Black Frame Triangle Heels from juror Rem D. Koolhaas’ United Nude

Time is running out! We know we have said that before, but seriously, there are only three days left for you to submit your project(s) to the A+ Awards. Over the course of the past few days we have explored the many faces that make up our 200-person jury, including design journalists from famed international publications, industry-leading developers and clients, curators from the world’s best art, design, and architectural institutions, and yes, even celebrities. Last week we made a point to specifically call out some of the world’s best architects, including Steven Holl, Bjarke Ingels, and MVRDV, who have added their names and clout to our jury.

Today we rounded up some of the top design minds from the A+ Awards jury, just in case there was any concern that all fields were not being accounted for. With jurors from internationally recognized offices including IDEO, Pentagram, and Fuseproject, the A+ jury is loaded with experts in fields that span all ranges of design, from luxury vehicles and lighting to furniture and, yes, shoes. Click through to see some of the design experts that have joined the A+ Awards Jury.

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Curator and writer John Cary is the founding editor of PublicInterestDesign.org and an A+ Award juror. This story is the final in a three-part series that spotlights notable, mission-driven work in the architecture and design fields. You can read the first two here and here.

Rounding out my three-part, year-end series on public interest design here at Architizer, today I take a look ahead to 2013. The year promises all sorts of exciting, game-changing initiatives in humanitarian design. From the first-ever Public Interest Design Week to MASS Design Group’s new lab in Africa, here are the 10 initiatives we are most looking forward to in the coming year. Click through to see them all!

Full disclosure: I am involved either tangentially or directly with a several of the following entries.

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Architecture for Humanity designed the Ecole La Dignité in Haiti, featured in the March issue of Architectural Record. Photo © Aric Mei

Curator and writer John Cary is the founding editor of PublicInterestDesign.org and an A+ Award juror. This story is the second in a three-part series that spotlights notable, mission-driven work in the architecture and design fields.

Following-up on yesterday’s review of my 2012 predictions for public interest design, today I’m highlighting the top 10 milestones from this past year. The list looks beyond individual design projects and instead toward initiatives with far-reaching consequences for the field—and, in some cases, the world. From a global visual language using signs and symbols to a solar-powered, self-cleaning toilet (really!), here are our top 10 public interest design initiatives of 2012. Read on!

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The moving platform in Rem Koolhaas’ Maison à Bordeaux allows the inhabitant to access a series of stacked volumes without having to move. Photo via.

Some of the most memorable works of architecture have arisen from life’s unfortunate setbacks: a near-fatal car accident led a wheelchair-bound man in France to commission the Maison à Bordeaux, Rem Koolhaas’ shining example of alternative interior circulation. Frank Lloyd Wright similarly designed a home in 1948 for Kenneth Laurent, a disabled war veteran whose life was made easier by Wright’s spacious, curvilinear plan. In contemporary Tokyo, Takeshi Hosaka architects designed a peculiar home for a deaf couple and their family, enabling the parents to communicate with their young children even from considerable distances.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have left no shortage of injuries and setbacks. But as NPR reports, a significant number of wounded U.S. soldiers wish to remain in uniform. At a U.S. Army fort in Virginia, developers are now overseeing a grand housing experiment called the Wounded Warrior Home, which is setting out to repair and retrofit 2,100 homes to accommodate disabled soldiers. Read on.

An ocular window installed in a ‘Wounded Warrior’ house.

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Foster + Partners, Bodegas Portia, image (c) Foster + Partners.

Foster + Partners have designed a winery for Faustino Group in the Ribera del Duero in Spain. More and more it seems like wineries are a benchmark typology for starchitects. This new offering from Foster + Partners looks brutal, even futuristic, from above – but its ground-level character benefits from the application of rich, warm materials and long horizontal proportions. Images after the jump. [via Architecture Lab]

Interesting developments out of LA regarding the legacy of Mid-century modernism: artists Justin Lowe and Jonah Freeman just closed a show at Country Club gallery that created a sequential stage set within Rudolph Schindler’s decaying 1939 Buck House, taking the house’s embedded narratives as the jumping off point for the environments. Meanwhile artist Sam Durrant’s foamcore models of Mid-century classics depicted as decaying, graffitti-ed ruins can be seen at the Museum of Contemporary Art’s new exhibit, “The Artist’s Museum.” [via LA Times Culture Blog]

We love Fast.Co & IDEO’s joint-venture Patterns series, and today they’ve got the latest installment, which is a real zinger: branded environments that bring the ‘fluidity’ of the web into the physical world. Which is basically the holy grail for branding strategists, right? Anyways, check out the piece. [via Fast.Co Design]

There’s an exposition of sauna design today from Build LLC, for all of you Scandophiles out there. [via Build LLC]

Italian furniture manufacturer Cassina has ‘painstakingly examined’ Le Corbusier’s late 50s/early 60s designs and introduced a set of four previously unproduced furniture pieces for their Cassina I Maestri Collection. Notable because the pieces are mainly made of wood – a material Le Corb only worked with late in life, as he reoriented himself in regards to nature and organicism. Click through for pictures. [via Abitare]

Perkins Eastman and Ehrenkrantz Eckstut & Kuhn Architects (EE&K) announced today that they have agreed to merge their practices, making their combined strength now 600 employees strong, with offices in New York, Washington D.C., and China.  [via Perkins Eastman]

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