It is with much gratitude and admiration that we celebrate the jury alumni members of the Core77 Design Awards.
Fabio Sergio is Vice President of Design at frog, the global design and innovation firm.
He works across a wide spectrum of industries and sectors, with global leaders such as Vodafone, GE, HP, LGE, BBC, J&J, Swisscom, Novartis, Merck, UNICEF, The Red Cross and the World Economic Forum. Fabio is part of frog's global Design Leadership team, the head of frog's Social Impact Design practice, one of the firm's healthcare experts and one of its User Experience Strategy leads. He helps to advance frog's capabilities, processes and methodologies.
Fabio is passionate about exploring areas at the intersection of design, technology and human aspirations, wrapping business scenarios around people's desires and dreams.
He often speaks at worldwide events, including The Economist Technology Frontiers, The Guardian Mobile Summit, The Aspen Design Summit, SXSW, The Unicef Innovation Summit, Stanford Mobile Health, NEXT Berlin, LIFT Geneva. He is a professor at Politecnico di Milano, and a guest lecturer at Domus Academy, Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design and SUPSI's Master of Advanced Studies in Interaction Design.
Lola Sheppard received her B.Arch from McGill University and M.Arch from Harvard Graduate School of Design. She is Associate Professor at the University of Waterloo. Together with Mason White, she founded Lateral Office in 2003.
Lateral Office is an architecture practice that operates at the intersection of architecture, landscape, and urbanism. The studio describes its practice process as a commitment to design as a research vehicle to pose and respond to complex, urgent questions in the built environment, engaging in the wider context and climate of a project– social, ecological, or political. Lateral Office have been pursuing research and design work on the role of architecture in remote regions, particularly the North, for the past seven years. Lateral’s work tests the potential for architecture and infrastructure to be culturally responsive, geographically scalable, environmentally adaptable, and multi-purpose in its programmability.
The office’s work has been exhibited and lectured extensively across the USA, Canada and Europe. Lateral Office was awarded a Special Mention at the 2014 Venice Biennale for Architecture, a PA award in 2013 and the Holcim Gold for Sustainable Construction for North America, for their project Arctic Food Network. They received the Emerging Voices from the Architectural League of New York in 2011, and the 2010 Professional Prix de Rome from the Canada Council for the Arts. Lateral Office are the authors of the upcoming book Many Norths: Spatial Practice in a Polar Territory (Actar 2017) and of Pamphlet Architecture 30, COUPLING: Strategies for Infrastructural Opportunism, published by Princeton Architectural Press (2011). Sheppard and White are also co-editors of the journal Bracket.
Kelsey Snook is Creative Director at Second Story experiential design studios. For over 15 years Kelsey has been creating participatory environments where people can connect. She has worked internationally, creating projects that span product, furniture, exhibition and large scale public interactive environments - as artistic pieces and for clients in cultural, commercial and public sectors. Kelsey holds an MA with distinction in Creative Practice for Narrative Environments from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, London, and a BA in Industrial Design from the Rhode Island School of Design.
Joe Speicher is the Executive Director of the Autodesk Foundation. Under his leadership, the Foundation supports the people and organizations designing and engineering high-impact solutions to the world’s most pressing social and environmental challenges. Prior to joining Autodesk, Speicher was on the founding team of Living Goods, where he spent six years leading operations for the global health organization. He began his career in the banking and finance sector, working with Deutsche Bank and Cambridge Associates. He then spent three years in the Peace Corps in the Philippines and has worked as a consultant for the Economist Intelligence Unit, the World Bank and Google.org. He earned a Masters degree in Development Economics from Columbia University and holds a Bachelors of Science degree from Washington and Lee University.
Richard is a principal strategy director at frog with a focus on data, systems intelligence, innovation, and organizational change. In his role, he helps leaders explore the frontiers of human-centered approaches to intelligent systems. Richard has a long consulting background with innovation leaders like Doblin, Monitor, and SYPartners where he as worked on large scale foresight, innovation, and transformation programs across industries including healthcare, information technology, consumer products, urban systems, humanitarian affairs, international development, and national security. Richard in on the faculty at School of Visual Arts Products of Design Master’s program and has conducted projects throughout the world in Europe, Asia, Africa, North America, and the Middle East. Select clients include: BNY Mellon, IBM, Google, Microsoft, SK Telecom, The United Nations, and the US Department of Defense.
Deanna is the co-founder of Designing Justice Designing Spaces, a nonprofit harnessing the power of design and development to transform people and communities. After starting her first company in 2011 she became a national leader in formulating and advocating for restorative justice centers, a radical transformation of justice architecture. Her passion for exploring the intersection of design and culture has been fueled by her work as a design lead on urban design, institutional and education projects in the bay area, Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Recent projects with DJDS include the Syracuse Peacemaking Center in New York and Restore, a multi-use hub for restorative justice and work force development in east Oakland. Deanna is currently conducting the first design studios with incarcerated students, and is a recent awardee of the Rauschenberg Artist as Activist grant to develop a prototype mobile resource village. Deanna received her BS in Architecture from the University of Virginia, M. Arch from Columbia University and is an alumnus of the Loeb Fellowship at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design.
Mesve Vardar is the Director of Industrial Design at Humanscale. With a decade of Humanscale experience behind her, Mesve Vardar has been a key contributor to a number of celebrated Humanscale products, including the Red Dot award-winning T7 Mobile Technology Cart. She joined the company in 2006 as a designer after earning a Master of Arts in Industrial Design from Pratt Institute. Before accepting the role of Design Director, Vardar worked as a Senior Industrial Designer and Researcher. In this capacity she worked on product development and research across categories, including seating, monitor arms, healthcare and lighting. Having conducted dedicated research into the future workplace, she is motivated by front-end thinking and the broad impact Humanscale can have on the changing office.
Petrula Vrontikis is a leading influence in graphic design. Her current work includes research, writing, consulting, creating brand communication strategies, training, and coaching. She received an AIGA Fellows Award honoring her as an essential voice raising the understanding of design within the industry and among the business and cultural communities. She served as a national advisory board member of the AIGA and is frequently asked to serve on numerous local, national, and international design juries.
She is creative director and owner of Vrontikis Design Office (@vrontikis and 35k.com) and a professor at Art Center College of Design, teaching graphic design, career development, and professional practice courses.
Her professional practice gives her role as a teacher an important authenticity. She encourages students to explore their potential as designers and as a catalyst for change in the larger creative community.
Petrula is an avid traveler and visual translator. It’s not unusual to find her scuba diving with giant manta rays, climbing a steep and rocky slope, or twisting her body like a pretzel in a yoga class.
Zhang graduated from Central Saint Martins Art & Design College in London, and is a member of the Architectural Association School of Architecture. He established Zhoujie Zhang Digital Lab in 2010. He is a pioneer in the realm of digital creativity.
His work is known for being independent, experimental and futuristic. Zhang believes that objects in the digital world can grow and morph much like things found in nature, and he is dedicated to discovering and exploring the methods within these transformations. His work mainly focuses on the simplicity of logic, variety and unpredictability, which is based on his understanding of nature.
His collections have been exhibited widely around the world and selected by museums as well as individual collectors. His work has appeared in mainstream media such as Wallpaper*, the New York Times, and Vogue.