DUBLIN, IRELAND….EARTH DAY, APRIL 22, 2015. Consumer Product design, architecture, and urban planning projects from 24 countries top this year's list as "The Green 100." 

This year’s winners of the Green GOOD DESIGN Awards, from a new campus plan in Egypt to a farming kindergarten in Vietnam, are redefining our future and proving that design can be a force for positive social change.

The 2015 GREEN 100 awarded building and product designs can be viewed at The Chicago Athenaeum’s website: www.chi- athenaeum.org

Organized annually by The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design, together with The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies, Green GOOD DESIGN is the benchmark for new designs that foster a greater sense of ecological-based design, eco-innovation, conservation, green technologies, renewable energy, and sustainability to better the quality of both life and the environment. 

 

Under the banner, "Build a Better World Now," hundreds of submissions were received this year by the world's most prestigious architecture and design firms and manufactures for the annual awards for the best new and innovative green design. 

The jury for awards was drawn from The European Centre's International Advisory Committee, which is composed of architecture and design professionals and leaders in manufacturing worldwide.

Founded in Chicago in 1950 by Eero Saarinen and Charles and Ray Eames, GOOD DESIGN remains the oldest and most established awards program for the most innovative and visionary new product design worldwide. In 2007, a special edition ofGREEN GOOD DESIGN was established to focus on the most important new international products and buildings and construction and planning projects that are leading the global way to a design that is fully sustainable and compatible with the highest standards of good environment. 

"The products and buildings selected this year," states Christian Narkiewicz-Laine, Museum President of The Chicago Athenaeum, "respect environmental limits while fulfilling social wants and needs and have become an unparalleled platform for innovation on strategy, design, manufacturing and brand, offering massive opportunities to compete and to adapt to a rapidly evolving world.

"Green GOOD DESIGN is a call for massive social, political, technological, cultural, and behavioral transition," he continues.

For 2015, awarded buildings and products are from Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Denmark, Egypt, Finland, Germany, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Korea, Lithuania, New Zealand, Portugal, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey, Vietnam, and the USA.

In this year's selection, 65 product designs were chosen in the categories of new lighting, packaging, transportation, housewares, floor covering, appliances, textiles, business machines, furniture, kitchen and bath fixtures, recycling bins, security devices, children's toys, medical equipment, construction materials, solar technology, car charging stations, and sports and recreational equipment.

Twenty-five (25) building and urban planning projects were also selected for new skyscrapers, cities, ecological farming, factories, expo pavilions, landscape parks, private residences, city squares, corporate headquarters, schools and campuses, playgrounds, multi-family dwellings, restaurants, museums, and commercial buildings.

BMW AG heads the list with three new generation mass-produced, zero-emission cars: BMW i3, BMW i8, and BWM C evolution. All three cars push the envelope for their revolutionary technology, fuel-efficiency, renewable materials, and aesthetic design.

Three designs selected have unparalleled humanistic value: Firefly Newborn Phototherapy by Design that Matters is the first device designed to treat newborn jaundice in rural Third World clinics worldwide; MDU (Mobile Dental Unit) designed by San Francisco architect, David Montalba, literally a dental office on wheels; and the Blooming Bamboo House by Vietnamese studio H&P Architects, designed as the first floating houses to withstand floods up to three meters. The "Fayetteville 2030: Food City Scenario" by the University of Arkansas Community Design Center was supported by the Clinton Global Initiative.

 

The Berlin-based Little Sun was founded in 2012 by Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson and engineer Frederik Ottesen to affect significant global change in sustainable energy access specifically, to get clean, affordable, solar light to the 1.2 billion people worldwide living without electricity in 'off-grid' areas.

"For these design and manufacturing businesses, sustainability means not only eco-efficiency, but also eco-effectiveness. Sustainability is absolutely about marketing and branding – when that means identifying market needs based on long-term prosperity and creating tribes of sustainable consumers. Sustainability needs to be about ‘greening'– because businesses and communities depend on healthy, productive ecosystems," continues Narkiewicz-Laine. 

"Above all, we believe that for tomorrow's enduring businesses, sustainable design will be about making money by meeting real and fundamental human needs."

In June, the Green 100 are featured in an exhibition: 100% Sustainable: Green Good Design 2015, at The European Centre’s Museum, Contemporary Space Athens (74 Mitropoleos Street, Athens, Greece) opening on June 26 and continuing through August 10, 2015. 

The exhibition travels to Chicago for the Third Chicago Architecture Biennale in September. 

For photographs, publication, and exhibition information, contact Ira Livadioti, Director of Marketing and Administration, at TEL: +30/210 342 8511 or by email atira@europeanarch.eu 

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You can download the press release for the Green Good Design Award 2015 here