Better Shelter Wins Beazley Design of the Year 2016
John Hill
27. January 2017
Photo: Märta Terne
The winner of the ninth annual award hosted by London's Design Museum is a flat-packed emergency shelter developed in part by the IKEA Foundation and the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR).
The award "celebrates design that promotes or delivers change, enables access, extends design practice or captures the spirit of the year," per the Design Museum, which is exhibiting Better Shelter and the other winning designs (see sidebar) at their new London home until 19 February.
In honoring Better Shelter with Design of the Year, the museum acknowledges the role of design in the refugee crisis and other emergency crises, such as natural disasters. It is a jarring contrast with the most recent Design of the Year also culled from the architecture category: Zaha Hadid Architects' Heydar Aliyev Center, a high-budget cultural facility in Baku.
Better Shelter was designed to be shipped in a two-box kit with all the tools needed to assemble the it in about four hours. Around 30,000 shelters are already in use around the world.
A statement from jury member Jana Scholze, Associate Professor, Curating Contemporary Design, Kingston University:
Better Shelter tackles one of the defining issues of the moment: providing shelter in an exceptional situation whether caused by violence and disaster. Sadly, we have seen many instances recently where temporary shelter was necessary. Providing not only a design but secure manufacture as well as distribution makes this project relevant and even optimistic. It shows the power of design to respond to the conditions we are in and transform them. Innovative, humanitarian and implemented, Better Shelter has everything that a Beazley Design of the Year should have.
Photo: Jonas Nyström
Previous Design of the Year Winners:
- 2015 Human Organs-on-Chips by Donald Ingber and Dan Dongeun Huh at Harvard University’s Wyss Institute
- 2014 Heydar Aliyev Center by Zaha Hadid Architects
- 2013 GOV.UK – UK Government website by GDS
- 2012 London 2012 Olympic Torch by Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby
- 2011 Plumen 001 by Samuel Wilkinson and Hulger
- 2010 Folding Plug by Min-Kyu Choi
- 2009 Barack Obama Poster by Shepard Fairey
- 2008 One Laptop Per Child by Yves Béhar
Beazley Designs of the Year, Category Winners
Architecture
Name: Better Shelter
Designers: Johan Karlsson, Dennis Kanter, Christian Gustafsson, John van Leer, Tim de Haas, Nicolò Barlera, the IKEA Foundation and UNHCR
Digital
Name: OpenSurgery
Designers: OpenSurgery was developed as a graduation project at the Design Interactions department of the Royal College of Art (London UK, 2015). The initial concept originated from the Healthcare Futures Workshop at the KYOTO Design Lab (D-Lab) at the Kyoto Institute for Technology (Kyoto JP, 2014).
Fashion
Name: Children vs. Fashion
Designers: A group aged 8 kids from CEIP La Rioja School, Madrid, Spain
Graphics
Name: ★ (pronounced Blackstar)
Designer: Jonathan Barnbrook at Barnbrook for David Bowie/Sony Entertainment Inc.
Product
Name: Space Cup
Designers: Mark Weislogel: Innovator (IRPI LLC/Portland State University)
Andrew Wollman: Designer (IRPI LLC)
John Graf: Co-Investigator (NASA Johnson Space Center)
Donald Pettit: NASA Astronaut Innovator (NASA Johnson Space Center)
Ryan Jenson: Sponsor (IRPI LLC)
Transport
Name: Lumos - A Next Generation Bicycle Helmet with Integrated Lights, Brake, and Turn Signals
Designers: Eu-wen Ding - Co-Founder & CEO, Jeff Haoran Chen - Co-Founder & CTO