GOOD Design Awards Gala at Divali Palace
On April 4th, 2025, Sky Factory’s IRIS Tunable SkyCeilings earned a GOOD Design award in the Lighting category for its patent-pending dynamic lighting virtual skylight. IRIS was recognized at the GOOD Design Awards Gala held at the Divali Palace Hotel in Athens, Greece, where 120 product designers, architects, and company representatives attended in person to receive the award.
One of the most memorable aspects of the GOOD Design Awards Gala is meeting leading designers across the spectrum of commercial design and coming together for the official photograph featuring the ancient Parthenon—a paragon of timeless design, softly illuminated in the evening background.
“Winning GOOD DESIGN is a testament to the commitment of designers and manufacturers to create intuitive and easy-to-use products and bold and new innovative solutions for product design,” states curator and founding president of The Chicago Athenaeum Museum of Design and Architecture, Christian Narkiewicz-Laine.
IRIS Tunable SkyCeiling – New Product Design Winner
“This year I have been particularly struck by the ingenious creativity shown by the award-winning products. It is really impressive and praiseworthy that there are still designs out there that can surprise us with their form and functionality,” said Narkiewicz-Laine who became The Chicago-Sun Times’ first and most notorious architecture critic back in 1979.
In 2024, The Chicago Athenaeum Museum received and reviewed thousands of submissions from over 56 countries featuring new product and environmental designs, plus graphics and packaging, launched between January 1, 2022, and June 1, 2024. An international jury of design experts evaluated hundreds of submissions on four key design qualities: product function, aesthetics, ease of use, social responsibility and sustainability—the same criteria outlined in 1950.
The winning entries are all offered the opportunity to send the products to The European Centre for Architecture, Art Design and Urban Studies in Athens as part of a one-month exhibit (April 4 – May 4, 2025) that follows the GOOD Design Awards Gala. The winners’ exhibit is free and open to the public. Summer hours 15:00 – 22:00. Address: 74 Mitropoleos, Athens, Greece.
The Oldest and Most Influential Design Award in the World
GOOD Design is the world’s longest running and most prestigious awards program. Christian Narkiewicz-Laine revived the Good Design Awards in 1988, which had been founded by Eero Saarinen and Charles and Ray Eames, and former MoMA curator, Edgar Kaufmann in Chicago in 1950.
The program highlights the most innovative and cutting-edge industrial, product, and graphic designs produced around the world. Among the designers and manufacturers participating annually for the best new industrial design worldwide are global companies such as Apple, MicroSoft and Hewlett Packard to BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Audi, and Volkswagen and other design manufacturers and design offices from Germany, Italy, France, Spain, Scandinavia, Japan, Korea, and China.
In his tenure, Mr. Narkiewicz-Laine also established the International Architecture Awards which are given annually for the best new skyscrapers, public buildings, institutions, corporate headquarters, landscape architecture, and urban planning from 2005 to the present. Likewise, he instituted the prestigious American Architecture Awards, the United States foremost prize for architecture, which honors the best new buildings and urban planning projects designed in the United States from 1996–present.
Every year, the GOOD Design Awards selects a prestigious jury of architects and designers that review thousands of product design entries across 32 categories, including building materials, electronics, furniture, lighting, and tools among others. The jury selected over 1,200 products and graphics worthy of the GOOD Design Award as a testament to the exceptional quality of the product design.
The Chicago Athenaeum Museum
In 1988, along with Greek architect Ioannis Karalias, Mr. Narkiewicz-Laine founded The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design in Chicago. The Museum is dedicated to the art of architecture and design holding permanent relative collections. At first The Chicago Athenaeum was located at 333 West Wacker Drive in Chicago, then relocated to the John Hancock Building, and then to a permanent location at 6 North Michigan Avenue.
At the Chicago Athenaeum, Narkiewicz-Laine massed several permanent collections of architecture and industrial design, including a Collection of Objects Designed and Manufactured in Chicago between 1900-1960; a Collection of Finnish Fabrics; a Collection of Industrial Design from Europe and the United States; a Collection of Furniture (1920–present); and a collection of architectural remnants, drawings, models, photographs, mostly of Chicago.
The European Centre for Architecture, Art Design & Urban Studies
The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies is dedicated to public education concerning all aspects of the built environment—from entire cities to individual buildings—including the philosophical issues of arts and culture that ultimately give the final shape to design. A high emphasis exists on contemporary values and aesthetics, conservation and sustainability, and the theoretical exploration and advancement of art and design as the highest expression of culture and urbanism.
The mission of the European Centre is to improve all aspects of human and urban experience by promoting greater public awareness and the broader appreciation and importance of architecture, design, art, and urban planning. The European Centre’s programs, workshops, competitions, and exhibitions foster public and professional education, research, investigation, and scholarship.
