Frequently Asked Questions about the Curry Stone Design Prize
Q. What is the Curry Stone Design Prize?
A. The Curry Stone Design Prize is an annual award to exceptional emerging design innovations that contribute positively to living circumstances for broad sections of global humanity. It is awarded to an individual or group of designers for extraordinary design projects or innovative ideas. The Curry Stone Design Prize rewards and supports new design projects and/or ideas that improve global, societal, and/or humanitarian conditions and represent innovative thinking. It is supported by the Curry Stone Foundation of Oregon and administered by Architecture For Humanity.
Q. What are the selection criteria?
A. The Curry Stone Design Prize is awarded based on the potential for the designer’s projects to improve daily living conditions around the world. These 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 who are emerging into professional and public consciousness with their work, in order to provide them with resources to facilitate further innovative thinking and its application. The award is not limited in terms of age.
Q. What do the recipients receive?
A. One recipient per year will receive a grant of $100,000. One to four other prizes may also be awarded at a level of $10,000 each.
Q. Are there strings attached to the prize?
A. There are no restrictions on the use of the prize. The Curry Stone Design Prize recipient is asked to return one year after the award to make a public presentation about his or her work, which will coincide with the announcement of the subsequent year’s prize recipient(s).
Q. What fields are generally represented among the recipients?
A. The Curry Stone Design Prize defines design in its broadest sense, from architectural design, urban design and landscape design to product design, graphic design, and other fields of design. The Curry Stone Design Prize also invites new definitions of design that defy tradition and break boundaries.
Q. How does the program define "contribute positively to living circumstances for broad sections of global humanity"?
A. Design has always been concerned with the 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, and make the talents of leading designers available to broader sections of society.
Q. How are candidates identified?
A. An anonymous group of invited external nominators selects a pool of nominees. This process is used to balance a broad search for emerging designers with a manageable pool of nominations. Unsolicited proposals are not accepted.
Q. Who are the nominators?
A. The group consists of 75 to 100 individuals who are leaders in contemporary design discourse today, along with key individuals with a sense of global vision. 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 during the course of a year? How long does it take for a nomination to move through the selection process?
A. Each nominator is invited to nominate between one and three designers per year, resulting in an anticipated pool of nominees ranging between 75 and 300 each year. The nomination process is rolling; that is, nominations are considered in the review year when the dossier is completed. It is possible that a nomination made in one year may be considered in a later year, as the dossier reaches completion.
Q. Do some people know that they have been nominated?
A. It is intended that the nomination and selection process be conducted anonymously.
Q. Are Nominators precluded from being nominated themselves?
A. Nominators cannot nominate themselves. If another Nominator puts forward – anonymously – the name of someone serving as a Nominator in that same annual cycle, the nomination will roll over into a subsequent year when the nominee is no longer a nominator.
Q. What is the composition of the Selection Jury?
A. The Selection Jury is comprised of four voting individuals. This group is represented by three leading designers or people connected with contemporary issues regarding the built environment around the world and a representative of the Curry Stone Foundation. The Curry Stone Design Prize Secretary serves as an ex-officio and non-voting member of the jury.
Q. What information does the Selection Jury use to make its recommendations?
A. The jury reviews dossiers prepared on each nominee. These dossiers are prepared by the staff of the Curry Stone Design Prize with assistance from the faculty and students of the University of Kentucky College of Design. Other leading schools of architecture may also assist with the dossier preparation.
Q. What is the selection process?
A. The recipients and finalists of the Curry Stone Design Prize are selected by a jury whose membership rotates every year. The jury makes its determination based on the potential of the award recipient to affect projects that improve or have the potential to improve the built environment for a broad segment of humanity. The standards for consideration are at the highest level: transformational ideas and projects that have the power and potential to improve the living circumstances for a large number of people around the globe.
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 pressure on both nominators and jurors in achieving this goal.
Q. What is the role of the advisors?
A. The Curry Stone Design Prize is guided by members of an Advisory Board who provide broad oversight to the nomination and selection processes as well as provide counsel and assessment on the overall direction of the prize process. The Curry Stone Design Prize Board of Advisors meet twice a year to review the nominations and the strategic direction of the Curry Stone Prize. The advisors rotate on a regular basis under the direction of the Curry Stone Design Prize Secretary.
Advisors also act as resources for the award winners, acting as liaisons to individuals or organizations able to assist the Curry Stone Design Prize recipients in carrying out their projects. They also direct and shape the Curry Stone Fellowship (see below).
Q. What is the Curry Stone Fellowship?
A. One intention of the Curry Stone Design Prize is that it support a growing network of individuals who share the mission of the Curry Stone Design Prize and the Curry Stone Foundation throughout their professional lives. The Curry Stone Fellowship will facilitate a network so that members can become resources to each other. Fellowship membership is not limited to Curry Stone Design Prize recipients and finalists alone. Participants in all aspects of the Curry Stone Design Prize process are invited to become lifetime Curry Stone Fellowship members; these include advisors and nominators after they complete those responsibilities, as well as award recipients. UK faculty who participate in the awards process also become fellowship members, and people who provide substantial resources to prize recipients to assist with their projects also may be asked to join.
Q. What activities will the Curry Stone Fellowship engage in?
A. The Curry Stone Design Prize Board of Advisors guides the Curry Stone Fellowship as it grows, in consultation with the Curry Stone Foundation and the Curry Stone Design Prize Secretary.
Q. What role does the Curry Stone Foundation Board of Directors play?
A. The Curry Stone Foundation Board of Directors will provide guidance on the overall goals and direction for the Curry Stone Design Prize.
Q. How are recipients notified of the fellowship?
A. Recipients are notified by phone by the Curry Stone Design Prize Secretary, followed by a letter of confirmation.
Q. What is the relationship between the Curry Stone Design Prize and the IdeaFestival?
A. The IdeaFestival (www.Ideafestival.com) is the chosen venue for the public announcement of the Curry Stone Design Prize recipients, and the venue for the public presentation by the previous year’s Prize recipient.
Q. When will the 2009 prize announcement be made?
A. The 2009 Curry Stone Prize recipients will be presented at the IdeaFestival, in Louisville, Kentucky, on September 24, 2009.
Q. Is there going to be a publication about the prize recipients?
A. There will be an annual report and publication on the Curry Stone Design Prize. Additionally, discussions are underway among the advisors about preserving all nominations as an archive for future study and documentation.