First winners of new Design Museum awards

Designers Martino Gamper, Yves Béhar and Penguin US’s creative director Paul Buckley have been honoured as category winners in the Design Museum’s first Brit Insurance Design Awards, it was announced today.

The seven fields being judged include furniture, graphics, interactive, product, transport, architecture and fashion design. The category winners must wait until next Tuesday for the overall winner to be declared.

Gamper was triumphant in the furniture category for his 100 Chairs in 100 Days creative work (see links below).

Burble, a 70m-tall structure consisting of 1000 helium balloons supported by 140 carbon-fibre hexagonal units, scooped first place in the interactive section, with design by Haque Design and Research, alongside Seth Garlock and Rolf Pixley.

Other winners include Meyra-Ortopedia Vetriebsgesellschaft’s Mex-x wheelchair for children in the transport group, and One Laptop Per Child by Behar of Fuseproject in the product category.

Penguin’s Classics Deluxe Editions, credited to Buckley, which feature one-of-a-kind book cover illustrations by artists including Frank Miller, Julie Doucet and Dan Clowes, took the top honour in graphics.

The Bejing National Stadium for the 2008 Olympics by Herzog & de Meuron and Airborne’s autumn/winter 2007 collection by Hussein Chalayan were declared the most innovative and progressive designs in architecture and fashion respectively.

All designs will be on show as part of the 100-strong shortlist at the Brit Insurance Designs of the Year exhibition at the Design Museum, London SE1, which runs until 27 April.

The five judges were Antonio Citterio, Rolf Fehlbaum, Alison Moloney, Lars Müller and Daniel Weil.