Frequently Asked Questions about the Curry Stone Design Prize
RATIONALE
Q. What is the Curry Stone Design Prize?
A. The Curry Stone Design Prize is an annual award to design innovators who contribute positively to living circumstances of humanity. The Curry Stone Design Prize rewards emerging design projects and innovative thinking that addresses pressing societal issues and humanitarian conditions. It is supported by the Curry Stone Foundation of Oregon.
Q. What are the selection criteria?
A. The Curry Stone Design Prize awards are based on the potential for the designer’s projects to improve daily living conditions around the world. Projects may improve the human spirit, increase awareness of the environment, or respond to an area of need—whether to provide shelter and clean water or address climate change and humanitarian crises. Emphasis is placed on nominees whose work is emerging into professional and public consciousness. The award provides designers resources for further innovative thinking and its application. The award is not limited by the age of the designer.
Q. What do the recipients receive?
A. Each year, one recipient will receive a grant of $100,000. Two honorable mention prizes of $10,000 each are also awarded.
Q. Are there strings attached to the prize?
A. There are no restrictions on the use of the prize.
Q. What fields are generally represented among the recipients?
A. The Curry Stone Design Prize broadly defines design as architectural, urban, and landscape design, product and graphic design, and other fields of design. The Curry Stone Design Prize also invites new definitions of design that defy traditional boundaries.
Q. How does the program define “contribute positively to living circumstances humanity”?
A. Design has always been concerned with built environment and the place of people within it, but too often has limited its effective reach to narrow segments of society. The Curry Stone Design Prize is intended to support the expansion of the reach of designers to a wider segment of humanity around the globe, making talents of leading designers available to broader sections of society.
NOMINATION
Q. How are candidates identified?
A. An anonymous group of invited external nominators from around the world submit nominations on an annual basis. This process is used to generate a broad pool of emerging designers. Unsolicited proposals are not accepted.
Q. Who are the nominators?
A. The group consists of approximately 200 contemporary design leaders and key individuals with a broad global vision and knowledge. Nominators serve anonymously. The composition of the group changes regularly under the direction of the Curry Stone Design Prize Secretary.
Q. How many nominations are received each year? How long does it take for a nomination to move through the selection process?
A. Each nominator is invited to nominate up to three designers per year, resulting in a pool of some 100 nominees each year. It is possible that a nomination made in one year may be rolled over to be considered in the following year.
Q. Are Nominators precluded from being nominated themselves?
A. Nominators cannot nominate themselves.
SELECTION
Q. What is the composition of the Selection Jury?
A. The jury is comprised of four voters who are announced several weeks before the jury convenes. The group includes three leading designers or people connected with contemporary issues regarding built environments around the world, and a representative of the Curry Stone Foundation.
Q. Why all the confidentiality?
A. The Curry Stone Design Prize is intended to identify and recognize exceptional designers based on the merit of their ideas and the potential for bringing their ideas to fruition. A confidential nomination and selection process reduces outside influence on nominators and jurors to achieve this goal.
ADMINISTRATION
Q. What is the role of the Board of Advisors?
A. The Curry Stone Design Prize is guided by an Advisory Board that provides broad oversight to the nomination and selection processes as well the overall direction of the Prize. The Advisory Board members are: Emiliano Gandolfi, Secretary, Chee Pearlman, Curator, Cameron Sinclair, Senior Advisor.
