Ken Wilson of Envision Design Recognized as Designer of the Year
DC Architect Selected by Contract Magazine for International Honor
(PRWEB) March 19, 2005 -- Kendall Wilson, AIA, IIDA, LEED AP, a principal and
founder of Washington, DC-based Envision Design, has been recognized as “2005
Designer of the Year” by Contract magazine. Wilson is only the second designer
from the Washington metropolitan area to win the award in the program’s 26-year
history.
Contract magazine’s Designer of the Year award honors architects
and interior designers who have demonstrated extraordinary leadership and design
excellence. The international field of past winners includes Michael Graves,
Lauren Rottet, William McDonough, Shigeru Ban, Peter Pfau, and Shashi Caan.
Debra Lehman-Smith, also of Washington, received the award in
1995.
Contract Editor in Chief Jennifer Busch noted Wilson’s “outspoken”
advocacy for sustainable design, as well as his design talents, in presenting
the award. “Though much of his work focuses on sustainability, Ken rejects the
label ‘green designer,’” Busch stated. “He prefers to be thought of as a
talented designer who happens to feel strongly about integrating sound
environmental practices into his work. This attitude speaks to the important
fundamental shift in ideas about sustainability that Ken and other designers
like him are driving.
“Never should ‘green design’ and ‘good design’ be
mutually exclusive terms,” Busch added. “…Ken is an individual who actually
practices what he preaches. He lives and works like the spaces he
designs—attuned to reducing the built environment’s footprint on the natural
world. In his life, as in his design practice, Ken sets an intelligent,
attainable, comfortable—and most importantly beautiful—example of sustainability
for others to follow.”
Wilson has been a leading advocate for the green
building movement in the US for many years. In addition to overseeing a number
of award-winning, breakthrough sustainable design projects, he has lectured and
published extensively on the subject, challenging design professionals,
contractors, and manufacturers to focus on sustainable innovations and
practices. He is active in the development of the USGBC’s LEED Rating System and
serves on the LEED for Commercial Interiors and LEED for Core and Shell steering
committees. Wilson also currently serves as Sustainability Forum Advisor to the
International Interior Design Association (IIDA). In June 2004, IIDA presented
him with its annual Leadership Award.
While accepting the award, Wilson
noted that in his professional practice, he has come to believe that, “easy
things have the greatest chance of being mediocre, and hard things have the
greatest chance of being excellent…In a strange sort of way, a design problem
needs to be challenging in order to produce a good product. This is one of the
reasons I want to embrace the challenge of sustainability in design. It is this
challenge that should arouse all of our egos….sustainable design is really more
about moving toward intelligent design—and what’s not sexy about being
smart?”
Wilson also urged audience members, who included many
international design stars and leading manufacturers, to consider the importance
of the environment in terms of today’s “moral values” debate, noting that the
November 2004 elections caused him to wonder when “protecting our natural
environment would become a moral value—or even patriotic?”
Wilson thanked
a number of people who have been influential to his career, including his
Envision Design partner, Diana Horvat, as well as “visionary people like Bill
McDonough, who has paved the way for firms like Envision to do the kind of work
we do.”
Wilson, who set a new standard in the industry by insisting that
every member of his professional staff become LEED-accredited in 2004, took the
entire Envision Design team to New York City for the awards presentation, along
with his family. A number of clients, including senior representatives from
Environmental Defense, Chase Manhattan, Nusta Spa, and Aveda, were also on hand
to congratulate him.
About Envision Design
Since its establishment in
1999, Envision Design has earned nearly 40 regional and national design awards
and citations, including numerous awards from the American Institute of
Architects and the International Interior Design Association. Recent projects
have included the World Wildlife Fund headquarters, the Greenpeace USA
headquarters, the Washington, DC office and New York headquarters of
Environmental Defense, and the headquarters for Conservation International. A
new center for Green Door, a Washington, DC non-profit service organization, was
recently featured in Interior Design and earned several 2004 design
awards.
The firm is ranked #6 in the nation on Interiors & Sources
“Top 25 Environmental Champions” list. Envision Design’s work has been featured
at the National Building Museum and in such leading industry publications as
Contract, Interior Design, Interiors & Sources and Environmental Design +
Construction.
Currently, Envision Design is designing the Washington, DC
headquarters for both APCO Worldwide and the Society for Neuroscience. The
firm’s recent Nusta Spa project, anticipated to earn a LEED Gold rating, was the
subject of a case study presentation by Ken Wilson at the 2004 GreenBuild
conference.
Envision Design also served as LEED consultant to Knoll, one
of the nation’s top five commercial furniture manufacturers, which received a
Gold rating under the Existing Buildings (LEED-EB) Pilot program for the Lubin
manufacturing facility in East Greenville, PA. The project was also recognized
at the GreenBuild Conference.
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Source: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/3/prweb219352.htm