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Meet the House & Garden Design Awards winners for 2024
At House & Garden, we are always on the lookout for who is making waves in the design industry. The Design Awards are our way of recognising these leading figures. We are thrilled to reveal this year’s winners – people who are making their mark on the industry, whether through a lifetime of work or a star on the rise.
Sophia Spring1/11INTERIOR DESIGNER OF THE YEAR: RITA KONIG
Sponsored by Farrow & Ball
In the March 2001 issue, House & Garden introduced Rita Konig: ‘Once in a while, someone appears on the decorating scene whose work seems completely of its time… her style is a delicious fusion of the traditional and the more modern.’ That might seem like a lifetime ago, but the same could be said of her today. Where to begin with Rita? For starters, she had the good sense to be born as the daughter of Nina Campbell, one of this country’s leading designers. ‘I can’t deny that my own approach is lifted entirely from her book of practicality, luxury, beauty and necessity,’ Rita has said. There is plenty of modesty mixed in with that truth because, over the past 20-odd years, she has developed her own style and acquired a reputation for creating elegant, comfortable homes. She has been described as ‘wildly pragmatic’ – a rare quality in a designer, particularly combined with such creativity and wit. This can be seen in her recent farmhouse project featured in our October 2023 issue, a melange of rusticity and glamour, classicism and downright fun.
Pictured: Rita Konig (left) with Charlotte Cosby of Farrow & Ball
Sophia Spring2/11GARDEN DESIGNER OF THE YEAR: LUCIANO GIUBBILEI
Sponsored by Cole & Son
Having lived and worked in London for 30 years, Italian-born Luciano Giubbilei is one of Britain’s most successful garden designers. We featured one of his London projects in the May 2024 issue, which epitomises his exceptional flair for combining perfectly balanced spatial design with elegant planting, beautiful sculptures and timeless detailing. A master at tapping into different design elements – from interiors, architecture and art to specialist horticulture – Luciano collaborates with others to make gardens that cross the disciplines. He has partnered with furniture designer Nathalie de Leval to create the Smith Collection of outdoor pieces and he works with sculptors and artists to produce bespoke creations. Current projects include a prairie-style garden in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia (to be featured in the September issue) and The Field, at his own house in Mallorca, which he hopes will become a community initiative to explore the parameters of sustainable Mediterranean planting. He has also been working at County Durham’s Raby Castle, reimagining the three sections of the 18th-century Walled Garden.
Pictured: Luciano Giubbilei (right) with Marie Karlsson of Cole & Son
Sophia Spring3/11PROJECT OF THE YEAR: A DEVON HOUSE BY OONA BANNON + RUSSELL PINCH
Sponsored by V-Zug
‘It was like assembling the most insane flat pack imaginable,’ says furniture designer Russell Pinch of the process of designing and installing (by hand) the wood-clad interior of his house in Devon, featured in our June 2024 issue. Russell and his wife Oona Bannon bought the land in 2014. It included a dilapidated, 17th-century cob barn, previously used as an ice cream factory, and planning permission to build a house. Exemplifying the skill of architect David Kohn (known for his purity of form and emphasis on materiality), the result is a 732-square-metre, four-bedroom house arranged around a courtyard. According to Oona, it blends ‘modern – almost Brutalist – architecture with the warmth and tactility of our material choices’. The rooms are furnished predominantly with Pinch pieces and several parts of the building – including the stairs and library – were conceived like large pieces of wooden furniture. There are views from the windows of fields and a garden by James Hamilton (formerly of Urquhart & Hunt). The pervading effect of this very personal newbuild is, says Oona, ‘simple but nourishing, with a sense of effortlessness, reflecting the intentions of our own designs’.
Pictured from left: Oona Bannon and Russell Pinch with Alicia Hill of V-Zug
Sophia Spring4/11SPOTLIGHT AWARD: WOW!HOUSE AT Design Centre, Chelsea Harbour
Sponsored by Louis Roederer
Over the years, there have been several initiatives in the UK to create showhouses conceived by multiple interior designers. But, in truth, they did not catch on in the way their American counterparts seem to. So there were question marks over the decision by Design Centre, Chelsea Harbour to launch its own version, WOW!house, in 2022. It is fair to say that those doubts have proved unfounded because, by all accounts, the now annual exhibition and celebration of design has been a resounding success. This month, the linear house pops up again, with each room created by a different designer. Once again, WOW!house has curated a brilliant mix of emerging and established names – from Studio Vero to Veere Grenney – to create one of the most talked-about design and decoration events in the London calendar. Claire German, CEO of Design Centre, Chelsea Harbour, is representing the team as she receives the Spotlight Award for this achievement: putting the focus on and creating a buzz around the industry that is House & Garden’s lifeblood. Each year, it partners with a different charity to raise funds: this year it is working with the diversity charity United in Design. Bravo.
Pictured: Claire German
Sophia Spring5/11RISING STAR, INTERIORS: ALICE B DAVIES
Sponsored by Zoffany
A strong sense of space and a deep understanding of architecture underpin the work of Alice Davies, whose elegant and refined interiors have impressed us this year. Having trained at the Chelsea College of Arts in interior and spatial design, she went on to become creative director of a boutique architecture firm before starting her own studio. Attention to the architecture of the building and to context is always the first step in her creative process, whether the project is a full house renovation or the decoration of a single room. She has a particular talent for creating serene, pared-back spaces and then infusing them with personality through carefully chosen artwork and furnishings. We have enjoyed seeing how she tailors this approach to the needs and tastes of her clients (and to their houses) in diverse projects. These include devising peaceful yet distinctive interiors for a Victorian flat in Notting Hill and bringing character to a new-build farmhouse in Hampshire. Alice runs her eponymous studio alone, but works with a trusted network of collaborators and skilled craftspeople. Her current projects include a large family house in Richmond, a Georgian villa in St John’s Wood and a country house in Sussex.
Pictured: Alice B Davies (right) with Lisa Montague, CEO of Sanderson Design Group
Sophia Spring6/11RISING STAR, GARDENS: CAREY GARDEN DESIGN STUDIO
Sponsored by Munder Skiles
Husband and wife team Joe and Laura Carey were designing gardens long before they set up their own business in 2020. Both have backgrounds in creative fields – Laura in decorative arts and Joe in design and technology – and when they made a garden for themselves for the first time, they realised they had found a shared passion. After cutting their teeth on gardens for friends and family, they cemented their knowledge with courses at London College of Garden Design (Joe) and the RHS (Laura). They were firmly launched into the garden world last year, when they designed the Talitha Arts Garden at RHS Chelsea Flower Show, which won a gold medal and the top award in the All About Plants category. Since then, the space has been recreated at the charity’s head-quarters and the duo are designing additional areas there. With a growing portfolio of private gardens in East Anglia (where they are based) as well as further afield, they are determined not to be pigeonholed in terms of style, preferring to bring a fresh approach to every project. What they have a natural talent for is translating clients’ ‘exciting and wild dreams’ into beautiful, cohesive gardens.
Pictured from left: Laura and Joe Carey with Liz Goodrich of Munder Skiles
Sophia Spring7/11LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD: CHRISTINE VAN DER HURD
Sponsored by Lalique
Christine Van Der Hurd is one of life’s cool people, but wears this mantle lightly. Fresh out of Winchester School of Art, where she studied textile design, she flitted off to New York in 1977 and immersed herself in the emerging creative scene (think Robert Mapplethorpe, Annie Leibovitz and Studio 54). Commissions from fashion houses such as Cacharel and Yves St Laurent followed. Then came a volte-face into interiors and the opening of an antique shop. She began importing edgy British furniture by the likes of Tom Dixon and Ron Arad before eventually finding her true love – the design and production of rugs. She returned to the UK in the Noughties and, last year, the business that bears her name celebrated its 50th anniversary. Christine has established herself as one of great creative forces of our time. Her designs for rugs, fabric and most recently wallpapers combine a deep understanding of weaving with an intuitive eye for colour, texture and pattern. Her talent and integrity has decorators lining up to collaborate with her or to use her designs in their projects.
Pictured: Christine Van Der Hurd with Frederick Fischer of Lalique
Sophia Spring8/11HOTEL DESIGNER OF THE YEAR: MARTIN BRUDNIZKI
Sponsored by Vispring
A champion of maximalism, with an enduring ability to bring instant joy to any room he touches, Martin Brudnizki needs little introduction to the readers of House & Garden. We have followed Martin’s career closely for the past decade, from early projects such as The Beekman, a Thompson Hotel in New York’s lower Manhattan, which was featured on the website when it opened in 2016, to the member’s clubs and Mayfair institutions, including Annabel’s, Scott’s and Bacchanalia, that have more recently called upon the designer for his theatrical, almost mischievous aesthetic. His interiors have maintained an element of surprise that still intrigues despite his international success. In the past year or so, the designer’s contribution to hotel design has particularly caught our attention. From the transformation of Belmond’s Splendido hotel in Portofino, to two of Paris’s most anticipated openings, Le Grand Mazarin and La Fantaisie, as well as The Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York and his first hotel in London, Broadwick Soho, his achievements extend beyond interior design. Rather, Martin has created a production of his own, in which behind every perfectly trimmed velvet curtain is a microcosm of his fantastical world.
Pictured: Martin Brudnizki with Clare Schifano of Vispring
Sophia Spring9/11RESPONSIBLE DESIGN AWARD, GARDENS: TOM MASSEY
Sponsored by Project Giving Back
Quietly confident in all that he designs, Tom Massey has risen swiftly to prominence since he qualified at the London College of Garden Design in 2015. He has produced three award-winning gardens at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, including The Yeo Valley Organic Garden in 2021, which won a coveted gold medal as well as a BBC/RHS People’s Choice Award. Last year, his garden for the Royal Entomological Society was designed to ignite an interest in insect science and the drive for biodiversity, and this is a theme that runs through all of Tom’s private work. Passionate about the environment, he makes gardens that are not only ecologically led, but also beautiful and liveable. The Richmond garden we featured in House & Garden in September 2021 demonstrates this perfectly, combining eating and seating areas with densely planted borders and a woodland meadow. Tom’s first book, RHS Resilient Garden: Sustainable Gardening for a Changing Climate (DK, £27), came out last year. Packed with information about how to work with nature and adapt your garden to be more resilient to climate change, it is an invaluable new resource for any garden enthusiast.
Pictured: Tom Massey with Alexandra Denman of Project Giving Back
Sophia Spring10/11RESPONSIBLE DESIGN AWARD, INTERIORS: HOUSE OF HACKNEY
Sponsored by JANUS et Cie
Ever since it was founded in 2011, House of Hackney has done its utmost to operate as a sustainable and purposeful business. That is not easy for one that relies on people buying new furniture, accessories, fabric, flooring, wallpaper and tiles from it. But its founders Frieda Gormley and Javvy M Royle are getting the job done with their Eco Manifesto, which pledges to create a legally binding contract to ‘ensure the hidden voices of nature and future generations continue to be safeguarded in all company decisions’. They have appointed Brontie Ansell, the co-founder of Lawyers for Nature, to represent ‘Mother Nature and Future Generations’ on their board of directors. Other efforts have included achieving official carbon neutral status, protecting 170 acres of ancient wood-land, donating one per cent of sales to environmental and community charities, and mapping the water and waste footprint in House of Hackney’s supply chain. The couple hope their pioneering move will inspire other brands to give nature a seat on the board and drive much needed change, to ensure a thriving world for future generations.
Pictured: Javvy M Royle and Frieda Gormley with Jason Wood of JANUS et Cie
Sophia Spring11/11THE LIST AWARD FOR DESIGN EXCELLENCE: POLLY ASHMAN
Sponsored by Yves Delorme
Polly Ashman started out working in project management for a building firm. That early experience means this young London-based designer is particularly well informed when it comes to those initial stages of a project when so many vital (and potentially costly) decisions have to be made. ‘I’m also comfortable telling a builder they haven’t quite got something right,’ she says with a laugh. Polly started out on her own four years ago and is a one-woman band ‘working with a group of gorgeous freelancers’ on a handful of projects at a time. Her look leans toward the traditional and she can often be found rummaging around at a car boot sale or at Kempton’s Sunbury Antiques Market in search of that one special piece to make a room sing. She is also realistic when it comes to working within a budget and says, ‘We’re very lucky here in the UK to have a pretty good high street.’ To date, Polly has worked mainly on private houses, but she says she would love to get her hands on a classic country pub or a hotel. Watch this space, because this ambitious young designer certainly has the flair and personality to go places.
Pictured: Polly Ashman with Richard Boyle, CEO of Fremaux Delorme
