Contract Magazine - January 2020 - 14

EDITORIAL

The Power of Community

I am thrilled to honor Joshua Aidlin and David Darling of Aidlin
Darling Design as our 2020 Designers of the Year, and David
Rockwell as the first recipient of our Visionary Award. Aidlin, Darling,
and Rockwell are designers who are on the forefront of architecture
and interior design and are excellent examples of the great talent
that comes out of our community.
We picked the San Francisco-based firm Aidlin Darling Design,
in part, because they've been consistently doing great work in the
Pacific Northwest, and in the last half-dozen years or so, they've
grown their practice with stellar commercial work. What started out
as a humble furniture design and sculpture studio over 20 years ago
has evolved into a rigorous multidisciplinary design firm whose
architectural research and commissions have expanded around the
globe from Doha, Qatar, to Hong Kong, and throughout the country
from the Hollywood Hills in L.A. to Aspen, Colorado, to Seattle. In the
past few years, they've also diversified their focus to include larger
projects that engage the public sector, from the 30,000-square-foot
Roseland University Preparatory High School in Northern California
to the new 55,000-square-foot Contemplative Sciences Center at
the University of Virginia. And they've done it all employing a unique
collaborative design process that is dedicated to discovering
innovations and uncovering the individual character of each project
through investigations into material, site, sustainability, craftmanship,
and the senses. For many projects, they collaborate with an extended
community of artists and artisans in the Bay Area to create amazing
spaces for public and private clients.
This year, we decided to evolve the Legend Award-
now known as the Visionary Award. I remember watching the 2018
Legend recipient Joan Blumenfeld's video, and she ended it with the
statement, "I'm not done yet." With Legend awards, you sometimes
get the feeling that we're celebrating someone's body of work,
without celebrating that the recipient still has many more years
of work ahead of them. Just look at all the great work that past
Legends like Moira Moser, Art Gensler, Eva Maddox, Stanley
Felderman, and Nancy Keatinge, just to name a few, have done
since receiving their award.

This year's Visionary Award goes to David Rockwell,
who is a true visionary in the classic sense of the word. His work
and practice have certainly evolved since he was Contract's Designer
of the Year in 1998. The New York designer brings a keen sense
of curiosity and creativity to his work, drawing on his love of drama
and community to create immersive spaces across all disciplines.
In addition to his powerful impact on the world of architecture and
design, Rockwell's commitment to New York as well as his philanthropic
and pro bono work for DIFFA and Citymeals on Wheels makes
him a natural fit for our first-ever Visionary Award. And there
is so much more still to come!
The Contract team looks forward to the Interiors Awards
every year because they give us an opportunity to not only see the
best of what the architecture and interiors community has done, but
also where interior design is headed. On this year's winners list, you'll
find some old favorites like Rottet Studio, STUDIOS Architecture,
and One Plus Partnership Limited, as well as exciting emerging design
firms like Islyn Studio, Bond Collective, and Atelier Cho Thompson,
which are all rethinking the way we design spaces.
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe once said that "the idea of service
leads to community." It's something I think about a lot. As we challenge
ourselves to create better spaces for the clients and people we serve
and design for, and work to design more for underserved communities
as well, we can pause to think about how lucky we are to design,
collaborate, and celebrate the architecture and interiors community
we are all a part of.
I hope you enjoy this issue, and I look forward to continuing the
conversation on how we can better support our community in 2020!
Sincerely,
Paul Makovsky
Editor in Chief

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