Frank Gehry Frank Gehry is known for making astonishing buildings, but his achievement is much greater: he has single-handedly made design a public event. Cities clamor for his buildings, and people make pilgrimages to their doorsteps. In 1962, he formed Frank O. Gehry & Associates in Santa Monica, California, and in 1978 he gained widespread...
AMERICAN ORIGINALS This honor—created especially for the first National Design Awards—is bestowed on individuals who have achieved the feat of becoming cultural icons by taking highly personal, even iconoclastic, paths to hone a unique vision of design. Morris Lapidus, 1902-2001 Morris Lapidus studied acting at New York University and architecture at Columbia University before embarking...
AMERICAN ORIGINALS This honor—created especially for the first National Design Awards—is bestowed on individuals who have achieved the feat of becoming cultural icons by taking highly personal, even iconoclastic, paths to hone a unique vision of design. John Hejduk, 1929-2000 True romantics are dangerously scarce these days. Thus the death of architect John Hejduk this...
Apple When Apple rolled out its new iMac in 1998, commentators couldn’t resist hailing the colorful new computers as the fruits of a design revolution. However, this was no conversion: the iMac was an affirmation of Apple’s core values. Since the mid-1970s, Apple Computers has overturned industry standards of speed and functionality with an approach...
Ralph Appelbaum When Ralph Appelbaum began his career three decades ago, designing an exhibition might have meant little more than specifying wall color and pedestal dimensions. Today, the museum designer creates exhibitions that rival movie sets in technical complexity and books in narrative intensity. Appelbaum’s designs have transformed museums from temples into public forums. For...
Lawrence Halprin Since opening his San Francisco design office in 1949, Lawrence Halprin has been in the business of bringing gardens—and their attending civic graces—to American cities. Remarkably, he romanticizes neither. In fact, the key to Halprin’s success may lie in his acceptance of the reality of his materials—natural forms that grow, change, and simply...
Paul Maccready Design today places a premium on beauty, lightness, speed, and sustainability. Paul MacCready’s energy-efficient vehicles have been a paragon of those virtues for decades before they became so urgently fashionable. MacCready’s early innovations earned him the moniker “father of human-powered flight.” In 1977, MacCready made history with his Gossamer Condor, the first successful...
Robert Wilson Design poet Robert Wilson defies easy categorization. He explores the human experience often in provocatively enigmatic ways. Over his thirty-year career, his brilliant approach to theater, dance, set design, installations, architecture, and furniture has raised the standards of creativity in all those fields—and beyond. His influential body of work ranges from the 1971...
Stanley Marcus Stanley Marcus is chairman emeritus of Neiman Marcus. Often dubbed the “Merchant Prince” of Texas, Marcus is best known for building his family’s Dallas store into an international icon of luxury and service. A noted collector, award-winning journalist, and dedicated architecture patron, Marcus honed his discriminating taste as he “shopped” the world—and he...
