Twelfth Beazley Designs of the Year exhibition at the Design Museum, London

The twelfth Beazley Designs of the Year exhibition and awards comprises 76 nominations across six categories: Architecture, Digital, Fashion, Graphics, Product and Transport. Selected by a panel of distinguished international designers, curators, critics and – for the first time – the general public, the awards showcase the most impactful products and concepts from designers around the world.
Nominees include a meme-inspired dress collection by Viktor & Rolf, a data generated proxy address system created to reduce homelessness, the world’s first hands free breast pump, Adidas’s collaboration with designer Ji Won Choi, as worn by Beyoncé, food sharing app OLIO and The Shed’s extendable building in New York.
Accessible designs represent a major theme in this year’s awards, as seen in IKEA’s ThisAbles collection, Tommy Hilfiger’s Adaptive clothing range and Chromat’s inclusive and sustainable AW19 collection - and even the exhibition design up is sustainable. Sketches, models, prototypes, videos and photography provide a compelling snapshot of the current world of design and are displayed in a spatial design developed by this year’s 3D designer Pernilla Ohrstedt: to reduce waste, she reused elements from the previous exhibition. By cutting holes into the walls of each space visitors can look through to each of the nominated categories, creating connections between the works. The removed material has been recycled to make bespoke plinths. The inspiration for the design came from artworks by the American sculptor Gordon-Matta Clark, who would carve ‘building cuts’ out of the walls of derelict spaces around Manhattan.
The architecture category features many impactful projects including ProxyAddress by emerging British designer Chris Hildrey, which generates a ‘proxy’ address to enable those facing homelessness to access support services regardless of location.  Also appearing in this section is the MK Gallery in Milton Keynes inspired by the local urban area, expanding and contracting flexible New York arts venue The Shed and a new roof for the ancient souk of Homsin Syria by Ghassan Jansiz for the United Nations Development Programme – built under challenging conditions after the original roof was destroyed by conflict.
The exhibition is running at London’s Design Museum from 11 September 2019 to 9 February 2020; a winner will be selected in each category and one overall winner will be announced on Thursday 21 November 2019. Previous winners have included Forensic Architecture ced on Thursday 21 November 2019. Previous winners have included Forensic Architecture (link) for their Counter Investigations Exhibition, Sir David Adjaye OBE for the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington D.C (link), and London 2012 Olympic Torch by Edward Barber.

Christiane Bürklein

2019 Beazley Designs of the Year exhibition
from 11 September 2019 to 9 February 2020
Design Museum, London, UK
Images: see captions
Find out more: https://designmuseum.org/exhibitions/beazley-designs-of-the-year