Contract - January/February 2015 - 18

pHoto: MEg WAlton

editorial

Celebrating Two Champions of Great Design for Even Greater Business
In this, our annual Interiors Awards issue, Contract is pleased to present
our 2015 Designer of the Year, Martin Lesjak, co-founder of the Austrian
architecture and design firm INNOCAD, and the recipient of our 2015
Legend Award, David Mourning, FIIDA, the founder of IA Interior Architects.
Both were honored at the 36th Annual Interiors Awards Breakfast in
New York on January 30.
Mourning has played a significant role in not only leading a firm
but in defining the modern practice of contract interior design, and
Lesjak is broadening that definition with his multifaceted design
approach. Together, they are two people of incredible impact in the
design industry that we are pleased to celebrate.
You may be familiar with some of the work of INNOCAD, which
won an Interiors Award in 2014 for Cannon Hall and two in 2013 for the
XAL Competence Center and the Microsoft Vienna office. Two separate
Interiors Awards jury teams selected those three projects out of a large
number of entries in each category. As I have closely followed
INNOCAD's body of work, have gotten to know Martin and his intense
focus on excellence, and after seeing firsthand the products that he is
designing as the co-founder of the product design company 13&9
Design, I am thrilled to name him our 36th Designer of the Year.
Lesjak is the fourth Designer of the Year from outside the U.S. in
36 years. His selection is also a signal that, as we see signs of economic
recovery in full swing, we are looking expansively at the world around us.
He and his colleagues are on a trajectory to do even greater work in
more countries in Europe, now in the Middle East, and soon in the U.S.
Lesjak is breaking down preconceptions of what an office interior can be
with projects like Microsoft and the most recent workplace, the 23-story
office of ÖBB (German acronym for Austrian Federal Railway). A fantastic
designer, Lesjak creates work that is truly Design with a capital D.
Our Legend David Mourning is most known as a business
leader in commercial interiors, growing one of the most highly regarded
design practices in the U.S. that now has 17 offices. The business of
contract interior design in this country in the last three decades has
absolutely been shaped by some of the best business practices that
Mourning espouses.
Cheryl S. Durst, Hon. FIIDA, executive vice president and
CEO of IIDA, acknowledges the important place in the profession that
18

Mourning has had. "David Mourning has contributed talent, wit,
intellectual rigor, and an infinite focus on strategy to this profession
that we know as commercial design," Durst told Contract. "And he has
significantly given and accorded great respect to the role of interior
design-and therefore interior designers."
Although both are founders of design firms, Mourning and Lesjak
seem so different, at least on the surface. But at the heart of both of their
work is great design. Mourning's leadership enables superb design
by his IA team. That, in turn, results in a superb solution for IA clients.
And Lesjak's outstanding design work further enables his clients to have
businesses that flourish. It goes hand in hand. The industry that
Mourning had a hand in building is now one that has expanded
internationally and has been reconceived in new, imaginative ways
by Lesjak and a new generation of designers. It's a continuing narrative
that brings disparate talents together with one adage in mind:
Good design is good business.
And here at Contract, we have that adage in mind as we think
about the future and start our 55th year as a publication. Beginning
with this issue, I am pleased to introduce a new regular columnist,
Evelyn M. Lee, AIA, writing for Contract (page 28). Lee is an architect based
in San Francisco who had served on the national board of directors of the
American Institute of Architects. A design strategist for MKThink, an ideas
company for the built environment, Lee has been invited to write for the
Contract audience of architects and interior designers with this premise:
The built environment design professions must evolve to remain relevant
and prosperous. A young architect who holds graduate degrees in
architecture, public administration, and business administration, Lee
is a welcome new voice for our readers. She will, I believe, broaden
perspectives on what we must do now and in the immediate future
to be vital and necessary as an industry.
Sincerely,
John Czarnecki, Assoc. AIA, Hon. IIDA
Editor in Chief

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