America's Best

Staff -- Interior Design, 8/1/2003 12:00:00 AM

A Millennium Council project of the White House and New York's Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, the National Design Awards arrived on the scene with the year 2000—and its attendant focus on design's various disciplines, from architecture to communications. Since then, the yearly awards have increased national awareness of design's many contributions.

Laura Bush is scheduled to preside over the fourth annual awards ceremony, being held on the grounds of the Cooper-Hewitt on October 22. Pei Cobb Freed & Partners founder I.M. Pei and Vignelli Associates cofounders Lella Vignelli and Massimo Vignelli are winners in the lifetime-achievement category, "for their redefinition of American design," says judge Rafael Viñoly. Target won the corporate award, recognizing product-design excellence. Finalists include architect Frederic Schwartz, Herman Miller, Tod Williams Billie Tsien & Associates, Architecture Research Office, and Laurie Olin of the Olin Partnership.