Hasta La Ideas

(Photos: Roberto Dutesco, courtesy Thomas Woltz, Paul Gilmore, David S. Rubin)

It’s almost time to spring ahead, into a fresh season of honoring distinguished achievements in art and design. Let’s start with the New York School of Interior Design, which on April 18 will present a lifetime achievement award to textile whiz and all-around design star Jack Lenor Larsen and bestow its inaugural Thomas N. Armstrong III Award in landscape design upon Thomas Woltz of Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects (projects include the Peggy Guggenheim Sculpture Garden in Venice). Meanwhile, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, has chosen Annie Leibovitz as the recipient of this year’s MOCA Award to Distinguished Women in the Arts. The photographer will join the ranks of past honorees such as Twyla Tharp, Yoko Ono, and Barbara Kruger. And speaking of distinguished women, Fern Mallis will be honored with the Pratt Institute Fashion Industry Lifetime Achievement Award at an April 26 show of designs by graduating seniors. Calvin Klein will present the award to Mallis, the creator of New York Fashion Week, former executive director of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, and former senior vice president of IMG Fashion.

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Forget the Oscars (but didn’t Gwyneth look stunning in that Tom Ford number?), it’s Pritzker time. This year’s architectural megaprize goes to Wang Shu, whose practice is based in Hangzhou, China. He’ll receive the prize—$100,000 and a swell bronze medallion inscribed with the Vitruvian ideal of “firmness, commodity, and delight” —on May 25 in a ceremony in Beijing. “This is really a big surprise,” said Wang, 48, when he learned that he would be joining past Pritzker laureates such as Philip Johnson (1979), Tadao Ando (1995), and Zaha Hadid (2004), who served on the nine-member jury for this year’s prize along with the likes of Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer and 2002 laureate Glenn Murcutt. “I am tremendously honored to receive the Pritzker Architecture Prize. I suddenly realized that I’ve done many things over the last decade. It proves that earnest hard work and persistence lead to positive outcomes.” The jury praised Wang’s buildings, which include the Library of Wenzheng College at Suzhou University (below, at left) and the Ningbo Contemporary Art Museum (at right), for their “unique ability to evoke the past, without making direct references to history” and “strong sense of cultural continuity and re-invigorated tradition.”

(Photos from left: Lu Wenyu and Lv Hengzhong, courtesy Amateur Architecture Studio)

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The visual savants over at the Society of Publication Designers won’t announce the winners of their annual awards bonanza—now in its 47th year—until May 11, at a fancy bash at Cipriani in New York. However, the judging wrapped up last weekend, with co-chairs Luke Hayman, Richard Turley, and Jeremy Leslie overseeing the print judging, Scher Foord and Joe Zeff supervising the digital judging, and Robert Newman chairing the Magazine of the Year competiton. Foord, Zeff, and their trusty five-member jury were particularly busy, having been deluged with a record number of digital submissions. Not only did they get through all of the entries, but they lived to tell about it. In this video by Joe Zeff Design, judges Mike Burgess (Beattie McGuinness Bungay), Neil Jamieson (Money), Steve Motzenbecker (NYmag.com), Josh Clark (author of Tapworthy: Designing Great iPhone Apps), and Marisa Gallagher (CNN Digital) reveal what they liked most in the entries they reviewed and what it all means for the publishing business.

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“Wendy does not play the typical architecture game of ecological apology,” say the architects of their boundary-pushing pavilion, shown here in a rendering.

Who’s tripping down the streets of the city, smilin’ at everybody she sees? Who’s reachin’ out to neutralize an airborne pollutant? Everyone knows it’s Wendy! That’s right, fans of emerging architectural talent, the spiky and proactive creation of New York-based HWKN (Hollwich Kushner) has been declared the winner of this year’s MOMA PS1 Young Architects Program, besting finalists Ammar Eloueini of AEDS Ammar Eloueini Digit-all Studio (Paris and New Orleans), Martin Felsen and Sarah Dunn of UrbanLab (Chicago), and the solid Cantabrigian (Massachusetts) contingent: Mariana Ibañez and Simon Kim of I|K Studio and Cameron Wu.

Now in its thirteenth year, the Young Architects Program program challenges each year’s winners to develop creative designs for a temporary, outdoor installation at MoMA PS1 that provides shade, seating, and water. HWKN’s “Wendy,” which will debut in Long Island City in late June, is composed of nylon fabric treated with a nifty titania nanoparticle spray to neutralize airborne pollutants. This summer, Wendy will clean the air to an equivalent of taking 260 cars off the road. “Wendy crafts an environment—not just a space,” note the architects of their 5,000-square-foot creation. “Spikey arms reach out with micro-programs like blasts of cool air, music, water canons, and mists to create social zones throughout the courtyard.” And speaking of summery social zones, HWKN also was recently tapped to design a new entertainment complex to replace the Fire Island dance club, Pavilion, that burned down last year. The firm is collaborating with Diller Scofidio + Renfro on the project.

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Jonathan Saunders, with models wearing looks from his spring 2012 collection, before his presentation to the BFC/Vogue Designer Fashion Fund judges in December.

Print- and color-loving Jonathan Saunders has sewn up the 2012 British Fashion Council/Vogue Designer Fashion Fund, the across-the-pond version of Anna Wintour and co.’s wildly successful initiative to boost young design talent. Now in its third year, the BFC/Vogue award provides the winner with £200,000 (at current exchange, just a few dollars over the stateside $300,000 purse) and access to industry mentors. Also shortlisted for the award were Marios Schwab, Mary Katrantzou, Meadham Kirchhoff (designed by Edward Meadham and Benjamin Kirchhoff), Nicholas Kirkwood, Peter Pilotto, Richard Nicoll, Roksanda Ilincic, and Zoe Jordan.

Saunders, who also made the 2011 shortlist, was selected as the winner based on the strength of his critically acclaimed catwalk and pre-collections over the past few seasons, his business plan, and a presentation to a judging committee chaired by Vogue UK editor-in-chief Alexandra Shulman. So what’s next for Saunders’ burgeoning label? “We have four womenswear and two menswear collections a year—so we’ll be expanding these collections and launching accessories,” says the Glasgow-born designer, who counts Rei Kawakubo, Miuccia Prada, Le Corbusier, and Charlotte Perriand among his design heroes. Meanwhile, his fall 2012 collection hits the runway on Sunday, February 19, during London Fashion Week.

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