewitt National Design Mind Award to my friend and colleague, Bruce Maugh. Thank you, Bruce. And thank you all. You know, as a young man, I had an image in my mind of a kind of thin, thin layer around the whole planet with particles in that layer. And the particles in that layer were the people that I was looking for to do my work. And that I was looking for them and they were looking for me. They didn't know it yet, but they really were. And I realized that only in that thin, thin layer, only the truth mattered. Only a pure signal would work. And that my work was really to put out a pure signal of the best intention. And I tried to do that, and I have been perhaps the most fortunate designer of the last half-century. In that layer, I found Rem Colhouse, I found Frank Gehry, and I found Sanford Quinter, an extraordinary woman named B.C. Williams, who I married and had three wonderful children with. Together, we started the Massive Change Network, and our purpose really is to bring design and the power of design to as many people as possible. More recently, I met Halu Kulin, I met Kerry Freeman, and I met Bob Priesthek, and I want to thank them sincerely for all the work that they allow me to do. I couldn't be happier. This is what a Canadian looks like when they're really excited. Thank you. Presenting the Architecture Design Award is architect and winner of the 2002 Architecture Design Award, Stephen Hall. Thank you. I first came to realize the intensity of the work of Marlon Blackwell due to Todd Williams arguing with me in an American Academy Awards jury. You must look at Marlon's work, Stephen, and we gave him an award. That was about eight years ago. And six months ago, I had a great chance to be at the Fay Jones School of Architecture, experiencing his work firsthand. And tonight, they gave me 35 seconds, so I was going to talk about that school, and I was going to talk about the St. Nicholas Eastern Orthodox Church was on the cover of Architecture Record in 2000, and the cabins are falling water, but I decided instead to talk about Marlon Brando. Because I found out that Marlon was named for Marlon Brando. And when I think of On the Waterfront, 1952, I really think that his architecture has this power, which I believe in, and that is the power of abstraction. Everybody should go and see the Agnes Martin show at the Guggenheim Museum next door. The power of abstraction is important for architecture. Marlon Blackwell. Thank you, Stephen. Wow. What an honor. It's always nice to be introduced by one of your heroes. Well, listen, all I can say is all you can ask from any discipline, especially the architecture, is opportunity. And over the last 25 years, we've been provided opportunity from our place in Arkansas, from the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design, from our wonderful, trusting clients, several over here tonight, and from our extended family of colleagues and friends and mentors. We thank you so much for what you've given us, which is opportunity. And I'd like to accept this award on behalf of our team back in Fayetteville, Arkansas, incredibly talented people who are essential to our success, but known so essential and amazing as my firm partner and life mate, Ati Blackwell. And of course, I have two great kids, Zayn and Iman, as well, who are here. But finally, I want to thank the judges and Cooper Hewitt for recognizing great design in the heartland, like Arkansas and other places outside the centers of fashion. There's great things going on there. And I deeply appreciate the opportunity to be here with you tonight because of that. This is a humbling affirmation of all we do to demonstrate that architecture can happen anywhere, at any scale, at any budget, and for anyone. Thank you. I'm here to present the Communication Design Award as co-founder and co-editor of Paper Magazine, Kim Haistrader. Hi, everybody. I'm here tonight to honor one of my favorite artists in the world, Jeff McFetridge, who I discovered 20 years ago at a funky little groundbreaking Lower East Side gallery called Alleged. Jeff's visual language hooked me immediately, and over the years, as I watched him evolve, my response to what he did was always visceral. I was moved by his vivid, childlike imagination, humor, and sense of the absurd. But mostly, it was the humanity I saw in everything from his enormous line drawings of throngs of people printed on wallpaper, or the animals and monsters he doodled, his dancing girls on skateboards, or his sweet, quirky film titles for Spike Jon's magical film, Where the Wild Things Are. But his essence hit me hardest one day, eight years ago, when I walked into a gallery and saw a painting of his that I knew I had to have and I had to leave with it. It was of a calm, beautiful, faceless girl simply holding her skirt over her head. I think they're going to show it to you. The image was memorable and simple, like a perfect and powerful logo. But unlike a logo, it was touching and intimate, gentle and sweet, capturing a glimpse of an odd everyday human moment. I've lived with this painting ever since that day, and to me it articulates what Jeff does best, simplifying everyday moments just as a logo simplifies a brand. He does this by looking from his own quirky perspective, both literally and figuratively. In the end, Jeff McFetridge makes us realize that it's all how you look at things. Is that dot a pattern on a dress or is it the top of someone's head? Is the glass half full or is it half empty? Is what he creates art or is it commerce? Designers turn logos into icons, but artists communicate humanity in the most intimate way. And I realize then that Jeff is really an artist, communicating little poignant glimpses of art in everything he touches. I'm so happy tonight to present the Cooper Hewitt National Design Award for communication to the wonderful artist and communicator of emotion, Jeff McFetridge. Thank you so much, Kim. And thank you to the Cooper Hewitt and the Smithsonian for this award. Working as a graphic designer, often what we do is seen everywhere, but we're anonymous. So being recognized in this way is a unique honor. Yet for me, one of the greatest takeaways from this experience was working with the teens at the design fairs in DC and here in New York and participating in the lectures and events around this award. Design has always created a constant need for inspiration in my life and it's also equally exposed me to new sources. It's a perpetual motion machine, and it's defined my life and my practice. At the center of this life is my wife Sarah and my daughters Frances and Phoebe who are here tonight. Thanks again for this great honor. Presenting the award for fashion design, please welcome Image Maker Jean-Paul Goud. Obviously, I didn't prepare anything. So I would like to introduce the best designers I know. I owe them one of my best evenings which happened last night and I want to thank them and I love them. Here they are. Thank you Jean-Paul for being here tonight. Having you here is, we can't put into words what it means and after last night it truly is such an honor to count you as one of our not only icons but amazing collaborators. And thank you to the Cooper Hewitt for honoring us tonight. I mean, it's really a dream come true. We would never think in a million years that we would be up here. In 2002, Caroline and I started opening ceremony really as an idea and a platform and fashion was our medium. We've had the opportunity to work in all different parts of culture that we've always wanted to be a part of, everything ranging from art, films, I don't know, all these different mediums and it's been a real, real big privilege for us to express ourselves in this way. The three words we always think about when we think of opening ceremony is community, dialogue and discovery. And we're going to celebrate 15 years next year and we're super proud of what we've accomplished but we look forward to the next 15 to seeing if we can push the boundaries and work in new projects with a lot of other new people. One of the most important kind of backbones to Caroline and I is our family who's actually here with us tonight. So we really, really want to thank them for being here and being with us along this whole journey. And letting us work at the mall as kids, we really had to have them sign off because we started working there pretty early and you needed their signature. And we also wanted to thank the amazing group of collaborators, some of who are here tonight, Eric Marshall, Brian Phillips, Spike, Jonah and of course John Paul. So thank you so much. Thank you. Joining us to present the Interaction Design Award is Creative Director for Google's Creative Lab in Sydney, T.U. Glow. It is such a great honor to be here. Now the funny thing about technology is that most of us don't really like it. I don't really like it. And I've worked at Google for a decade. During that time it's been a privilege to work with Telart creating objects and art and even architecture that we could then bring to life with data, making the digital tangible. Matt and Nick use design to reach out to people explaining and changing how we see the world. Telart does that to me. They change how I see the world. So it is a great delight to be here to witness Telart awarded the 2016 National Design Award in Interaction Design. Thank you. I'd like to congratulate all this year's winners. Thank you to the Cooper Hewitt, thank you to T.U. for that lovely introduction. It's really a privilege to be up here and represent our clients, which are truly our kind of creative partners in this work. Our incredibly talented staff around the world that make this work fun and brilliant every day, especially Brian Hinch who is here tonight with us and has been here since the beginning, thank you. I'd like to thank our families and our wives and of course Matt. Thank you, Nick. It's been 16 years and we feel lucky to be practicing design at this time during this period of rapid technological change. We've tied ourselves to emerging technology purposefully and it's led us on a crazy journey. The next wave of technology with machine learning and synthetic biology will be even more complex and opaque and we feel designers are uniquely positioned to act as translators to work with the public and with manufacturers and policy makers and we'll need to guide decision making about how technology comes into our world. This award makes us proud and inspires us to continue working with our students and push them along their path to being advocates for humanity and for society in regards to technology and thank you very much for this encouragement and award. Here to present the Interior Design Award is Vice President of Architecture and Design at Technion, Jennifer Boosh, Orpila, Storyteller, Paradigm Shifter, Rainmaker, Verda Alexander, Artist, Creative Inspiration, Foundation, Peri Stepney, Motorcycle Enthusiast, Captain, Anchor. Together these three lead the Uber talented staff at Studio O Plus A, the go-to design firm for the most innovative high-tech upstarts. They were among the earliest to grasp the design implications of the social and cultural shifts brought about by the technological revolution and they have turned those brilliant ideas into built environments that have changed the way we think about work. They have also been gracious enough to allow me to share and delight in their stratospheric professional and personal journey. It gives me great pride to help honor Studio O Plus A Cooper Hewitt National Design Award for Interior Design. Please welcome Prima Orpila, Verda Alexander, and Peri Stepney. Thank you so much Jennifer for that wonderful introduction and thank you Barbara and everybody at the Cooper Hewitt. This is quite an evening for us. Verda and I actually met in Intermediate, no, we met just before Intermediate School in high school and we came up with this idea of having a company. We had no idea what this company would be. It was going to be a magazine company, it was going to be a flower shop and lo and behold we started in design. So Verda and I have been together since their senior year in high school and we started our practice in Fremont, California, Design Mecca. Yeah, from Fremont to the Upper East Side. So it's a wonderful acknowledgement. We don't do it for the acknowledgement. We actually love doing interiors for our clients and we love really figuring out what it is that makes people kind of respond to space and have great experiences. So I think we spent kind of a lifelong endeavor trying to figure that out and we're really proud to be the recipients of this year's Cooper Hewitt. We know the list of David Rockwell. I kind of, woo, I got to meet him tonight. That was like huge, David. I'm going to let Verda speak. We are so thrilled to be honored for what we've done in workplace over the last 25 years. We're just tickled. It's been our charge, our flag that we've borne for the last 25 years and we're so excited that we have finally, this is the peak. This is the ultimate award. But I want to say that I wish my entire team could be here because they are, they're O plus A, not just the three of us here. And we have Elizabeth and Neil here from O plus A, but I don't know why, how we found them, how they found us, or why they even wanted to work for us. Maybe it's a little bit about who we are, but they are who makes O plus A and they are absolutely an amazing, incredible team and we're O plus A and thank you so much for this award. Perry's a little shy. This guy's been with us for over 15 years. He's the rock. This is a big part of it, so Perry won't say anything but he's the bomb. Presenting the Landscape Architecture Award is architect and design principal of his namesake firm, Michael Moulton. Thank you. In Meadow and Bridge, Cascade and Pier, in a braided line, in a great park scale, Hargraves Associates has led a redefinition of form, expectation, and contemporaneous in landscape architecture. And whether in London, Los Angeles, San Francisco, or Sydney, we've known to expect from their work great intelligence and maximum joy. It's always a blast working with them and an even greater pleasure to present to my friends the National Design Award in Landscape Architecture to George Hargraves, Mary Margaret Jones, and Gavin McMillan. Thank you, Michael. It means so much to us that you've come all this way. We're honored. Thank you, Cooper Ewitt and the Smithsonian. Thank you to the jury. We're very honored to receive this award. And we accept this award on behalf of the principals and the designers in our offices in New York, San Francisco, and Cambridge, some of whom are with us here tonight. And with a nod to our clients with whom we have dreamed. The design of landscapes is a very particular art. Landscapes are systems as much as they are objects. They're open-ended and they're fluid. We're very pleased and honored to have set in motion some great ones. And I just want to give a shout out to George Hargraves. We're really in the same city at the same time. So like Maggie Smith, you could not be here this evening. But George constantly reminds us that the power of design does and should extend into the landscapes that surround us. Thank you very much. Joining us to present the Product Design Award is Graphic Designer and winner of the 2013 Communication Design Award, Paula Cher. In 2007, Robert Brunner, already an established and well-regarded graphic designer, started a new business called Ammunition. He did it with a very, very savvy strategist named Matt Rolenson and an established and terrific graphic designer named Brett Wiccans. Together, yes, they put together a design-driven organization that made products that were intelligent, that were functional, and that were beautiful. And nothing exemplifies that better than Beats' headphones and international icon. Now, if the truth be told, Bob Brunner is my former partner at Pandagram. And he is also my friend and someone I admire tremendously. And I want to tell you that when I first met him 20 years ago, I thought he was a guy who was a science nerd inside a body that looked like a blonde surfer boy. And this is important because if you look at his work and you look at the work of the firm, that is who they are. Their products are functional, they are purposeful, and they are very, very sexy. So I am delighted to present this award to Ammunition for their fantastic body of work. We've got the crew coming up here. So we're nearing the end, so hang in there. You know, I'm doing something here. I normally prepare what I'm going to say and I'm going to try something different. I'm not going to do that. It was a bad idea. No. Look, I grew up in a family that was very interesting. My father actually invented, pretty much invented the hard disk drive. And I lived with that in my garage, in my dad's garage always making things. My mother was a model, an artist, a designer, and an entrepreneur. And so I grew up in this sort of environment. What they instilled in me was curiosity and curiosity with things. And that became an obsession, right? The idea of objects and what do they mean? Not just what do they do, but why are they in our lives and why are they so important? And that is what drives a lot of our work. But you know, what happens as a designer is you are obsessed. I think everyone that's probably come up in this stage is obsessed with an idea or a thing and an image that they have to get out. But then at some point you see someone using it. And you realize that you've created joy in their life or enhanced it in some ways. And then you're really hooked. And then you can't stop. And that's really what we created this team about. I have an amazing group of people that I work with. My partners, Matt Rowlinson and Brad Wickens and Victoria Slaker and two of our key people here, Christopher Koo and Jonas Lagerstadt, these amazing designers. And one of the reasons I would say that is early in my career I had a very smart guy tell me something. He said, you're only as strong as the backs of the people who carry you, right? And what I took that embodied was to surround myself with people that are much more talented and smarter than I am. And that is the core of our team. We have an amazing organization and a culture that's all about excellence. So I want to thank the Cooper Hewitt for this amazing award. I want to thank my wife Elizabeth and also we've got Matt's wife Sam and Corley can't be here and Richard is over there. They not only put up with our behavior, they actually support it, which is crazy. And I just want to thank this group of people that I work with. They're incredible people and they're the things that keep me every day happy to come in to work and be part of this. And I want to thank them. Thank you. Here to present the award for Lifetime Achievement, please welcome co-founder of MIT Media Lab and founder of One Laptop for Child, Professor Nicholas Negroponte. Good evening. I would like to make a very personal introduction because 50 years ago, almost to the month, I was a student of architecture at MIT. And a young man just a few years older than me in Montreal had just done his thesis Habitat. And what I cannot tell you, it's almost unbelievable. Everybody at MIT and Harvard in the architecture department were making little habitats. Our thesis was made with sugar cubes and it influenced all of us because Moshe showed us that there was a granularity in architecture that was human. Then I didn't see much of Moshe, but I went off to work in computers and made a computer program for the next two years that designed little habitats. And 30 years later, actually 40 years later, we re-met. And he took my wife and I through Yad Vashem personally, talk about experiences. And so it is with great love that I not only introduce Moshe for his lifetime achievement, but also as my best friend. Thank you. Thank you, Nicholas. You have taught me what real friendship is. Thank you. And thank you to the Cooper Hewitt. I'm deeply moved. And I accept this award with humility as an affirmation of the values and the principles that have guided my work as an architect. That design must evolve out of respect for the needs and aspiration of people. That our work as architects has profound impact on the quality of life of those who experience it. That we must build responsibly and use resources responsibly. Having practiced architecture for 50 years, I can ascertain that it is truly a collective effort. I have been blessed. I've been blessed by a wonderful group of colleagues, gifted people who form and make up my office. I couldn't do it without them. Some of them are here. I've asked them to stand up. Thank you. I have been blessed by having wonderful clients who aspire for the sublime. One of them is here tonight, Alice Walton. I'd like to ask you to stand up. I've had the good fortune to work with the most talented and gifted engineers and the many other specialists who contribute to the craft of building. I appreciate the contribution they have made again. Without them, we couldn't do what we do. And finally, I've been blessed by incredibly supportive family and my wife, Michal, who nourished me continuously to be able to do what I do. Thank you very much. Thank you. I would say quite the unforgettable evening. Congratulations to all our winners. Thank you all for being such a vital part of Cooper Hewitt's community. I look forward to seeing you next October. And now let's raise a glass to the class of National Design Awards 2016. Congratulations. And please do join me for a drink in the Great Hall.