Designs of the Year 2015

On view at Design Museum the 76 nominated projects, including microchips that mimic human organs, a campaign promoting ugly vegetables and a book printed without ink.

2015’s Designs of the Year nominees represent the global breadth of design talent, featuring some of the industry’s biggest names alongside rising stars and little-known practices.

Now in its eighth year, Designs of the Year celebrates design that promotes or delivers change, enables access, extends design practice or captures the spirit of the year. The international awards and exhibition showcase projects from the previous year, across six categories: Architecture, Digital, Fashion, Product, Graphics, and Transport.

Design experts, practitioners and academics from across the world are asked by the Design Museum to suggest potential projects, from which the museum has selected 76 for nomination and display in the exhibition. A specially selected jury chooses a winner for each category and an overall winner.

The 2015 Designs of the Year jury are: Anish Kapoor, artist (Chair); Hilary Alexander, writer and stylist; Alexis Georgacopoulos, director of Ecole cantonale d’art de Lausanne; Farshid Moussavi, architect and professor at Harvard University Graduate School of Design; Richard Woolley, Studio Director, Land Rover Design Research & Special Vehicle Operations.

Designs of the Year’s wide-ranging scope provides a snapshot of the contemporary concerns of the design world, with nominees coming from over thirty countries across five continents. A strong theme for 2015 is the desire to harness new technologies to solve long-standing problems, as seen in projects as diverse as the world’s first lab for 3D printing prosthetic limbs, and the Moocall sensor which is connected to a cow’s tail and texts the farmer when calving is imminent.

The Designs of the Year category winners are announced on Monday 4 May, with the overall winner being revealed at an event at the Design Museum on Thursday 4 June.

Of the 76 designs of the years 2015 nominees we have published: Desert Courtyard House, Scottsdale, Arizona, USA, designed by Wendell Burnette Architects; Forfatterhuset Kindergarten, Copenhagen, Denmark, designed by COBE; Long Museum Westbund, Shanghai, China, designed by Atelier Deshaus; Markthal Rotterdam, Rotterdam, the Netherlands, designed by MVRDV; One Central Park, Sydney, Australia, designed by Ateliers Jean Nouvel; Philarmonic Hall Szczecin, Szczecin, Poland, designed by Barozzi / Veiga; Proposals for banknote designs for the Central Bank of Norway, designed by Metric Design and Snøhetta Design; Double O, designed by Paul Cocksedge Studio; Dragonfly, designed by Odo Fioravanti; Endgrain, designed by Yael Mer and Shay Alkalay; Switch Light, designed by Joel Hoff.