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Jeanne van Heeswijk has been awarded the Curry Stone Design Prize 2012

Date uploaded: October 29, 2012

Jeanne van Heeswijk has been awarded the Curry Stone Design Prize 2012

The Rotterdam-based artist Jeanne van Heeswijk has been named winner of the prestigious Curry Stone Design Prize. The $25,000 prize will be invested by her in 2Up 2Down, the Homebaked Land Trust and Community Bakery, a cooperative organisation that has been setup with residents of the Anfield area. 2Up 2Down is part of Liverpool Biennial, running until November 25th at 199 Oakfield Road, Anfield, Liverpool. Click here for more information.

The Curry Stone Design Prize was created in the belief that designers can be an instrumental force for improving people’s lives and the state of the world.

The Winners of the 2012 Curry Stone Design Prize are: Center for Urban Pedagogy, aka CUP (Brooklyn, New York), Liter Of Light (Manila, Philippines), MASS Design (Boston, MA), Riwaq (Ramallah, Palestine), and Jeanne van Heeswijk (Rotterdam, Netherlands). The five winners will share the award equally, each recognized with $25,000 for their work as social design pioneers. An awards ceremony will take place on November 15, 2012, at Harvard Graduate School of Design, followed the next day with a forum of presentations by the 2012 winners and panel discussions with a curated group of respondents. The awards ceremony and daylong forum are free and open to the public.

The Curry Stone Design Prize celebrates social design pioneers and the power of design as a critical force for improving lives and strengthening communities.

Jeanne van Heeswijk is an artist who facilitates the creation of lively and diversified public spaces, typically from disenfranchised or derelict sites. Her socially engaged practice generates new forms of encounter while challenging bureaucratic conventions and acquired rules. Van Heeswijk’s work presents a fresh understanding of the role of art in the design world—that art actively works in shaping society, and that the ultimate artistic production lies within the evolution of the people involved in the process.

"The mission of the Curry Stone Design Prize is a wide mission of social transformation," said Emiliano Gandolfi, Secretary of the Prize. "It's not about style anymore, it's about an approach. The Curry Stone Design Prize is one of the institutions that is enabling this transformation."

“The aim of the Prize is as much about sharing best practices of these emerging design disciplines as it is about the actual prize,” said Chee Pearlman, Curator of the award. “Each of these emerging practices is taking on critical challenges, and in the films we can share their stories.”

About the Curry Stone Design Prize:
Clifford Curry, an architect and recognised pioneer in senior housing, and Delight Stone, a historic archaeologist and social justice activist, launched the Curry Stone Design Prize in 2008 to champion designers as a force for social change. Now in its fifth year, the Prize recognizes both individuals and firms who use innovative design strategies to address critical issues such as food scarcity, clean water access, disaster response, housing rights, health care, education, post conflict development and peace keeping.

Nominees for the Curry Stone Design Prize are selected by an anonymous, rotating group of social impact leaders representing broad fields of design, as well as humanitarian advocates from related disciplines. Emphasis is placed on emerging projects and ideas that may not have yet been taken to scale.

The 2012 guest jurors include Joseph Grima, Elvira Dyangani Ose and Teddy Cruz. Joseph Grima is a Milan based architect and curator and Editor of the architecture and design magazine Domus. Elvira Dyangani Ose is Curator of International Art at London’s Tate Modern. Teddy Cruz is a professor of Public Culture and Urbanism at the University of California, San Diego, where he founded the Center for Urban Ecologies.

Click here for more information.

Click here for further information about the 2Up 2Down / Homebaked Landtrust and Community Bakery