Cooper-Hewitt Director Paul Warwick Thompson chose Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley as the year's "design patron." Daley has presided over the transformation of railroad tracks and parking lots in downtown Chicago into Millennium Park through a public-private partnership. The area has a band shell by Frank Gehry, sculpture by Anish Kapoor, an interactive fountain by Jaume Plensa and gardens by Kathryn Gustafson. Daley was traveling in Poland this week and not scheduled to attend the awards gala.
Educators Michael and Katherine McCoy, former directors of design at Cranbrook Academy of Art and teachers at Illinois Institute of Technology and London's Royal College of Art, were saluted with the first "design mind award."
The jury offered a special commendation to Sergio A. Palleroni, a research fellow at the Center for Sustainable Development at University of Texas at Austin, who has organized humanitarian design studios around the world.
The first award for interior design, announced last night, went to an architect, Richard Gluckman of Gluckman Mayner Architects in New York, whose practice includes gallery and museum design, fashion boutiques and installations with contemporary artists such as Richard Serra.
Toledo Studio picked up an award for fashion. Isabel Toledo's work with Ruben Toledo has appeared at the Victoria and Albert Museum and the museum of the Fashion Institute of Technology.
Winners receive no cash prize. Instead, they are required to share their thinking in a program of lectures, studio visits and other programming.
At Air and Space, the SpaceShipOne on exhibit is notable for a dent in the underside. Pilot Mike Melvill explained the deformation by phone from Rutan's company, Scaled Composites, in Mojave, Calif. It was "a badge of honor, so to speak," caused by an unexpected crush of air on reentry during the first flight. The problem was fixed but the Smithsonian asked to have the spaceship just as it appeared after the initial journey. Autographs of well-wishers and staff are visible on the nozzle of the rocket motor.
Melvill, who has flown Rutan's experimental craft for 28 years, describes the designer as a "second edition" of Clarence L. "Kelly" Johnson, a legendary aeronautical engineer who led Lockheed's "Skunk Works" and designed 40 aircraft, including the U-2 spy plane.
"Kelly Johnson was his idol as a kid," Melvill says. "Nobody could tell him what to do. Even the government couldn't get him to bow down. He was abrasive. He was a brilliant designer. Burt's the same way."
SpaceShipTwo is on the drawing board, a cooperative venture with Branson, whose Virgin Galactic company will sell tickets. They will need FAA approval to ferry space tourists beyond the clouds. But Melvill says he hopes that Rutan will finally be allowed to take a trip.
On the appointed day last year, Melvill was in the cockpit going through his checklist when Rutan poked his head in.
The FAA deemed the flight too experimental for passengers, so the pilot was preparing to take off with ballast. At Melvill's urging, Rutan jumped into a seat and closed the door.
"He sat in it for a long time," Melvill said. "He was looking around. I could just picture him wondering what it would be like to see the stars in the middle of the day."
