A UNIQUE CEREMONY AND CELEBRATIONStaged before a black-tie audience led by INDEX: royal patron HRH the Crown Prince of Denmark, the ceremony to name the winners of the world’s richest prize for design was watched by a worldwide audience in real-time online, leveraged by INDEX:’s use of newly released Facebook technologies.
The colorful, fast-paced and singularly devised awards program began streaming at 8:00 p.m. Copenhagen time Friday August 28, with the assistance of DR2, on at http://www.DesignToImproveLife.dk Everyone was welcome to come watch the show and, by clicking on the Connect with Facebook button, interact with Friends on Facebook to discuss, debate and learn about Design to Improve Life, Denmark’s INDEX: to a better world.
The coveted INDEX:Award 2009 carries a total purse of 500,000 euros (more than US$700,000) and originates under a hall-wide multi-media screen installation specially created for Copenhagen’s new Koncerthuset.
Set at the Danish National Broadcasting Center, the evening was led by three key media personalities: - Adrian Lloyd Hughes of DR2’s “The Arbiters of Taste,” Copenhagen,
- Daniel Sieberg, Technology Correspondent for CBS News, New York, and
- Shanon Cook of CNN’s “Music and Conversation,” New York.
The Danish National Chamber Orchestra shared the stage with the hosting trio, under the direction of Henrik Vagn Christensen and with special preparation by Tatjana Kandel and Karl Bjerre Skibsted for an integrated use of live orchestral effects at several points in the program, as well as music of Igor Stravinsky.
Additional musical elements of the show have been provided by a special sponsorship for INDEX: from the UK’s Beatsuite.com Production Music Library, bringing world-music texture and site-specific dimension to the stories played out during the evening.
One key element of stage furnishing was standing on the “King’s side” of the beautiful hall: A wide, tall, oval table provided by Fritz Hansen, the iconic manufacturer of great Danish design and sponsor of the INDEX: People’s Choice Award. It was at this “Winners’ Table” that five Designs to Improve Life – secret until announced onstage – was honored, recipients coming to the stage was met by the evening’s hosts and internationally influential presenters bearing congratulatory gifts from INDEX: sponsors Georg Jensen and Royal Copenhagen.
After the major awards of 100,000 euros each was given in the five major categories of INDEX: Design to Improve Life – Body, Home, Work, Play, and Community – the People’s Choice Award was be announced. Chosen by global vote at http://www.DesignToImproveLife.dk using Connect with Facebook, this prize carries a special prize from Fritz Hansen: An “Egg” chair, one of the classic examples of world-leading Danish design by Arne Jacobsen.
The five major awards have been chosen by the INDEX: Jury of 11 experts from five continents. They began with an initial nomination pool of some 725 designs, worked them down to 69 finalists, and then chose the five winners for the biennial award in long sessions of collegial research and debate. The Jury, the INDEX: Board, CEO Kigge Hvid, many of the group’s international Senior Advisors body and Regional Ambassadors joined the ceremony to celebrate the results of the long process to pinpoint and promote humanitarian design that makes a difference in how people live. The program’s creation and direction is led by Porter Anderson of Porter Anderson Media, serving as INDEX: Executive Producer and Creative Consultant.
Using three major criteria – form, context, impact – the INDEX: Jury, like the organization, itself, is committed to leading designers to turn their genius to the needs of people both in the developing and developed worlds. Past awards, therefore, have included: the “Mobility for Each One” prosthetic leg for land-mine victims, and the iPod/iTunes system of protected digital music distribution; the LifeStraw device that turns dirty water clean for people in regions without good drinking water, and the original Tesla Roadster, designed to attract car-savvy drivers in the West to electrically –powered vehicles; the “X/O” computer created for inexpensive distribution to poor schoolchildren, and the Tongue Sucker, a device inspired by trauma-struck commuters in the 2005 London Underground bombings.
Created with special attention to the human foundation of the INDEX: mission and purpose, as mandated by its establishment in 2002, the show offers extensive video presentations about each award-winning design and the personalities behind it. What’s revealed in these probing interviews is the passion that lies behind each Design to Improve Life brought to Koncerthuset and the world stage for INDEX:Award 2009. Each designer or team leader speaks of the deep concern for human welfare driving the idea, the development and the struggle to implement potentially powerful designs in a fast-changing world.
One INDEX: juror, Patrick Frick of The Value Web and Blatter + Frick, refers to this as INDEX’s role in a world today gripped by a positive force he calls “(P)anarchy.” “The world we’re going to see,” Frick says, “is one I would title or brand as ‘(p)anarchy.’ And (p)anarchy is a way of organizing. It’s bottom-up, it’s grassroots, it’s organic. There’s no central command who would direct any kind of movement or people. And that’s very close to nature. ”A special presentation in the show will focus on Frick’s and his juror-colleagues’ assessments of where the move toward Design to Improve Life stands today – and on how “INDEXing horizons” is the key impetus behind the organizations’ world-famous awards.
INDEX:Award Ceremony 2009 was produced by INDEX: in collaboration with STV production A/S and No Parking Production Aps.
You’re welcome to download the entire show, our shorter videos and Public Service Announcements (broadcast quality or mp4) at:
http://indexaward.surfoffice.eu
Username: download
Password: download
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