ASID Announces 2005 Design Award Honorees

The American Society of Interior Designers (ASID) is pleased to announce its 2005 design award honorees. A jury of esteemed members of the design community selected winners in five categories: Designer of Distinction, Design for Humanity, Educator of Distinction, Patron’s Prize and Product Prize (corporate and individual). The jury also decided to bestow a Special Citation on a design visionary.

Designer of Distinction
Barbara Barry, ASID, is the 2005 ASID Designer of Distinction. An interior design icon of the late 20th century, Barry has designed timeless residential and commercial interiors—restaurant, spa, retail and office environments—for the most refined and prestigious of clients. She says that her designs convey a sense of “calm haven in a hectic world.” Barry’s signature design style—influenced by the casual elegance of 1940s Hollywood tempered by a modern sensibility—is now being offered to a wider audience by a variety of fabric and furnishings collections under her name. Barry has created signature collections for Ann Sacks Tile and Stone, Baccarat Crystal, Baker Furniture, Bloomingdales, Blueridge Carpets, Boyd Lighting Company, Havilland Limoges, HBF, Kallista, McGuire, Sferra Bros., Tufenkian Rugs and Wedgwood, among others.

Design for Humanity
Patricia Moore, Ph.D., FIDSA, is the 2005 Design for Humanity honoree. A founder of the universal design methodology, Moore is president of Moore Design Associates, is an adjunct professor of industrial design at Arizona State University, and is a sought-after speaker and author. Her client list includes 3M, AT&T, Baxter Healthcare, Corning Glass, General Electric, Johnson & Johnson, Johnson Wax, Kraft General Foods, NASA, Norelco NA, Merck, Marriott, Maytag, Monsanto, OXO, Procter & Gamble, Sunbeam NA and Whirlpool, among others.

From 1979 through 1982, Moore, disguised as a woman in her 80s, traveled through more than 100 U.S. and Canadian cities to study how senior citizens—“our elders,” according to Moore—are treated. The result of her experiment was the book, Disguised: A True Story.

Educator of Distinction
The Rural Studio at Auburn University’s School of Architecture (Auburn, AL) has been honored with the 2005 ASID Educator of Distinction award. Established in 1983 by Dennis K. Ruth and the late Samuel Mockbee, the Rural Studio, based in Newbern, AL, has become a visionary and effective provider of innovative, dignified and low-cost housing and community projects that have served the residents of some of the poorest regions of western Alabama.

The Rural Studios’ “context-based learning” program places 15 second- and fifth-year architecture students in residency in Hale County, AL, one of the poorest counties in the nation with more than 1,400 substandard dwellings, during each academic quarter to find solutions to the needs of a community within its own context—not from outside it. Rural Studio also offers an outreach program to non-Auburn University graduate students to work on joint and individual community outreach projects in their own areas of study. Rural Studio not only has provided hands-on, worthwhile training to hundreds of Auburn architecture students and raised the students’ collective social conscience, it also has improved the quality of life of thousands of the neediest individuals in the United States.

ASID Patron’s Prize
Edward A. Feiner, FAIA, is the recipient of the 2005 ASID Patron’s Prize. Formerly chief architect with the Public Building Service, U.S. General Services Administration, Feiner is being honored for his work during his tenure as chief architect, including being the mastermind behind the “Design Excellence Program,” which has changed the form and function of government buildings in Washington, D.C., and across the nation.

Upon making their decision, the award jurors noted, “Feiner’s vision of public architecture (interior and exterior) is to give wonder, dignity and humanity back to the places where people meet authority.” An employee of the federal government for 35 years, Feiner recently moved to the private sector, accepting a position as director of operations with the Washington, DC office of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill.

ASID Product Prize
The 2005 ASID Product Prize honorees are Humanscale Corporation (corporate) and Suzanne Tick (individual). The category honors individuals, organizations or manufacturers that have contributed a significant and lasting body of work relating to the products of interior design.

Founded in 1983, Humanscale is the visionary manufacturer of highly innovative, ergonomic products that are designed to improve the health, efficiency and quality of work life. With a focus on design, Humanscale has become known for its functionally driven products that combine ease-of-use and unparalleled performance with an elegant and timeless aesthetic.

Tick is a great American textile designer and artist. Internationally known for her extraordinary textiles and floor coverings that reflect sensitivity to nature and use new and innovative materials, Tick is the design director of Tandus. Along with Terry Mowers, business partner in their company, Suzanne Tick, Inc., she oversees Tandus’ strategic direction. Tick previously was the creative director of KnollTextiles and still designs for the company. While at Knoll, she created a great number of textiles, including the Imago™, Una, Silver Screen, Forza, Extreme Velvet and Resolution lines.

Special Citation
The 2005 ASID Awards Jury also bestowed a Special Citation on Christopher Alexander, Ph.D., author of A Pattern Language, the seminal book on humanizing the designed environment, and one of the most important architects of the 20th century. With the recent release of the four-volume The Nature of Order, he has expanded his original arguments even further through careful observations of holistic, systems-based thinking about how the designed environment coexists with the natural environment. In announcing their decision, the awards jurors commented, “As the design community shifts its focus to health, safety and welfare issues, Alexander’s groundbreaking works will be important teaching tools for a new ecological thinking and systems approach to problem solving.”

Alexander is a professor in the graduate school and emeritus professor of architecture at the University of California at Berkeley. In 2000, he created PatternLanguage.com—“a community-based Web site dedicated to supporting all efforts to rebuild the earth and care for it as a living structure”—and in 1967 founded the Center for Environmental Structure, where he continues as president today.