Green Good Design Competition

Green Good Design: The Latest cutting-edge product design and architecture showcased in an exhibition that opens in Europe. The world’s latest new sustainable product designs, buildings, and urban planning projects form an exhibition that opens at Contemporary Space Athens on April 6 and continues through June 19 and is then scheduled to travel inside Europe through the end of 2011.

Contemporary Space Athens is located at 46-48 Megalou Vassiliou, Rouf/Athens, Greece. An Opening Reception is scheduled for Wednesday, April 6 from 8:00-10:00 PM. “Green GOOD DESIGN™” is curated by the Christian K. Narkiewicz-Laine, Finnish/American architecture critic and Director of The Chicago Athenaeum. Organized by The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Center for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies, “Green Good Design” features over 150 awarded industrial and product designs, architecture, landscape architecture, and urban planning projects in the historic awards program from 2010. Founded in Chicago in 1950 by architects Eero Saarinen and Charles and Ray Eames, Good Design is the world’s oldest and most significant global program that awards the best of the best design in terms of visionary products and environments.

Green Good Design Awards 2010
Every year, thousands of leading industrial and graphic design firms, manufacturers, and leading FORTUNE 500 companies vie for this prestigious award worldwide. The familiar Good Design logo, a circle inside a square, designed by Chicago graphic designer, Mort Goldsholl in 1950, is one of the world’s most visible and highly recognized public branding marks. In 2008, The Chicago Athenaeum and The European Centre added a “Green” edition to this historic Awards Program as a way to emphasize and promote the best new products and environments that are leading today’s “Green Revolution” in order to make a public education statement about the importance of sustainability for consumer product design and our global architecture. The aim of Green GOOD DESIGN is to bring a public appreciation and awareness of a new design paradigm led by a current generation of visionary architects, designers, urban planners, corporations, governments, individuals, and private and public institutions. Designs are based upon the ideals of energy conservation; the reduction of toxic waste and greenhouse gases; the diminishing dependence on fossil fuels; and a sensitivity for waste, pollution, and the depletion of the world’s energy resources. For 2010, the Green GOOD DESIGN Awards recognized cities, governments, organizations, research, programs, and people who are blazing a new path toward a sustainable environment together with new products, buildings and landscape and urban planning projects. The 2010 awarded product designs and architecture are the “best of the best” in new Green thinking from the world’s leading FORTUNE 500 manufacturing firms and most prestigious design offices from over 31 nations. Green Architecture and Green consumer products from the following countries are included in the exhibition: Argentina, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Canada, Chile, China, Denmark, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Indonesia, Israel, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Lebanon, Luxembourg, Mexico, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Saudia Arabia, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey, Vietnam, and the United States. A total list can be seen in the European Centre’s website at www.europeanarch.eu.

At the top of the list, both institutions honored The City of Madrid as one of the “Greenest” cities on our planet. Madrid is full of abundant huge green parks, magnificent tree-lined boulevards, flowers, emblematic green-scapes, vertical gardens, a boating lake, and an enormous sprawling parkland making the Capital of Spain one of the world’s leading examples of urban beautification and a Green Renaissance in our 21st Century. Other 2010 Awards were also bestowed to foundations, new research/technology, and people including the University of Houston, The German Prof. Peter Latz of Latz + Partners GbR., Kranzberg, Germany was cited for this efforts environmental contributions for sustainability and Green Architecture. Also featured in the exhibition are leading new consumer and building products geared for the mass market audience from some of the world’s most renowned names in manufacturing: Allsteel Inc., Armstrong World Industries, Inc., Artemide SpA., Autodesk Inc., Belux AG., Bodum AG., BSH Bosch und Siemens Hausergäte GmbH., Electrolux Major Appliances, Dell, Inc., Grohe AG., Hansgrohe AG., Haworth, Inc., Herman Miller, Inc., Indesit Company, Johnson Controls Inc..Keramik Laufen AG., Mannington Commercial, Moen Incorporated, Pano Logic, Inc., Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications Design, Steelcase, Inc., Sustainable Solutions International (SSi), UPM-Kymmene Ojy., Valcucine SpA., Velux A/S, and VKR Holding A/S. The latest innovations for the Green automotive industry were also awarded in 2010 to and are featured in the exhibition by BMW AG, Critical Move, Daimler AG., and Mercedes-Benz. Other leading the awarded Green Products are new designs for furniture, lighting, washing machines, refrigerators, ovens and cooktops, dishwashers, floorcovering, and packaging design that forward the principals of regeneration, energy efficiency, ecological consequence, deforestation , and renewable energy while providing the latest and most innovative design. These Green consumer designs are the visionary work by some of the foremost industrial design firms worldwide: Almadesign, BMW DesignworksUSA., Daimler AG Werksdesign, fuseproject, Marken Design Bosch, Matteo Thun & Partners, No Picnic Packaging & Design AB., Phoenix Design, Ross Lovegrove, Strømme Throndsen Design, Studio AMDL, srl., Whipsaw Inc., whiteout & glare GmbH., and X-Technology Swiss R&D AG. Numerous architecture, urban planning, and landscape architecture firms were also awarded in 2010 for improving the environment, sustainability, and building energy efficiency—one of the most cost-effective ways to decrease greenhouse gas emissions.

• “We initiated this special Green Edition of the annual Good Design program to emphasize the most profound and enlightening developments in this new world era of design for sustainability,” states Kieran Conlon, Director/COO, The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies from his office in Dublin, Ireland.

• “Good Design” is not about color, style, impression, or trends but instead about thoughtfully considering the use and user of the product or building, the experience, the social and environmental context, and the impact a building or object has on the surrounding environment,” states Christian K. Narkiewicz-Laine.

• “Green Design is Good Design,” he adds. “No design can be considered good design unless it attempts to address all these concerns. We believe in the original modernist ideology of the original GOOD DESIGN program as forwarded by Saarinen and Eames in 1950 that form and function are intertwined in design. Style and substance are not mutually exclusive. Buildings and products are environmental.”

Deadline for submissions for the 2012 Green GOOD DESIGN Awards is September 1, 2011.
Applications for 2012 and more information is available on line at The European Centre’s website > www.europeanarch.eu | lary@chicagoathenaeum.org