Norman Foster Wins This Year’s American Prize for Design

The organizers of the Good Design Awards, the Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design, and the European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies have named British architect Norman Foster, Hon. FAIA, founder and executive chairman of London-based Foster + Partners as the recipient of the 2018 American Prize for Design.

“We are pleased that our institution is the first to recognize the truly important and historic contributions Mr. Foster has made to the field of industrial design,” the museum’s president Christian Narkiewicz-Laine said in a press release.

Awarded annually since 2016 in conjunction with the Good Design Awards—founded in 1950 by architects Eero Saarinen, Charles and Ray Eames, and Edgar Kaufmann, Jr.—the American Prize for Design program has recognized an individual for his or her lifetime achievements in the fields of industrial design, communications design, and graphic design. Last year, German car designer and head of Mercedes-Benz Gorden Wagener received the award.

Foster, a graduate of the Yale School of Architecture, and the 21st Pritzker Architecture Prize laureate, has been previously awarded the Royal Gold Medal for Architecture in 1983, the Gold Medal of the French Academy of Architecture in 1991, the American Institute of Architects Gold Medal for Architecture in 1994, the American Prize for Architecture in 1996, and the Aga Khan Award for Architecture for the Petronas University of Technology project in Malaysia in 2007.

The British architect, who is behind some of the world’s most iconic buildings, including the Apple Park in Cupertino, Calif.; Gherkin and British Museum’s Great Court in London; and the Philological Library in Berlin, also has a hand in industrial design. For decades, Foster has worked with manufacturers, such as Louis Poulsen, Walter Knoll, Steelcase, Lumina, and Molteni to design a wide array of products, ranging from table lamps to dining chairs and door hardware.

A selection of Foster’s portfolio of industrial design products will be on display in a new exhibition at Contemporary Space Athens art center in Athens, Greece starting this fall.