Ozwald Boateng and Melanie Keen announced as judges for Dezeen Awards 2024

Fashion designer Ozwald Boateng, Wellcome Collection director Melanie Keen, architect Dong Danshen and Design Bitches founders Rebecca Rudolph and Catherine Johnson are the latest Dezeen Awards 2024 judges.

Dezeen Awards 2024 launched last month in partnership with Bentley. There are just two days left until the early entry deadline! Enter by midnight London time this Wednesday to save 20 per cent on entry fees.

Now in its seventh year, the programme has become the ultimate accolade for architects and designers everywhere, with winners selected by a prestigious panel of international judges.

Read on to learn more about the new names that have joined this year's judging panel:

London-based fashion designer Boateng will join graphic designer Ian Cartlidge on this year's design judging panel. With over 30 years of experience, Boateng is known for his contemporary silhouettes which utilise colour, deep textures and traditional British tailoring techniques.

Boateng became the first English tailor to stage a catwalk at the 1994 Paris Fashion Week with his collection Classic with a Twist, which led to the opening of his flagship store on Savile Row in London.

The British-Ghanaian designer has collaborated with international brands including private bank Coutts & Co, whisky brand Johnnie Walker and Virgin Airlines. He was also appointed as the creative director for fashion house Givenchy Homme in 2003.

Recent projects include a new uniform collection for British Airways and a collection of wool rugs, tribal pillows and wallpapers for Poltrona Frau.

Keen, who is director of the Wellcome Collection, will join fashion designer Boateng on the design panel. Through the museum's collections, Keen aims to explore the connection between human experience and health, to reshape our cultural assumptions around race, disability and gender.

Before joining the Wellcome Collection, she was a curator in arts policy and funding at the Arts Council England. She was also a director and chief curator at the Institute of International Visual Arts (Iniva).

She was recently awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of the Arts London (UAL) for her contributions to curation and arts management.

Joining this year's architecture panel will be Chinese architect Danshen. The Hangzhou-based architect researches balanced architecture – a traditional Chinese philosophy that unites core values from technology and art to appearance and quality.

He is chief principal architect at the Architectural Design and Research Institute at Zhejiang University, as well as professor, doctoral advisor and director of the Centre for Balance Architecture at Zhejiang University in China.

Danshen's designs were exhibited at the Art of Europe International Architecture Exhibition in 2018 and at the Chinese Pavilion of Venice Biennale Architettura in 2020.

Rudolph and Johnson are the co-founders of architecture practice Design Bitches and will join artist Pilar Zeta on the design judging panel.

With over 20 years of experience, the Los Angeles-based pair has collaborated on projects spanning residential, commercial and cultural buildings.

The female-founded studio has won multiple awards including the 2017 AIA Los Angeles Emerging Practice Award recipient, as well as being shortlisted for the Moira Gemmill Prize for Emerging Architecture.

Rudolph and Johnson have lectured at institutions including the University of Oregon, Columbia University, Yale University, California Institute of Art, Southern California Institute of Architecture (Sci-Arc), and University of Southern California (USC).

Dezeen Awards 2024 in partnership with Bentley

Dezeen Awards is the ultimate accolade for architects and designers across the globe. The seventh edition of the annual awards programme is in partnership with Bentley as part of a wider collaboration to inspire, support and champion design excellence and showcase innovation that creates a better and more sustainable world. This ambition complements Bentley's architecture and design business initiatives, including the Bentley Home range of furnishings and real estate projects around the world.

The post Ozwald Boateng and Melanie Keen announced as judges for Dezeen Awards 2024 appeared first on Dezeen.