Swiss Grand Award for Design 2022

Susanne Bartsch has been living in New York since 1981, where she has created a dazzling Gesamtkunstwerk through the creation of her iconic looks and legendary parties. As an impresario, artist-agent, and big-hearted, open-minded hostess, she moves virtuosically at the intersection of fashion, make-up, activism, art, music, and performance. In a career as interior designer, researcher, author, and teacher that has spanned more than five decades, Verena Huber has engaged profoundly with the issues of living and staying. To this day, she continues encouraging people to question spaces and objects and to put them in new contexts. Uncompromising in her approach and always looking beyond national borders, she has been hugely influential in contemporary Swiss interior design. Since the early 1980s, artist Beat Streuli has used photography and video to create works of strong visual force. Although cityscapes form the backdrop of his images, it is always people rather than architectural or structural elements that are in his focus. Streulis images have made him one of the worlds foremost exponents of street portraiture. Switzerlands Federal Office of Culture has awarded the 2022 Swiss Grand Award for Design to Susanne Bartsch, Verena Huber, and Beat Streuli. This book introduces each of them through a concise text and interview as well as a brief biography, illustrated with images from their archives. Text in English, French, German and Italian.