The award itself, of silver and laser-etched rubber, was designed by Kate Reynolds and is fabricated for Collab each year by jewlery designer Maria Eife. Reynolds was a sophomore in Philadelphia University’s Industrial Design program when she entered the 2001 Student Design Competition, Designing The Design Excellence Award. Of her project, she said, "This award is meant to symbolize the continuity of design. Its shape reflects the endless relationship between past, present, and future.”
The elegance of her thinking touched that year's judges and the Collab group so deeply that it has been adopted as an element symbolic of Collab's mission, binding them to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Past recipients of this prestigious award include:
- 2006 Georg Jensen
- 2005 Gaetano Pesce
- 2004 Florence Knoll Bassett
- 2003 Richard Gluckman
- 2002 Ingo Maurer
- 2001 No award given
- 2000 Milton Glaser
- 1999 Jonathan Ive, Maya Lin, and Karim Rashid
- 1998 Sir Terence Conran
- 1997 Philippe Starck and Ian Schrager
- 1996 Richard Meier
- 1995 Michael Graves
- 1994 Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown
- 1993 Swid Powell
- 1991 Jack Lenor Larsen
- 1989 Niels Diffrient
- 1988 Vignelli Associates
- 1985 George Nakashima
For more information, please contact Collab by phone at (215) 763-8100 or by e-mail at .
